REND, RETURN, RECEIVE Joel 2:12-17; Colossians 2:13-14; 1 John 1:9 Theme of the Month Spiritual Reflection & Renewal
Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Sharp
Lead Pastor, English Congregation Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church, Vancouver, British Columbia
Ash Wednesday Meditation for 17 February 2010
Scripture Passages Joel 2:12-17
“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Let the priests, who minister before the LORD, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, 13 Rend your heart LORD. and not your garments. Do not make your inheritance an Return to the LORD your God, object of scorn, for he is gracious and compassionate, a byword among the nations. slow to anger and abounding in love, Why should they say among the and he relents from sending calamity. peoples, 14 Who knows? He may turn and relent ‘Where is their God?’” and leave behind a blessing— Colossians 2:13-14 grain offerings and drink offerings When you were dead in your sins and in for the LORD your God. the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, 15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, God made you alive with Christ. He declare a holy fast, forgave us all our sins, having canceled call a sacred assembly. the charge of our legal indebtedness, 16 Gather the people, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the consecrate the assembly; cross. bring together the elders, gather the children, 1 John 1:9 those nursing at the breast. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and Let the bridegroom leave his room just and will forgive us our sins and purify and the bride her chamber. us from all unrighteousness. 12
17
REND,RETURN,RECEIVE 1
Every once in a while a quirky story makes our newspapers—a story with no real significance except for what it says and reveals about the human family. A few years back on Ash Wednesday the Associated Press carried a story about a woman in Olney, England named Dawn Gallyot who defied snow and a biting wind to beat seven other women to the finish line in the annual Shrove Tuesday pancake race. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday. In her first race, Dawn who is a 38-year-old school administrator made the 380 meter dash with a frying pan and a pancake from a pub in the market square to the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in 73 seconds. That was 9.5 seconds slower than the previous year’s pace. The rules for the race require each woman to flip a pancake in the frying pan at the start and at the finish of the race. The record is 58 seconds. The news report ended by saying that Mrs. Gallyot, who wore a traditional headscarf and apron but opted for modem running shoes, said she was “ecstatic.” Shrove Tuesday, known in Britain as Pancake Day, traditionally was the last day for merrymaking/partying before the start of Lent. Pancakes were thought to be a good way to get in the eggs and fat the faithful were supposed to do without during Lent. Legend has it that the Olney race started in 1445 when a housewife, dashing to get to church on time, arrived at the service still clutching her frying pan with a pancake in it. The pancake race is but one of many traditions which have grown up around the season of Lent. Mardi Gras is another—one last blow-out before the season of denial. Since Lent has become associated through the ages with fasting and doing without, many people in our culture give up something they enjoy for Lent—some eat no meat, others no chocolate, some give up Facebook, etc. These are all well and good, but the real intent of Lent is that we should look inside our hearts. So, the prophet Joel writes: “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, rend your hearts and not your clothing.” This text from Joel is often read on Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is a time for reflection and introspection, for taking an honest look a our ourselves. Ash Wednesday invites us to a bright awareness of the stark reality of our situation: the deep knowledge that all is not well in the world and in us; that we are not as secure or as good as we thought we were. I am and you are not as blameless as we pretend to be. To us Joel shouts: “Blow the trumpet! Sound the alarm! The day of the Lord is coming!” It will be a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, unleashing the truth about us, about faith and faithfulness. And if we are honest we aren’t too happy with that truth. But the good news is that Joel doesn’t leave us in that gathering darkness, he says—“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart.” Here is an invitation from the God who is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. Now Joel doesn’t see everything as clearly as we do on this side of the cross and Easter. We can’t expect him to fully understand the good news we know in Christ. But he does remind us of something very important—that it is possible to rend (rip,tear), return and receive forgiveness and a new start and a new life because God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy invites us and makes it possible to come, just as we are.
REND,RETURN,RECEIVE 2
And as we come the first task/work of Lent is repentance—“Return to the Lord, your God.” The Hebrew word for “repentance” means “to turn”. The picture is of someone going in one direction, realizing that they are heading the wrong way, stops and turns around and heads in the opposite direction. In these words—“Return to the Lord, your God”, we are invited to turn around, to turn in God’s direction and bring our sins and lay them before the throne of God. And if we think about it, what a gift that invitation is, because some of us carry around so much guilt. Immediately after the 1971 Los Angeles earthquake, a number of children were seen in a counseling center. One child’s problem was that he absolutely refused to close any door whatsoever. He had been told many times by his mother not to slam doors—something he often did, because it had been very successful in getting her attention But the last time he had slammed a door, the earthquake struck and the ground began to shake beneath him And so he refused to close doors in case it might happen again. People had been hurt, his family had been hurt by that earthquake. So he carried around with him this guilt, that somehow his slamming that door on that day had caused the devastating earthquake. It was as if he had gone too far in his bid for attention, “over-manipulating” the environment, which then struck back with all its might. I think we would all agree that this sense of guilt carried around by this little boy is irrational, but very real nonetheless. Sometime back the newspapers told of a man who walked into the police station to confess a crime he had committed fifteen years before The reason for his confession?: “I have not been able to get it off my mind.” Here was a man willing to subject himself to punishment in order to restore his peace of mind. He got tired of living with the guilt. I think I’ve told you the story the psychologist Karl Menninger relates in the first chapter of his book, Whatever Happened to Sin? It took place on the streets of Chicago. There was this man who took up his position in the middle of the sidewalk like a stature. And every few minutes he would raise his arm and point and shout “Guilty!” The person who related this story to Dr. Menninger said it was interesting to see the reaction of the people on the street. Some people would look at the man and shake their heads and mutter, “Crazy”. But there were many others who hurried along or stopped and some even asked, “How does he know?” as they hurried away. Some of us are troubled and we don’t even know why we are troubled. And for many of us, the issue is unresolved guilt. And if we stop long enough and do enough soul-searching, the source of that guilt will probably reveal itself. But sometimes we may never be able to fully understand what caused that sense of guilt, but the good news is that whether we can pinpoint the cause or not, we don’t have to live with it gnawing at our insides and invading our sleep and disrupting our lives. Lent is a time of repentance. It is a time for confession of our sins and for healing and the beginning of a new life. It is a time for laying ourselves before God and asking him to deal with the guilt and brokenness in our lives. Our work and God’s work in the Lenten season is to allow the signs of brokenness to come to the surface of our lives. It is not easy work, but it is essential work. For you see, there is no healing, no moving on, no peace, no joy without laying this brokenness before God and having him heal us. And a service like this and Lent help us to do that.
REND,RETURN,RECEIVE 3
And that brings us to the second thing, this text from Joel has to say to us, and that is that Lent is also a time of release or absolution, meaning forgiveness, pardon, or liberty. “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…” It does no good for us to confess our sins if we keep beating up on ourselves. This may be the chief reason why so many people fail to truly repent and begin new lives. They never experience the absolution/the release/the forgiveness/the pardon of God, the forgiveness because they find it hard to accept that God would love them that much that he would actually absolve them/ pardon them/release them from the guilt and condemnation of their sins. An old Scottish pastor once said that the devil has two lies he uses at two different stages. Before we commit a sin, he tells us that one little sin doesn’t matter—no one will know. The second lie is after we’ve sinned when he tells us we’re hopeless. Both are lies, because they aren’t true. Sin does matter. It hurts our relationship with God, it hurts us and it can hurt others. But an even greater lie is that because we have sinned, we are hopeless. It is a lie because even greater than our sin is God’s offer of forgiveness and that gives us hope. Max Lucado puts the meaning of forgiveness quite concisely: “God wants you to fly. He wants you to fly free of yesterday’s guilt. He wants you to fly free of today’s fears. He wants you to fly free of tomorrow’s grave. Sin, fear, and death. These are the mountains he has moved. These are the prayers he will answer. That is the fruit he will grant. This is what he longs to do: he longs to set you free so you can fly. . . home” (Max Lucado, And the Angels Were Silent, Multnomah Books, p. 72). Lent is a time of repentance and release. It is a time to fly free of sin, fear and death. It is a time of release because God offers you and me forgiveness in Christ. And that brings me to the third thing I see in this passage from Joel and that is, Lent is also a time of renewal. “Who knows,” wrote the prophet, “whether he [God] will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him…?“ We know! We know because we know about Christ and the cross. Lent is a time of renewal and refreshment. It is a time of turning our burdens over to Christ and allowing him to carry them on our behalf. In the Musee de Chagall in the Mediterranean city of Nice hangs Marc Chagall’s painting of The Sacrifice of Isaac, a favorite theme of the Jewish painter. The painting depicts that story in Genesis 22 where we Abraham as he is about to plunge the knife into the heart of his young son Isaac. But an angel has seized his hand and holds it, and off to the side of the altar a ram has been caught by its horns in the bushes. God provided a sacrifice to take the boy’s place. Up in the corner
The Sacrifice of Isaac, Marc Chagall
REND,RETURN,RECEIVE 4
of the painting there is another figure. It is Jesus carrying His cross to Golgotha. This is a theme to which Chagall returned again and again. It is a theme that we also need to return to again and again in the season of Lent. If we have repented of our sins, we can experience the absolution of God, the forgiveness, the release and we can turn over the burdens of our hearts to Christ who is far better to bear them than we are. And we can experience renewal—a new start. Why? Because Paul tells us in that passage from Colossians (2:13-14), if we have come to know God’s grace in Jesus Christ, if we have given him our lives and taken him into our lives, those sins which stood against us and condemned us have been forgiven. They have been nailed to Cross. It is as if we have broken free of the grave, the prison cell that held us. We are alive and we need to learn to live in that forgiveness and freedom. So, as we begin our Lenten journey, I want to extend an invitation for you to return to God this night. I want to invite you to lay your sins/burdens, concerns, needs at God’s altar. Experience God’s forgiveness and release. Turn your burdens over to the Christ and begin a new life. If you have never trusted him, you can; if you have trusted him, you can live in that trust. Hear the Good News—If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us/purify us from all sin/all unrighteousness ( 1 John 1:9).
Reflection Questions 1. Where do I stand with God? Afar off ? Disconnected? Running away? “At home”? What does God’s invitation to “return” mean for me? 2. Do I know/experience the reality of God’s forgiveness in my life? 3. Is my life being renewed daily because of God’s grace and working in my life? 4. What questions, reactions, feelings does this meditation and these scripture passages raise in your life?
REND,RETURN,RECEIVE 5