Repentance
Ash Wednesday
2 Corinthians 5: 20b-6: 3
Currie Burris
The last few days have been beautiful, temperatures up into the 60’s, some clear skies, a teasing taste of springtime come much too early. We know that we have much more winter to come. Some forecasts are for snow flurries tomorrow, and we know February and March can be our most brutal days in winter.
I am spiritually ready for the springtime however. I am ready for new life, renewal, revitalization. I am ready to reconnect with God. I am ready for the long wintertime of the spirit to be over. But not yet. Now is the time for repentance. Now is the time for a rigorous inventory of our lives, a time to acknowledge our separateness from God, to confess all the ways that we have fallen short of what God expects from us, the ways we have failed in what God calls us to do and to be. It is time for us to confess our sins of omission and commission, the things we have failed to do as well as the things we have done.
It is time for us to ask how we are spending our time, what takes up the hours of our lives. Is it wasted? Is it useful? Is it loving? Is it serving? How are we using our energies? Are we creative? Are we making a contribution to the good of the world? How am I using my God-given talents, my intelligence, my passion, and my resources? Where am I loving, where am I serving God?
Look at the words we use, the money we spend. Am I speaking ill of others, am I sowing conflict and suspicion, am I spreading falsehoods or things I am not really sure are true? Where is there conflict and broken relationships?
Now is the time for repentance, a time for healing the breach between God and us. The Greek word for repentance is “metanoia.” It means “turning.” Repentance means to turn away from all the ways of life that are not of God and to go in another direction, to make a 180 degree turn in life and return to God.
The Hebrew word for repentance is “shuv” and it means, “return,” very similar to the Greek word. It has a sense of returning, going back to where you came from, returning back home. Repentance acknowledges we have wandered far away from our true home, our true place with God. Repentance is not just confessing our sins, being sorry for what we have done wrong. It is taking up a whole new way of living. It is making changes. It is abandoning old ways and habits, and starting a new life.
Today marks the beginning of a forty-day season of Lent. It is a time of repentance and preparation, a time of cleansing and reorienting, turning and returning to the way of God in our lives. Some people use this time to make commitments to change; some make commitments to eliminate something in their lives that is an obstacle between them and God. Is there something in your life that binds you, which weighs you down, that tempts you away from the life to which God calls you?
In few moments, you will be invited to come forward and receive the sign of the cross in ashes on your forehead. Ashes are a symbol of repentance, a confession that we are not perfect people, that we are not God, that we are humans who sin, who fall short of the glory of God, intended for us.
On our own, we are destined to return to the dust out of which we came. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Yet the sign we make with the ashes is the sign of the cross — the cross where Christ forged victory over death, the triumph over the grave, the final word of the defeat of sin and death and the celebration of new life. We walk forward to this table as dust, and there receive life in the eternal love and mercy of God. You are marked with Christ, to live as Christ’s own forever.
Let us pray:
Merciful God,
You called us forth from the dust of the earth;
You claimed us for Christ in waters of baptism.
Look upon us as we enter these Forty Days
Bearing the mark of ashes,
And bless our journey through the desert of Lent
To the font of rebirth.
May our fasting be hunger for justice;
Our alms, a making of peace;
Our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts.
All that we do and pray is in the name of Jesus,
For in his cross you proclaim your love
Forever and ever.
[A Household blessing]
Amen.