Ashes and Humility

            There is a wonderful old statement about Ash Wednesday and receiving ashes.  When you are leaving the church, if you think that you ought to wash the ashes off your forehead because you don’t want anyone to see them, they you need to leave them on.  If you are proud of having the ashes on your forehead and you want the world to admire you for having them, then you ought to wash them off.  The point that this is trying to make is that we need to approach this day and this sacrament with humility.  We have all done things that don’t make us proud.  Being forgiven is a beautiful thing that gets us back on track and back to the place where we need to live our lives.  What guilt and shame cause in us is disruption and in this great beginning of Lent, God is giving to us a chance to get rid of some of those things that cause the disruption.

            Jesus advice in the gospel for today is in the same vein.  He tells us that when we give alms, or pray or fast that we ought not to do it as the hypocrites do in very public and outlandish ways to cause attention to what we are doing, but we need to do it all very quietly so that our God knows what we are doing and can give us our reward.  The reward is forgiveness and the blessing of God’s love cleansing our souls. 

            The point is that we are all human and human beings sometimes do things that we ought not to do.  We all know this and sometimes we tell stories to cover up what we have done.  That isn’t always helpful.  We need to honestly confess our failings before our God and sometimes before each other so that we can get back to normal. That isn’t always easy.  Frequently it can be rather embarrassing for us to tell one another that we have done something wrong.  People sometimes go to great lengths to not do this.  It can destroy relationships.  Every time that we have the Eucharist, we have the general confession, a time when we are supposed to confess the things that we have done before God and to receive absolution.  Before we have the confession, there is supposed to be a period of silence that I always observe so that we can think of the things that we need to confess.  In addition to that, I am always available to you if you need to talk further about any of this.  I have had a lot of experience with people who have done wrong and who have needed to talk about it.  What I have discovered is that confession frees the soul and offers a time of reflection that contributes to a better life.

            I have told you of the ministry that I had for a number of years at Western Penitentiary.  In that time, I had great relationships with men who had killed someone.  I saw how our conversations helped them to understand the depth of forgiveness.  I have a number of stories of how that played out in the lives of not only those prisoners, but in the lives of the people who they hurt by their crime. 

            This service today is a time for confession.  In a moment, we will recite Psalm 51, which is the Psalm that King David wrote after Nathan the prophet came to him and accused him of the seduction of Bathsheba, his neighbor and the wife of Uriah the Hittite a soldier in his army whom he ordered to be sent into the heart of the battle and then was killed.  David was filled with remorse because of Nathan’s reproach and went back to his room and wrote this Psalm.  We will then say the litany of penitence, to which I will respond with an absolution.  We will then receive the ashes on our forehead as a sign of our repentance and absolution.  This is how we begin this season of Lent, leading to the absolute joy of Easter.  God bless us in this endeavor and help us to understand the totality of His love.