Lent: The 'Come As You Are' Party

Ash Wednesday Feb. 17th, 2010

…according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

…therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
     (Excerpts from Psalm 51, Ash Wednesday Liturgy)

As you have probably picked up, I have decided this week to reflect on Ash Wednesday instead of the Gospel for this coming Sunday, which is on the Beatitudes. If you were really looking forward to a reflection on the Beatitudes, just wander off to the archives on the left side of this blog and look up November 1st, 2009. Voila. A reflection on the Beatitudes.

Ash Wednesday sometimes creeps up on us quickly. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long since we put the Christmas decorations away and suddenly it’s time to think about what we can do for Lent to prepare ourselves for the great celebration of Easter. It felt appropriate, then, to reflect on Lent a week or so before Ash Wednesday comes along so that we can spend some time pondering on what it is exactly that we want from our Lenten Season, the season of deepening self awareness and of drawing closer to the heart of our God.

I chose certain excerpts from the Ash Wednesday psalm because they illustrate a crucial spiritual truth that is often overlooked by God’s people, especially in times such as Lent. The truth is that even though we may sincerely practice self denial, offer sacrifices and experience heartfelt moments of anguish over our sinfulness, we have absolutely no capacity to make ourselves uncontaminated and worthy of the Father’s Love. What’s more, the Father knows that we are completely disabled and helpless when it comes to cleaning ourselves up. When he tells us to come to him with weeping and fasting, he is not saying that before we come to him we have to make sure we are all clean and pure and that we have made ourselves spotless inside and out. What he is saying is, “Come. Come with the awareness that you are small and I am the All in All. Come with the sorrow of knowing that you have tried to accomplish things that only I can accomplish. Come with the knowledge that you have tried too hard, have cried too much, have crumbled under too many burdens, felt too lost, for too long and still have made so little progress. Come with the understanding that looking on the Cross of my Son is not for your condemnation but is what should bring you tremendous joyful relief because he has accomplished everything that you never could and never will be able to accomplish, especially when it comes to making yourself whole and worthy. Come because you are so loved, not because you are so good.” 

If we really approached Lent with true understanding and were able to fully receive its inherent gifts, we would rename it “The Season of Breathing.” Can you recall a time in your life when you were carrying a huge emotional burden of some sort and suddenly everything worked out beautifully? Can you remember the unexpected sense of being able to breathe freely and how it felt like you hadn’t really been breathing for a very long time? If we really understood the full impact of all that happened at the first Easter, we would become giddy with the delicious freedom to breathe.

What really struck me about the Ash Wednesday psalm was that the one who was being expected to perform all the action was not the psalmist but the Lord himself. Listen:

…blot out my transgressions…Wash me from my iniquity … cleanse me from my sin… teach me wisdom…Purge me with hyssop…wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow…Create in me a clean heart… put within me a new and right spirit…Restore to me the joy of your salvation…sustain in me a willing spirit… open my lips…

Obviously, the psalmist understood something we seem to forget. The ball is in the Lord’s court. He alone is the source, the power and the action. When we try to wash, cleanse, teach, purge, create, restore, sustain or open ourselves in order to make ourselves acceptable to the Lord, we are leaving out the key part of our salvation: why Jesus died on the cross. We need to grasp, once and for all, that we cannot accomplish our own salvation. We are absolutely, totally and irrevocably incapable of healing ourselves of our sins, failures, wounds and disabilities. It is this understanding – and the acceptance of it – that is pleasing to the Lord.

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

What is a broken spirit? It is the spirit of one who knows she has no capacity to be whole, knows she is not God and knows that no one, not herself nor anyone else, can expect her to be capable of something only God is capable of.  “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”  There you go. I got a beatitude in there after all. Those who are so busy trying to heal themselves and make themselves clean and pure and worthy are certainly not barred from the Kingdom; it’s just that it’s hard for them to allow themselves entry because it’s so difficult to accept that the Kingdom is completely available to those who are incapable and needy. The door is wide open to the poor in spirit because Jesus, knowing our inadequacies and disabilities, did it all for us. He paid the full price of admission.  

If God is the only one capable of creating and cleaning us, then what is our responsibility in the equation?

To show up.

That sounds simple and simplistic but, in reality, in spite of all our spiritual activity, all our services to our parish community, all our prayers, devotions and good intentions, sitting as empty broken vessels before the Lord is not an easy place for anyone to be. ‘Human Beings’ is a misnomer. We should be called ‘Human Doings’ because we prefer to do rather than be. We ‘do’ because we feel much more in control – until we discover that all our ‘doings’ haven’t done much for us in the depths of our beings and we start to see that we have been existing on the surface of all our needs.

Lent should be a time of consciously showing up, a time of being there and being aware. Whatever your chosen Lenten sacrifices and offerings are, they should be more than just something you do; they should act as reminders of not only your spiritual poverty but, most importantly, as reminders of the awesome beauty and wonder of Christ’s sacrifice. If all you do is focus on how much of a failure you are or how bad you are but never allow yourself to face full on the incredible fact that Jesus did it all and because of what he did, you are forgiven, blessed, loved, healed and set free, then there might as well not be an Easter. The cross was not for our condemnation; the law already did that and still does that. The Cross was for our freedom and healing – for freedom from guilt and shame and for the healing of all the wounds we have sustained from our own sins, failures and inadequacies. 

This Lent, may I suggest that whenever you go to prayer, practice self denial or whatever practice you choose to increase your spiritual awareness, remind yourself that without Easter, Lent has no meaning. Then ponder on this line from the Easter Exultet:
 
“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

Be there and be aware. Breathe. And laugh with relief.