Sunday, February 12, 2012

2/22/2012 – Ash Wednesday - Joel 2:12-18, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 –


      This season of Lent – the special penitential season of preparation – calls out to us today.  We ourselves are “called to be Holy” during this holy season.  We are called to be holy on this day that we have ashes placed on our foreheads as a public sign of repentance.  We are called to be holy during the season of Lent as we recall and trace Jesus’ path of ministry, as we follow the footsteps of his passion, death, and resurrection, footsteps that bring to us salvation as the holy people of God.
     In today's first reading, the prophet Joel calls the people of Israel to a communal rite of anguish and repentance as a path toward hope in God.  Joel calls the people to repent with sackcloth and ashes, with prayer and fasting.  The priests and the leaders of the community, the elders and the infants – everybody joins in this ritual of repentance.       
     Joel tells us to rend our hearts, not our garments, to return to the Lord.  Perhaps this message gets to the heart of what we mean by signifying Lent as a season in which we are called to be holy. We are not to focus on the externals, but on how our hearts are being changed and converted on the inside.  There is a tension between our call to repent publically and Jesus’ admonition of being aware of practicing our piety before others in order to be seen by them, in perhaps taking pride in the way we express our remorse and repentance publically.  If we focus on the surface of the externals and the rituals, there is a danger that we will just go through the motions of repentance.  If we just go through the motions, this holy season will not be life-changing or transformative for us this year.
     We are called to holiness during this holy season of Lent not just individually, but also as a community. During Lent, we will all have daily devotional books in we can all pray together as a community.  We will have our traditional Wednesday evening soup suppers each week during Lent in which we will gather and journey together during this holy season.  We also will receive different symbols during our Lenten journey that will bond us together as a faith community.
     As we start our Lenten journey with Ash Wednesday, may we rend our hearts for personal reflection that will lead us to a season of confession, change, and renewal.  The trumpet is to be sounded in Zion, but not as a call that celebrates victory, not as a call that signals the advance to war, but rather a call that warns those who are penitent that the day of the Lord is coming.  Let us see beyond the smudge of ash that is placed on our foreheads to the smudge that exists in our hearts.  May this journey that we start on Ash Wednesday through this holy season bring our repentance from the shadows into substance, from ritual into reality, from a facade into faith.  May we journey together as a community during Lent in our call to greater holiness. 

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