ASH WEDNESDAY 2016
Of all the beautiful and enduring themes for stories in literature, one of the ones I like to best is the homecoming story, the one in which the protagonist leaves the comfort of home, encounters various dangers and trials, gets lost on dead end paths, meets strangers, some of whom might be friends, lovers, monsters or enemies. But at the end, the protagonist arrives home safe and sound and is reconciled to his or her loved ones and the story ends with the hero or heroine wiser, more compassionate, more humble, more aware and more astute.
The season of Lent which we begin today is very much like that homeward journey. Lent calls each of us to come home the basic facts of our existence: the fact that we are not immortal, the fact that we are unconditionally loved by God and reconciled to Him through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that we are all called to exercise love and mercy toward one another in imitation of the God who has loved us.
Sometimes we can lose sight or consciousness of these facts; and this happens to us because we tend to live at some distance from our real lives. Most of the time, we think we are immortal, we think that we have bestowed existence upon ourselves and that we are the owners and masters of everything around us, that we can love things and use people, rather than love people and use things. We need to come home to the fact that, in truth, we have no control over the length of our lives, but we do have control over the depth of our lives.
We tend to live at some distance from the truth that God loves us unconditionally, from the truth that there is nothing we could ever do or say or become that would make God love us less. We tend to believe that we have, somehow, disqualified ourselves from God’s love because of our sins, and, thus, give ourselves an excuse to remain alienated from God. Who needs a God in their life who does nothing but judge and condemn? We need to come home to the fact that sin is real and that sin is powerful in our lives, but that sin, no matter how serious or so destructive, is no match for God’s grace and mercy. We cannot out-sin God’s mercy.
And we tend to live at some distance from the obligation we have to love one another with the fullness with which God loves us. There are people in our daily experience whose suffering cries out to us: the poor, the rejected, the homeless, of course, even though we treat them as though they were invisible; but even those who might live on our floor or in our apartment, members of our fraternity or sorority or service org, whose lives are coming apart at the seams, who are, consciously or not, becoming more and more addicted to behaviors or substances which are destroying them while we pretend not to notice, or give ourselves the coward’s excuse that it is inappropriate to judge another. We need to come home to the fact that, especially when it comes to maintaining or destroying life, we are always our brother’s keeper, no matter what.
We find ourselves at a distance from these facts of our existence, usually, not because we have made a deliberate choice to forget who we really are or where we really belong. We aren’t so much bad as we are so compulsively busy, so easily distracted by what’s new or what’s popular, and so easily susceptible to the sense of emergency and necessity with which the media and advertising inundate us without ceasing.
So here we are today, and, maybe for the first time in a while, conscious of both our need and our desire to come home to claim once more the facts of our existence.
The church recommends three sure and clear paths which will help us get beyond the masks and the illusions and the lies about our lives and bring us home.
First, we sign ourselves with ashes today as a sign that we are not immortal, that someday, we will have to give an account of the choices we have made.
Second, the church recommends that we pray a little bit more during Lent to remind ourselves of what God has done for us and is doing for us. We might try the Jesus prayer, which takes five seconds, but reminds us of who we are and who God is: “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner.” We are always sinners and God always, always, has mercy.
Third, the church recommends that we perform some concrete acts of compassion and mercy for our neighbors. Perhaps we could choose to pray for those on our campus whose lives are going out of control. Perhaps we could make a list of the people we find difficult and then pray for them every day. Perhaps we could strike up a conversation with someone we don’t know very well. Perhaps we could express gratitude to the worker in the Lair or the member of the maintenance staff or the gardener instead of treating them like they don’t exist.
The season of Lent calls us home to the beauty and the mystery of who we are; it calls us to reclaim, with new eyes and with new wisdom, the purpose and the meaning of why we are here at all. Home is where the heart is, and Lent leads us right to our hearts.
Come home, sisters and brothers, come home.
Amen.