Biblical Words [760]
In a world darkened by sin, prayers of confession and pleas for
forgiveness are the acceptable sacrifices to God.
In most religions there is a rhythm between
feasts and fasts, between celebration with feasting and restraint with
abstinence. Usually, specific times of
fasting are a preparation for the feasting to follow.
In Christianity, Lent is the season of
fasting before the feast of Easter. In
the early centuries, the fasting of Lent lasted only two or three days before
Easter, but after the fourth century the fasting was gradually extended in the
Western Church to the traditional 40 days before Easter, not counting the six
Sundays of Lent. (Sundays, the Lord’s
days, are feasts; therefore you do not fast on Sundays.)
Ash Wednesday, the day on which Lent begins, is a cry of pain at our
lostness, and a plea for forgiveness of our destructive sins. The Lectionary texts for the day reflect
moments of such traumas in the life of the community and of the self.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
The prophetic reading presents a great crisis for the community –
the very Day of the Lord, “a day of darkness and gloom” (verse 2,
Sanctify the congregation;
Though scholars have long recognized that the
prophet refers to a terribly severe locust plague, the oracles seem
deliberately vague. The horror impending
is not entirely natural. It has
overtones of eschatological warfare.
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
The psychological and spiritual tone is of
ultimate doom. All personal and communal
reality is under this shadow. Nothing
else matters.
The appropriate human response is
repentance.
Yet even now, says the Lord,
Fasting here is an act showing sorrow, sorrow
for alienation from God. Only a return to God can lead to relief, a
return by all the social body caught in the doom of separation from the source
of holiness.
Fasting – not eating for a day – is an
external sign of emptiness, of the absence of God from the depths of the soul,
communal and personal.
Psalm 51:1-17.
This psalm selection is the quintessential
text for Ash Wednesday. It is the
most profound personal confession of sin in the psalms.
This is a “lament” psalm, the kind that finds
the cause of trouble, not in others, but in one’s own condition. See a Special
Note on Laments at the end of these readings.
The
language of sin and forgiveness. The
psalm speaks of “transgressions,” “iniquity,” and “sin” (singular) and uses
verbs “to sin” and “to do evil.” For
purposes of this psalm, these are all synonyms.
“Against you, you alone, have I sinned…”
The personal relation to God has been alienated by the sin,
transgressions, and iniquity.
The speaker affirms that sin is a kind of
power that threatens one’s whole existence.
Sin extends back to conception and
birth. “I was born guilty, a sinner when
my mother conceived me” (verse 5,
A variety of images are used for God’s forgiving
sin.
- “Blot
out transgressions” views sins as tracks in the sand, where the sinner has
violated a boundary (trans-gressed), which tracks are to be erased.
- “Wash
me from my iniquity” is scrubbing off dirt and filth from one’s body.
- “Cleanse
me from my sin” is a ritual expression, meaning to purify someone or
something that has become ritually “unclean” and thus denied access to
sacred precincts.
- An
extension of this last image is, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean” (verse 7; 9 in Hebrew). Hyssop
was the branch of a shrub that was used as a brush to sprinkle holy water
or blood in ritual settings (Leviticus 14:4 and
- Expressing
a more personal action by God are “wash me and I shall be whiter than
snow,” “hide your face from my sins,” and, “let the bones that you have
crushed rejoice,” that is, let there be a wholly new recovery of my health
and wholeness before you!
The climax of praying for forgiveness,
however, is the plea for full personal transformation.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
A final argument for why God should forgive
and renew this person is the
witness it will create among
others. “O Lord, open my lips, / and my
mouth will declare your praise.” Then,
the speaker declares, a true
offering will be made to God.
“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken
spirit; / a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (verses 15
and 17).
That final declaration is the essential
message of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.
II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10.
The epistle reading begins, “We entreat you
on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
Reconciliation to God is the long-range goal of self-examination,
of sorrow for sins, of confession of emptiness apart from God, and of trust in
the promise of forgiveness.
There follows a remarkable statement of the
divine action in Christ. The statement
is a little awkward but is the more striking for that reason. Very literally it reads, “The one knowing no
sin [Christ], … he [God] made sin, in order that we might become the
righteousness of God in him” (
The expression “Christ was made sin” probably
refers to the double meaning of the Hebrew word for sin (ḥatta’). This Hebrew word means both a sinful condition and a sin-offering which removes that
condition.
Sinners bring a sin offering (animal) to the
altar which the priest sacrifices for them and they are freed of their sinful
condition. That is how the ritual cult worked. Paul is saying that Christ went to the altar
(read “cross”) as a sin-offering on our behalf (“The one knowing no sin he made
sin…”). Therefore, as long as we are “in
him,” we live in the benefit of that sin-offering and are reconciled to
God.
In the remainder of the passage Paul expands
on the roles of the apostles as “ambassadors” of Christ (5:20a), ambassadors
who bring to sinners the message that reconciliation is available. He goes on to emphasize the great hardships
and acts of self-denial that the ambassadors of Christ go through in this work
for God (6:4-10), but we will save that for another time.
Matthew 6:1-6 , 16-21
The Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday is
subordinate to the prayer of confession in the psalm.
This selection from the Sermon on the Mount warns
against conspicuous consumption in the practice of religion,
against public displays when one practices charity (verses 2-4), prays in
public (verses 5-6), and when one fasts (verses 16-18). Such religiousness for public consumption is
its own reward. It leaves the relation
of God and sinner unaltered (though does one ever really know?).
What must be sought instead is something that
makes a difference in heaven, not just in the media or opinion polls, not just
accumulating earthly treasures (verses 19-21).
In a word, true religion – “the sacrifice acceptable to God” (Psalm
51:17) – is not about externals, but about the inner being, about “a clean
heart” and “a new and right spirit within.”
One may take ashes on one’s forehead at the
Ash Wednesday service, but what counts is the awareness of the darkness in the
world and in oneself – the darkness exposed by the proclamation of the Day of
the Lord, and illuminated only by the promise of God’s forgiveness.
Special Note on Lament Psalms
The “lament” psalms are all arguments for the
defense. The speakers are in trouble of
some kind and they are pleading before the high judge to deliver them from this
trouble. Though the rhetorical
stratagems become diverse and complex, the laments are by their nature
arguments for the intervention of the Judge to relieve the speaker’s distress
or suffering.
The argument developed in a particular lament
psalm depends on the source of
the trouble. Whose fault is it?
There are three possibilities.
(1) Most commonly, the trouble is caused by
enemies, or by others. These are
the prayers of the falsely accused righteous ones, and the prayer asks God to
deliver the speaker from the enemies.
The appeal is to God’s indignation at the arrogance and brutality of the
enemies, and to God’s compassion for a suffering servant God has previously
cared for. Psalm 7 is a striking
example, though there are more psalms of this type than any other.
(2) Less commonly, the trouble is caused by oneself. The speaker is the cause of his or her own
trouble, which in some way or another is sin.
It is especially sin against God, but may include sin against
others. These are the “penitential”
psalms, confessing sin and begging for forgiveness rather than the destruction
of one’s enemies, though accusations against enemies are sometimes thrown in
for good measure. The appeal here is to
God’s pity: the psalmist demonstrates
how intensely he or she has suffered already, and the confession of sin
justifies those punishments from God that the speaker has already endured. The traditional penitential psalms in the
Christian tradition are 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143 – but the greatest of
these is psalm 51.
(3) Very occasionally the cause of the speaker’s trouble may be God,
which poses a very tricky problem for the speaker of a lament. The speaker’s misery leads to desperate and
daring accusations. “I am silent; I do
not open my mouth, / for it is you who have done it. / Remove your stroke from
me; / I am worn down by the blows of your hand” (Psalm 39:9-10,
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