Ash Wednesday

The Venerable Richard I. Cluett

This day, Ash Wednesday, may be for some of us the most important day, the most wonderful day in the Christian calendar. With the exception of Good Friday, all the other days are major feast days, days of remembrance, celebration, and contemplation on the acts of God – in the past. Even Good Friday is something like that; the day is totally focused on the acts of Jesus.

But today, today is about us. It is a very personal day that has solely to do with our relationship with God, and with ourselves.

Bishop Steven Charleston writes about today:

“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, the cycle begins again, the ancient whisper of our own frailty, slipping the fine clothes from our shoulders, taking the crown from our heads, bringing us back to that humble place where it all began and where it will surely end.”

This is the day we can be released from whatever it is that has bound us for so long. This is the day we can be released from whatever it is that has separated us. We can be released from whatever it is that has isolated us. We can be released from whatever it is that wakes us and worries us or frightens us in the middle of the long night. This is the day we can be released from whatever it is about us that has condemned us in our own sight. We can finally lay these burdens down, all of them.

Garrison Keillor says that "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving" - and we give it to ourselves. We bind it upon our own backs.

But this is Ash Wednesday. This is "Get out of Jail" day. This is "Get home free day". At the end of this day, at the end of this liturgy, we can be washed clean. At the end of this day, or at the end of this season of Lent, we can be made dazzling white, cleaner than any fullers bleach could make us. Fresh and clean as a newborn babe, as a newly baptized babe. You and I – a new creation.

Today is our Yom Kippur; today is the Christian Day of Atonement. It is the day that opens the way for clearing away all the stands between our truest, most honest selves and our God. A season of spring-cleaning lies before us, a chance to rid our lives of the detritus of life, the clutter of our consumption. It is the day to start a process of once again becoming “at one” with our God, living in harmony with our God and God’s Creation.

If we will repent and re-turn to the Lord, "our God will have compassion and he will richly pardon." St. Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” God was in Christ reconciling You to himself. And me. And so we can begin again in hope and in faith that God will make us a new creation – again, at one with God and in harmony with those among whom we live.

We can start anew. We can get over it - whatever it is. We can get over ourselves, and get right with our God, and begin to get right with those with whom we live, and among whom we live, and with the rest of God's creation.

Today is about us - about God and us. It is a day to get over ourselves, beyond ourselves, outside ourselves, and get on with life as God intends it to be. Get on with our life in the fullness God has prepared for us.

Today God says, "It is over. What is done is done. You are mone and I love you and you are now forgiven. I absolve you from all that has separated you from me. I absolve you from all that has separated you from your family or friends or neighbors. I absolve you from all that has separated you from yourself."

William Countryman is a wonderful teacher and theologian. He writes about it this way:

"The message of forgiveness says to us, Get over yourself! Get over your goodness and your righteousness, if they threaten to keep you from full participation in your humanity. Get over your faults, your inadequacy, if they're what hold you back. Get over whatever it is that makes you self-obsessed, whatever makes you reject God's wooing of you, whatever makes you feel that you would rather not go in to the party, whatever makes you feel like you belong to some separate and superior race of beings, whatever makes you feel like an eternal victim, whatever makes you imagine that there's something in this world more important and more fundamental than love."

If we repent and turn to the Lord, we "may obtain of the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness". Do you hear that? "Perfect remission and forgiveness." Made worthy to stand in the presence of God. Washed through and through from our wickedness and cleansed from our sin. 

Freed from all that binds us. Freed from all that separates us. Freed from all that isolates us. Freed from all that condemns us. Free at last. Free to take our rightful place at the table. Free to get on with life. Free to get about the work of building the kingdom. Free to help release others from whatever binds them or diminishes their God-given humanity. Free at last! Today. It’s Ash Wednesday. And new life can begin today.

Thanks be to God.