Today is a day of conversion, not just once but for all of one’s life. Today God invites us to conversion of ourselves as prodigal daughters and sons.
As the father in the story, God is waiting for us, saying to us, ‘Welcome home. The door is open, the feast has been well prepared.’
Like the prodigal, we need to turn around and start over again.
God is waiting for us.
+
It is curious that the story of the prodigal is not read on Ash Wednesday insofar as it is the quintessential story of someone who turns away from God for a period of time. After wandering far in a land of waste, the prodigal wakes up to his sorry reality and realises his need to turn around and go home. He does, and is graciously received by his father, who prepares a feast for him.
Such an extravagant reception is in contrast with Matthew’s gospel which exhorts us to pray in secret, fast in secret and be penitent in secret for our Father in heaven will know and the rest don’t need to know.
+
The contrast between that gospel, the extravagance of God’s reception for us prodigals and the imposition of ashes when taken together always strikes me. Why is it that people so much want to have ashes put on their foreheads? People who don’t darken the door of a church from one end of the year to another show up on Ash Wednesday in order to get their ashes.
I think it’s because subconsciously, people realise on this day that, as a community, we look into ourselves, see our sinfulness and brokenness, and contemplate our mortality. To do both things alone would be too much but as a community, we are able to draw near to the edge and look over the precipice, or to look out beyond ourselves.
And we do so because of our trust in God as expressed in the gospel, psalm and from Isaiah — in words from the gospel, ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ from the psalm, ‘The Lord is full of compassion and mercy,’ and from the reading of Isaiah, which gives us an idea of how we are to live our lives.
Only through these promises, the community and the meal set before us are we able then to receive ashes in the fullness they are, the reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
+
Today the church, the people of God, is invited to walk for the 40 days of Lent, a time to convert ourselves once again.
We come bringing too much baggage and weight of sadness, pride, anger, egotism, rancour, lack of justice and compassion.
But our God is a god of invitation, not rejection. Our God is a god of pardon, not punishment. Our God is a god of love, never to abandon us.
Come, brothers and sisters. Welcome home in the house of God. God is waiting for us, now. We just need to start over again.
1 comment:
We had 19 including 9 in the choir and two Lutherans on the altar. Our supply priest decided to not make the trip - maybe because the senior warden waited till Sunday to ask him. I knew the pastor of the local Bethesda Home because she is a member of my home church. She came after her own service. We made a good team. I had never heard her preach. She's good. Of course she was asked if she would supply but she has her own responsibilities.
Post a Comment