Ash Wednesday February 17 Ash Wednesday
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Psalm 32
When I acknowledged my sin, I received immense joy. When we acknowledge our participation in oppressive policies, we know God will overcome those, and we can also be in joy instead of living in denial or guilt. Then we will have the energy to act against those oppressions.
Psalm 143
I am almost crushed by my enemy, and by my own weakness. But I remember how good you were in the past, and I still hope in you. Otherwise, there is no hope.
Jonah 3: 1-4: 11
Ash Wednesday is about taking responsibility for our having participated in evil, whether actively or by staying silent. We all have much to confess in that regard. In response we are generously forgiven, a miracle indeed!
Jonah, a deeply religious person, has been sent by God to challenge the wicked pagan city of Nineveh about their depravity. The city repents and God immediately forgives. But Jonah objects that this was too easy—there should have been some consequences for the city’s long evil. Like us, Jonah cannot comprehend that God would want to be so generous to pagans and to people who are totally ignorant. God points out that Jonah was concerned about a bush that died, so shouldn’t God be even more concerned about a whole city which faced up to their evil, even if they are people who don’t even know left from right? God is saying, “Don’t imagine that there is anything you or the human race can do that God won’t be eager to forgive.”
Written around the time that the Jews were about to return to Jerusalem after a generation enslaved in Babylon, the book proposes that God is as loyal and generous to the evil pagans who had enslaved them as to upright and religious people. That was a radical and even treasonous proposal. We, too, can object that it’s not fair that evil people be treated with the same generosity as those who have been faithful to God for their entire lives. But God’s inclusion extends to every part of us, and to every person without exception, no matter how undeserving. Even if, like the pagan Ninevehans, people have had no interest in God or faith, or if we think there is some part of ourselves that cannot be forgiven, that is to utterly underestimate God’s radical generosity.
Luke 18: 9-14
The theme is the same as in Jonah—the truly good and faithful person cannot imagine that God warmly welcomes the undeserving sinner who will be more at home in heaven than he or she themselves. Jesus was undermining the sense of truly good people that they are especially favoured by God. But such a person isn’t truly good—they aren’t in deep love and care for their sinning neighbour, as God is. Trusting in the illusion of our own goodness feels satisfying, as it did for the Pharisee, but that way leads to immaturity and isolation and prevents us from knowing the joy of discovering God’s radical and boundless love.
During Lent we are being encouraged to die to illusions about ourselves, and to receive glorious new life in that honest self-discovery. In Lent we focus on going through those deaths into new life.
This week’s collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you despise nothing you have made
and forgive the sins of all who are penitent.
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our brokenness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen
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