Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17: This passage from the small and not often read prophecy of Joel stands as a frontispiece over our whole observance of Lent. "Blow the trumpet in Zion," says the prophet, and he repeats it a second time. The trumpet sounds the first time to call attention to the crisis before the people. It sounds the second time to call for repentance, a change of heart and life, on the part of all the people.

"Blow the trumpet in Zion," says Joel (2:1), "for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near." Joel sees an enemy army coming toward Zion, great and powerful, whose like has never been seen from old. The march of enemy feet fills the earth with darkness; armies move under clouds of smoke and dust. The blackness in the souls of those under attack is greater still. Gloom and thick darkness settles over them. Yet, says Joel, this is not only the day of enemy attack. It is the coming "day of the Lord." Israel had expected the "day of the Lord" to be a time of celebration and feasting. It proves to be precisely the opposite. When God comes, God will demand reparation for our follies and sins, for our lack of trust in God's goodness and God's judgment. The day of the Lord is darkness and gloom.

"Blow the trumpet in Zion," says the prophet a second time (2:15). Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the people together, young and old, bride and bridegroom, sanctify the congregation of Israel, let them be set apart as those who are holy to our God. Do all those things that indicate a change of heart and soul on the part of all the people. "Return to me with all your heart, says the Lord, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning. Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God."

Why should we do this? Joel repeats the great creed of the people of Israel, one that goes back to Moses and the time of exodus. "For God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." Who knows? If this gracious Lord finds that our repentance is sincere, God might relent and return us to his favor.

So Joel sounds the themes that we pick up on Ash Wednesday and consider throughout the period of Lent, the forty days, minus Sundays, between this Wednesday and the Easter to come. Spiritual crisis is upon us: look to your own souls. Do what we must to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord: worship, pray, dig deep into our own lives to see where we stand before God. Turn to God, with fear and trembling: will God return us to God's own favor?

Isaiah 58:1-12 There is a common thread that runs through the passages chosen for the lectionary for Ash Wednesday, and the thread is composed of two strands. One strand points out the necessity of practicing our piety, by means of worship, prayer, fasting, giving. The other strand says that unless these practices are based on the justice and mercy of God, they are meaningless and probably self-deluding.

The prophet who wrote the words of this text is called "Isaiah of Babylon" to distinguish him from his mentor of another generation, "Isaiah of Jerusalem." Isaiah of Jerusalem had lived during the times of four kings of Judah - Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. These kings ruled during the years 750 to about 700 BC. During this time, the northern kingdom of Israel (made up approximately of the ten tribes of Israel located in the northern part of the land) had suffered catastrophe. It had been attacked by the invincible Assyrian army, and the capital city of Samaria had been razed. The few people who survived the battle were scattered among the regions that Assyria ruled. In the sister kingdom of Judah, Isaiah of Jerusalem was the prophet who kept calling king and people to return to God in order to avoid the same calamity from occurring in their lands.

But in 586 BC, Jerusalem did fall, not to the Assyrians but to the Babylonians who had succeeded Assyria as the dominant nation of the world. King Zedekiah and his court, the priests, the elders and leaders of the people - those who were left from the siege - were taken into exile far to the east in the lands of Babylon. There Isaiah of Babylon, thinking of himself as a simple disciple of the earlier Isaiah, issued his prophecies. The proclamations of Isaiah of Jerusalem comprise the first thirty-nine chapters of the book. The remaining seventeen chapters are credited to Isaiah of Babylon. His prophecies were uttered in the years around 540 BC, about a generation after the exile had begun.

This Isaiah believed that God was about to restore the people of Judah to their homelands around Jerusalem, so his message begins with the heartening words, "Comfort, comfort my people." (40:1) He tells of "The Servant of the Lord," who will be God's agent in redemption, the one "despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." (53:3) Isaiah is also the one who issued the call that Jesus accepted as his own job description: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, . . to bring good tidings to the afflicted, bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim liberty to captives." (61:1) It was in the spirit of this call that Isaiah issued the message that serves as our lectionary text.

Isaiah points out how the exiled people of Judah were now happily coming before God: "They seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, they delight to draw near to God." (58:2) And why not? Think of what God had done for them. Forty years before, their houses had been burned, their temple destroyed, their fields despoiled, their relatives killed. But God had blessed them during the exile. Now they had homes and fields of their own, a thriving community, servants who worked for them. To show their gratitude, they fasted, they prayed, they humbled themselves before the Lord, they spread sackcloth under them and put ashes on their bodies.

But on the very day that they fasted, they also oppressed their workers, they quarreled with each other, they fought with one another, (58:3-4) they pointed fingers and spoke wickedness. (58:9) This kind of fasting, said the prophet, is not acceptable to the Lord. "This is not the fast I choose," said the Lord. The fasting acceptable to God is to loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the thongs of the yoke to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into your house, and cover their nakedness with clothes. (58:6-7) Only as you do this, says the Lord, shall your light rise in the darkness (58:10), only then shall your ancient ruins be rebuilt and the streets of your homeland restored. (58:12)

The issue, of course, is true worship: what is its nature? Is it doing acts of piety, praying, fasting, singing? Or is this to be done only in the larger context of justice, to loose the bonds of wickedness, remove the yoke from the oppressed, share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless into our houses, and clothe those who have no clothes? There is no question where Isaiah of Jerusalem stands on this issue, nor Jesus himself, as we shall see in our Gospel text. On Ash Wednesday, as Lent begins, we begin our examination of ourselves and our worship, and the examination needs to continue all during Lent until our Lord himself is crucified and raised from the dead. Do we delude ourselves into believing that worship of God is an end in itself? Or is our worship that which leads us to carry out God's work of bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed? This, says our text, is our major question as Lent begins.

Psalm 51:1-17: A fellow minister of mine, Dr. Harry Kruener, Pastor Emeritus of Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, New York, once began a sermon with these words:

"The 51st Psalm is the great confessional of the Bible. It is supposed to have been written or inspired by the king of Israel, David. You remember what a half-poet, half-barbaric creature he was. And once he coveted another man's wife; he fell in love with Bathsheba and because he was the king he saw to it that her husband was sent to war and put in the forefront of the battle. There he met his death. Then, you remember, the knotted old prophet Nathan came to him and told him a story of a man who was rich and had many flocks of sheep, and nearby was his neighbor, poor with only one single ewe lamb, and how that rich man stole the poor man's single priceless possession just to flatter his own power and please some whim of his fancy. And David, all unsuspecting, swore vengeance against such cruel injustice: how easily we can spot the corruption in another, how blind we are to our own. To which Nathan answered: "O king, thou art the man." And stunned, and crestfallen, and seared with the hot iron of his conscience, David wrote this Psalm: "Have mercy upon me 0 God ... wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin... for I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before thee... against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight." The words pile up: "Hide thy face from my sin and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a right spirit within me." Then the great insight of all true prophecy: "Thou desirest not sacrifice., else would I give it. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not despise." Nowhere in the Old Testament will you find sin so described and so confessed. It has become part of the liturgy of all our churches, this Psalm of a tortured spirit centuries ago."

Some scholars disagree with my friend and insist that David did not write this psalm. Whether or not he did, the psalm has been ascribed to David through many generations. It expresses the kind of grief over sin committed that we identify with biblical faith, and it speaks of the kind of restoration that David experienced when he made his confession to God.

Let us try to reconstruct the situation of the writer. He is sick with grief and pain. His greatest pain is his sharp sense of having alienated himself from God by his sin. His sin, he admits, is not only against a person, a Bathsheba or Uriah; nor against the law of the land, which he has broken; nor against his nation, whose trust he has betrayed. It is against God, because what the confessor has done violates God, desecrates what Walter Brueggemann has called "the god-ness of God." (Message of the Psalms, 99) Sin at heart is a violation of our relationship with God, and the psalmist cries out: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy, blot out my transgression." (51:1)

The words are those of a person making a sacrifice before an altar. "Transgression, iniquity, sin": these are the terms he assigns to his acts. "Blot out, wash, cleanse, purge:" this is what he requests from God. "Blot out" means "to remove completely from the record of a tablet." "Cleanse" has to do with removing dross from metals. The process involves heating metal to such a degree that the dross is burned away and only the pure metal remains. In other words, the act of cleansing will be painful to the confessor, as fire is caustic to the metal. "Purge me with hyssop" is literally "unsin me, by anointing me with the aromatic oil used to spray on lepers or the loathsome sick." The purpose of God's doing this? "To create in us a new spirit, a steadfast unwavering loyalty." The word "create" is the same word that is used in the creation story in Genesis. The person at prayer is asking that God bring into being in him or her a whole new creation, the kind that will be spoken of in Paul's Letter to the Corinthians, the epistle text for the day. The confessor - or David, or ourselves, or anyone - is asking that God perform a new act of creation, like the act of creation on the first day. This new act will result in a new center of being within us that will permit God to restore us to right relationship with himself.

Why would God do this? The reason is found in the words "mercy" and "steadfast love." God is merciful; for no reason other than God's graciousness God does this. God is "steadfast love." The Hebrew is "chesed," and it may be the most important word in the Old Testament. It speaks of God's entering into a covenant with God's people at the time of Moses, God is our God and we are God's people. Chesed has to do with God's keeping up that relationship, doing everything necessary to fulfill it, God's unrelenting care. God entered into covenant with God's people not because of any virtue in ourselves but because God is God, and God is gracious. And God continues to shower this love upon us because God is God, and God is gracious. Our hope for "the new spirit " depends on God alone, the God to whom this humble prayer is addressed.

Dr. Kruener, whose sermon began this exposition, also provides our ending. He closed his sermon by saying this:

"The Christian always realizes that God himself suffers infinitely because of our sin. Do you see now why the Christian can never treat sin lightly as does the average modern man or woman? Our God is simply too big, too holy to pass over sin lightly, and too loving not to suffer with the sinner. And it's this redemptive, loving suffering of God with and for us that promises our redemption at last. That's the gleam of light on a very dark horizon; that's the glory beyond the Cross; that's the only optimism worth having, optimism born out of a sense of the true tragedy of human existence, not dismissing it with shallow phrases and flip gestures, but knowing in your own life and the life of the world about you both the depths of humankind and the unending, long-suffering love of God. This is the tear-stained triumph of the Christian faith.

0 love that wilt not let me go

I rest my weary soul in Thee.

So then at this Lenten season, like David., let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God. Unamuno, the modern mystic, closed his great book with this benediction: "May God deny you peace but grant you glory." That's my prayer for you, for myself. In this world of sin may God ever deny us peace but grant us something higher, the glory of His grace."

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21: In these words Jesus describes what had become the traditional practices of piety of the Jewish people: fasting, praying, and giving alms for the poor. It is fascinating to see each of these acts in its context.

"When you do an act of mercy (give alms, in other words), do not sound a trumpet before you." (6:2) . . ."Sound a trumpet" probably refers to a specific situation. In Palestine the community's poor were supported by a graduated tax, which was supplemented by freewill offerings collected in synagogues and schools. Trumpets were sounded during public fasts, especially in times of drought, and there were prayers in the street. It may well be that collections for the poor were made at public fasts. The trumpet helped call attention to these acts of generosity.

"But when you do an act of mercy, do not let your left know what your right is doing." (6:3, my translation) This apparently refers to the ostentatious way a gift would be made: the giver lifts the coin from his money-belt with his left hand, transfers it in front of his body to his right hand, then passes it on to the one in need. Who could miss it! But Jesus' statement also refers to something deeper. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it plainly: "Knowing of Jesus, a man can no longer know of his own goodness. Knowing of his own goodness, he can no longer know Jesus."

"When you pray, do not stand . . . in the synagogues and on the corners of the highways to pray. . . . But when you pray, go into your store chamber (this was a little ante-room in the rear of the tiny Palestinian house, and it was certainly not the usual place one would seek out for saying prayers) and lock the door to pray to your father in secret. . . . Do not prattle words as the gentiles; for they think that in their many words they shall be heard." (6:5-7 my translation)

These people like to pray to an audience. In the synagogue they would loudly recite their own prayers instead of being content to pray the accustomed congregational prayers. At the three daily times of prayer - when the pious workman quit his work and the teacher his teaching, in order to turn toward Jerusalem in acknowledgment of God - the professionally pious would arrange their life as to be caught at a crowded corner. Then they would sometimes stand for three hours in their devotions.

"Do not prattle words" - this means to stammer, to repeat the same sounds. It may be derived from Battus, a king of Cyrene, who is said to have stuttered; or from Battus, an author of tedious and wordy poems. It is an unusual word, used only here in the New Testament and found elsewhere only in the Lives of Aesop and the writings of one other man.

"And when you fast . . ." (6:16-18) To fast, of course, means to abstain from food and drink as a religious exercise. If a fast lasted a single day, the fast was absolute: no food, no drink. If it continued for several days, it was abstinence from customary and choice foods. Sometimes the persons fasting would pour ashes upon them to indicate how seriously they took the fast.

Jesus and his disciples were conspicuous because they fasted hardly at all, and Jesus gives a whole different interpretation to fasting. "Do not be of a sad and gloomy countenance, or disfigure your face," he said, "but wash your face and anoint your head," a sign of rejoicing, so that no one else will know that you are fasting.

Jesus' concern is keeping these acts private. Do not give your alms in public but in private. Do not conduct your personal prayers ostentatiously but seek a private place to meet with God. Do not fast in such a way that everyone knows you are fasting, but fast in such a manner that God alone will know of your fast. If you do these for their public show, said Jesus "you have your reward." The phrase has been found on the face of thousands of commercial documents uncovered in the sands of Egypt, and there it means "Paid in full." When the acts are performed for themselves alone, the giving has no further point, the prayers no transcendent purpose, there is no other reason for the fasts than the fasts themselves. They are marked, "Paid in full." There is always, says Jesus, a tendency of the human heart to exalt itself at the expense of God, and using these acts of piety for public purposes is a tragic example of that exaltation. Isaiah says it, the psalmist says it, and now Jesus underscores it. True spiritual life is unanxious faith. It cares only about helping other persons.

The section at the end of the text (6:19-21) is a short poem of two stanzas with three lines each and one stanza with two lines. It does not fit naturally with the practices of piety but seems to be included in this section because it does have to do with treasure, and it includes mention of "the store room." Note verse 21. This seems to reverse our usual understanding of giving. We like to think that if our heart is right, we will give money to those in need. Jesus states the exact opposite: "where your treasure is, there will your heart be." In other words, the mind follows the matter. Treasure the poor, and you will give to them; treasure the causes of Jesus, and your life and its resources will follow.

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10: It is easy to see why this passage is included among these texts for Ash Wednesday. Paul has just written of "the new creation" (5:17) which Psalm 51 described in Old Testament terms. Paul talks of it in New Testament concepts: "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation." Paul is talking about the transformation that had taken place in many but also in himself. "Purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God" (6:6-7): these are the qualities that mark Paul's ministry, and these are also the qualities of life that constitute "the new creation" in Christ.

They are not qualities one generates within oneself, by willing them. They come from God, and sometimes they come because of hard lessons. Paul describes the lessons: "great endurance (upothumia, the most cherished of Christian virtues, the ability to endure in the midst of challenge and chaos), afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults (these are the great disorders that throw life out of balance), labors, watchings (this strange plural denotes the wakefulness of sleepless nights, care that causes sleeplessness), hunger. (6:4-7) To face these the Christian has to be armed with the weapons of the right hand and of the left, of attack (the sword in the right hand) and of defense (held in the left hand, the shield.)

Then Paul lists, I think for the first time in Christian literature, the great paradoxes of the Christian life.

We are viewed as Yet in truth we are

dishonored honored

in ill repute in good repute

imposters true

unknown well known

dying behold we live

punished yet not killed

sorrowful always rejoicing

poor making many rich

having nothing possessing everything

We are not what the world sees, says Paul, those situations described in the left-hand column, above. We are what God sees, and God sees us in the terms established by the right-hand column.

We are therefore ambassadors for Christ. "To be an ambassador" means to live in one country and yet to represent the interests of another country: Christians live in the world governed by the Emperor at Rome, and yet they are to represent the interests of another kingdom, the kingdom of God. We do this, says Paul, because of what Christ has done for us.

Here we come upon the most difficult line to interpret in the whole passage: "For our sake God made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin, that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God." Rudolph Bultmann (NT Theology, 277) points out that this does not mean that God treated the ethically sinless Christ "as if" he were a sinner. Rather, this clause expresses the paradoxical fact that God made the sinless Jesus to be a sinner. God did this by permitting Jesus to die on a cross, for as Paul notes in the Letter to the Galatians (3:13), the Book of Deuteronomy declares that anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed. Here is the syllogism: Christ hanged on a tree; Christ was cursed; Christ was thereby a sinner against the Law of God. But his sin is a "sin offering" made to God, an offering of himself that takes away the sin that stands between us and God. Because our sin is taken away by this "sin offering," Christ has re-established right relationships between God and ourselves, that which the "sin offerings" offered at the Temple were designed to do. Because Christ was willing to become a sin offering on our behalf, we are restored to righteousness, that is, to right relationships with God. As Paul said at the beginning of the passage, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. There is therefore a new creation, created by God and Christ, which is extended to us and in which we are invited to share.

It is in searching for this new creation that we enter upon the period of Lent.