I once heard a very wise person say that
repentance is too important for God to leave it all up to us.
As the years go by I am seeing more clearly
not only the truth of this statement
but also the implications.
Welcome to Lent!
And as we begin this Lent I want to say something to you
that you may not have heard before.
Anyone who has been around the Episcopal Church for a few years
and has shown up on Ash Wednesday
to get the ashes rubbed in the shape of a cross on the forehead
will recognize the scripture readings.
These readings can become so familiar
that we end up not looking at them more than at surface level,
and then people tend to fall into patterns and rituals for observing Lent
that just plain miss the point altogether.
And this gets reinforced by the Ash Wednesday liturgy itself.
In this liturgy you will be told to observe a holy Lent
by self-examination and repentance;
by prayer, fasting, and self-denial;
and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
And what perennially happens is that people will think
that the ashes on the forehead is the repentance part (but really it isn’t).
They may give up desserts or chocolate for their fasting and self-denial,
and maybe they will read a devotional book
and, to cover the prayer part, try to get to church more often.
All done in good Anglican moderation.
If this sounds anything like what you have known,
then sit up and pay attention,
because I’m going to tell you what repentance really means.
You probably know that the word repent means “to turn around,”
to change course, reverse direction, return to your beginning point, the Source.
In other words, the way you are going is in the wrong direction,
and you are getting farther away from what is life giving and holy.
Repentance is also about having a change of mind,
and what does that mean?
There is a change in what I have held as my reality, my world view,
when something happens and I experience a new reality,
a new perspective on life,
so that I can no longer think the way I used to,
and as a corollary what I do changes too.
Well, how do we get to repentance?
Do I say to myself, “You’re going in the wrong direction.
You should change your mind.
Let’s try out a new take on reality.”
No.
Repentance happens to us.
Something happens, we have an encounter or interchange with others,
something that catches us up, sometimes with a devastating effect,
and we stand aghast at ourselves.
We did not initiate the repentance, we did not choose to repent,
but now we find that we are very much in the midst of it.
Isn’t that much more like what really happens?
This, my friends, is God’s merciful intervention in our lives.
God is the giver of repentance.
It says so in the Bible in more than one place.
Start with Acts 11:18 and Romans 2:4, for example.
Look them up and then come talk to me about it.
God is the giver of repentance.
You see, repentance is much too important for God to leave it all up to us.
Lent is about having a season to prepare for Holy Week and Easter,
a whole 40 days to get ready so that we will be able to better grasp
what Good Friday and the Feast of the Resurrection are all about.
That’s it.
That is all that Lent needs to be about.
If we can get it, if we can take in
just what it is that Jesus did in going to the cross,
how it was more than just sins that he was taking on,
how he took on all the suffering that ever was and ever will be,
and released this huge power and energy of resurrection,
and made that all available to us by his continuing presence in the world
through the Holy Spirit.
But we don’t get it,
so we need Lent.
We need 40 days or 40 years or a whole lifetime.
And even at that it takes God’s intervention in our lives
to bring about real repentance.
HOWEVER we can cooperate.
We can cooperate with this process off being repented.
Repentance is not about self-affliction and asceticism and breast beating.
Our part in repentance is making ourselves available,
making ourselves available for God’s merciful act of repenting us.
It’s a matter of trust.
Can we trust God to have our best interests at heart?
I’m going to risk that,
which means I will need to be open to considering
that all events in life have the potential of being in my best interest,
events both lovely and gruesome.
It’s a matter of trust.
So do you want to know a way, a good Lenten practice
for being open in trust to God’s merciful act of repenting us?
Meditate.
You knew I’d say that.
Meditation is one way,
I must say a particularly simple, accessible and efficiently effective way.
Do the praying, do the fasting, do the self-denial
(by the way, meditation is a form of self-denial and fasting),
read the Bible –
that’s the book the bishop recommends this year for Lenten reading.
These are all ways in which we can be open
to repentance happening in our lives.
Remember, the purpose of repentance is to return us to the Source of Life,
to return us to the embrace of God,
who like the father in the parable about the prodigal son,
has never ceased to watch for us,
who sees us from afar and runs to meet us,
who before we get through our litany of penitence
has already killed the fatted calf and started the party.
What we are doing today in this liturgy
is to set us up for 40 days of spiritual practice
so that when we get to Easter we just may realize the immensity of it all.
And this year I would encourage you
to take home with you the worship booklet and read again Psalm 103.
This Psalm gets overlooked with everything else happening
in the Ash Wednesday liturgy.
We’re more likely to remember Psalm 51 which we will be reciting shortly
than Psalm 103 that we read after the Joel passage.
Here’s the Easter goal for us:
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, *
and all that is within me, bless his holy Name.
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, *
and forget not all his benefits.
3 He forgives all your sins *
and heals all your infirmities;
4 He redeems your life from the grave *
and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness;
5 He satisfies you with good things, *
and your youth is renewed like an eagle's.
8 The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, *
slow to anger and of great kindness.
9 He will not always accuse us, *
nor will he keep his anger for ever.
10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, *
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.
11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, *
so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west, *
so far has he removed our sins from us.
13 As a father cares for his children, *
so does the LORD care for those who fear him.
And now here is the segue into what comes next in the liturgy:
14 For he himself knows whereof we are made; *
he remembers that we are but dust.
15 Our days are like the grass; *
we flourish like a flower of the field;
16 When the wind goes over it, it is gone, *
and its place shall know it no more.
If there is anything that can bring us to repentance,
it would be death, the reminder of our own mortality.
Death is a gift that makes us look at the precious gift of life we have been given.
You know, we all have to face this sometime;
none of us get of here alive.
Welcome to Lent.
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