Ready or Not*

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-18

Psalm 51
(homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 
New Harmony, Indiana)

Ready...

or not???

Lent is here

Now, not just because it happens to be Valentines Day today

(Think rend your hearts Joel 2:13, 

and create in me a clean heart O God Psalm 51:10)

---it’s the HEART that is on my mind

Not head, I know what that means. 

Not gut, I know what that means

But when I put my hands gently on my heart---it means the whole of me, the essential me.

I'd like, this Lent

To join the psalmist’s plea

Create in me a clean heart, O God

Like kitchen floors

One day of attention won’t cut it.

Our liturgy is packed with

sights and sounds and symbols

That move us toward contrition

Toward an honest recognition of our sinfulness

But always…always…always

We recall our sin

Convinced…utterly convinced...

of God’s boundless mercy

...steadfast and always on offer

We must never bring our scarcity thinking

with us to worship

God’s mercy always comes first

There is no limited supply

God won’t ever run out 

Calling to mind our sin

Is not as easy as it sounds

In a few minutes

when I drop to my knees in prayer

And Dr. Beth leads us in the

Litany of Penitence

I know my mind will wander

I’ll be quick to call to mind my hypocrite neighbor

…who, everyone knows, really needs that prayer

And isn’t that how blindness works?

I need help to see what I can’t see

I need your help

And so praying together…

in support of each other

We jump start our Lent

We hear in the Invitation to a Holy Lent

a call to ‘make a right beginning’

…a beginning

We will leave here having only just begun

to cultivate a daily practice of contrition

to cultivate reconciliation as a style of life

I have this one stanza from an Auden poem taped onto my office wall:

The nightingales are sobbing

in the orchards of our mothers

And hearts that we broke long ago

Have long been breaking others.

It paints a picture for me

Of how deadly un-forgiven-ness can be…

All it takes is my inattention

and it will go on breaking hearts

With God always on the ready

The choice really is ours:

1) We can walk through our lives

Carrying all that un-forgiven-ness with us

On our faces

And in our voices…

showing up in the words we choose…

constricting our bodies

We can hold on to that un-forgiven-ness 

and let it make a nice home in us

OR…OR...

We can follow the Church’s lead

And having worked through

Our sinfulness…

Having come clean...

Having placed ourselves openly and honestly before God...

Having cultivated a habit of contrition...

And having chipped away at all that keeps us from accepting the forgiveness of God

Having done all that…

We can walk through our lives

carrying with us something quite different

The evidence will be compelling and conclusive…

On our faces

And in our voices…

showing up in the words we choose…

and in the freedom of our bodies

Having cooperated with God's grace

We can walk through our lives

carrying instead the fruit of forgiveness

which is…SHALOM…PEACE

And it will be obvious that this SHALOM

Is not of our own making

It will point back to its source in God

With God always on the ready

The choice really is ours

The liturgical years is always giving us beginnings

This is another beginning

in the company of each other

we are absolved and fed

And we will leave here…sent to practice

That perennial rhythm of the Christian life

a rhythm that over and over again leads us 

From sin to grace

From blindness to sight

From death to resurrection

and in our practicing

God WILL 

over and over again

without getting tired

re-create our hearts

Clean and full of Shalom

Thanks be to God