Ash Wednesday

After September 11th, 2001, a widow one of those who lost his life in the World Trade Center asked her daughter, on Ash Wednesday, what she would give up for Lent. I’ve given up a father, she answered. Isn’t that enough for God? Some of us have lost loved ones. We all have lost the little gray church that we loved so much. Might we be excused from giving up something for Lent? Why spend 40 days focusing on Jesus’ death? Haven’t we had enough?

Is that a question you ask of the air, or of God, as though God sends us misfortunes? Do you see the misfortunes of your life as coming from God as a punishment for your sins? Was it Jesus’ job to take the bullet from God that was intended for us? Is that what it means when we hear from Paul that, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin”? Was Jesus the substitute for us, so that the anger of God was poured out on him instead of us?

God wants so much more for us than to be let out of jail, to be given a reprieve from execution. “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God,” Paul begs the Corinthians. To be reconciled to God is so much more simply being paroled by God. God wants us to be able to call him our Father, just as Jesus called him Father. Of course, standing between us and this God who would be our Father is our sin, our unrighteousness, our injustice to others. God, who is supremely just, cannot allow sin to have the last word.

In our limited justice, wrongdoing must be answered by punishment. To be blunt, it must be answered by a bullet of some kind. But Jesus did not take the bullet from God for us. Are there bullets that seem to come at us from all directions? Of course, but they do not come from God. The bullet that Jesus did take did not come from God. It came from the religious leaders of his day who conspired against him and the soldiers who crucified him.

We are all created in the image of God, but have mutilated that image by our fear, our distrust and our sin. So yes, it hurts the heart of our heavenly Father to see his beautiful creatures so marred. And in our guilt and fear, we dare not approach God on our own to beg forgiveness. But Jesus of Nazareth offered himself as our representative. Instead of paralyzing fear, Jesus stepped forward to meet the soldiers who came to arrest him in the garden. Instead of distrust, Jesus trusted that if he submitted to death, His father would be waiting for him on the other side. And by doing all this on our behalf, Jesus of Nazareth, who was fully human, overcame our sin. That sin has no power over him and it has no power over us.

Of course, the bullets still come, whether deserved or underserved. And just as Jesus took the bullet then, so he takes the bullet with each and every one of us. As they fly, know in your heart and soul that you are not alone. And just as the Resurrection came for Him, so it shall come for each of us in God’s good time. The purpose of Lent is not to remind ourselves of how we have crucified Christ in our own way. The word, Lent, means “spring.” The purpose of Lent is to prepare us for Resurrection.

Yes, train your soul this Lent by emptying your body of one small thing that it may know the fullness of God’s love in Jesus Christ. Or train your soul by meditating on the emptiness that has been created by one of those bullets. But remember that you are training your soul, so that on Easter Sunday, the love of the risen Jesus will fill your heart. Meanwhile, as you prepare to accept the reconciliation that Jesus makes between you and God, make that reconciliation in your family, your church, your community, your world. And in the words of my favorite Lenten hymn:

Then shall your light
Break forth as doth the morning;
Your health shall spring,
The friends you make shall bring
God’s glory bright,
Your way through life adorning;
And love shall be the prize.
Arise, arise,
Arise! and make a paradise!