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Ashes on Your Heart
by The Very Rev. Frank F. Limehouse, III
Ash Wednesday, Joel 2:13
2/17/2010
unedited
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The season of Lent has, for many centuries, been set apart in the church for the purpose of promoting in the minds of Christians a deeper humility before God and for preparing them for a deeper sense of genuine gratitude for those profound acts of God which we commemorate during holy week and Good Friday.
There is of course a true sense that a call to a deep humility before God is suited for all days and seasons, yet the fathers of our church consecrated this season for a more than ordinary course of penitence and prayer.
To that end, we begin on Ash Wednesday, and I call your attention this day to a very well known verse in Scripture, Joel 2:13: “Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…”.
For this evening's purpose, we might put it another way, “Wear smudges of ashes on your hearts and not your forehead. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful…”
In other words, to wear smudges of ashes on your forehead would not amount to anything, nothing but pious ceremony, unpleasing to God, if we did not at the same time wear of smudges ashes on heart.
It's easy, isn't it, to wear ashes and other outward signs of religious emotion? But to feel true repentance is the heart-mark of a genuine Christian.
Years ago, newly ordained, I was asked to speak to a group of children about prayer. I still have the notes I used for the class, 1989. St. Paul's exhortation in Philippians was my text: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (4:6). I encouraged the children to pray with me, making their requests be made known to God. We heard the usual wonderful stuff: healing for pets, friends, teachers. One little girl prayed: “Help me God to know my sins…”. It was like the Lord sent this 11 year old girl to speak to me! Jesus said, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast brought perfect praise (and wisdom), Matthew 21:16.
“Help me to know my sins.” Who among us this day has not grievously departed from God's ways? A little later in this service, during the Litany of Penitence, we will be praying for specific sins. I pray the Holy Spirit will convict each of us. To truly know our sins- the know, see and feel the power of sin turning us inward to self- is indeed the soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit. It is powerfully humiliating, yes, but completely sin-purging for the Lord, your God is gracious and merciful.
I hope it's not an over-kill to return to something I wrote about in the Adventurer newsletter just two weeks ago. It's about a walk I took with a woman years ago on a damp, chilly, winter Sunday afternoon to the marsh-side grave of her son, who had been killed in Vietnam. She had many memories of her son and she talked about them: Phi Beta Kappa at an Ivy League school where he also lettered in football as a place kicker and defensive back and held various honors across the board.
As she was fondly reminiscing, she told me if she could have five minutes of her son's life again, it would be the day he disobeyed her and ran into her garden- an angry, rebellious little boy- and trampled some of her flowers. Then, in a little while, with a broken flower in his hand he came back and threw himself into her arms, asking forgiveness. She said, “You know, I don't think he was afraid of punishment, he was sorry he hurt me, and if I could have him back for just five minutes, I would want to take him back as that mercy-seeking little boy.” I was struck by that- not wearing an honor's gown, not kicking the winning field goal to win an Ivy League game, not war hero, but mercy-seeking little boy.
The key to a meaningful Lent, indeed, the key to a meaningful Christianity and understanding the Christian gospel is to see ourselves as we really are, much like that little boy- disobedient, rebellious (“wicked from my mother's womb”); and to see God as he really is, much like that loving mother (“a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”).
And so our text commands us to rend our hearts and not our garments. Before we take Holy Communion to celebrate the redemption of our souls through the broken body and blood shed by Jesus Christ, without which there is no redemption of our souls, you will be invited to receive the imposition of ashes. These ashes are intended to be an outward and visible sign of an inward reality. So let us pray to God that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these ashes may be truly and earnestly worn in our hearts, because the Lord said,” Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the me, your God, for I am gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…”.
May God draw reluctant hearts, and now give doubting souls courage to believe this for Jesus' sake. Amen.
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