Gather together sisters and brothers.
Sing
together psalms and songs of sorrow, dear people.
Call
upon the LORD God, cling to Christ the Savior of the World.
Confess
your sins, known and unknown.
Be
marked with the dust of your very nature.
Come
here, you lonely and abandoned ones.
You
quiet, you reflective.
You,
like David, who have been confronted
with your sin, pinned down by a clarifying moment—struck dumb by your Sin
revealed, confessing “I’ve seen the enemy and it is me.”
You,
like Joel, overwhelmed by the events
of the world and your own helplessness in the face of it all. Found powerless, you do the only thing you can, you
kneel in prayer, you search out the warmth of other people, so that sorrow
might be shared, and overcome by community, carrying one another and bearing
one another.
Yes,
come together in worship and fellowship, gathered together as the body
of Christ as we prepare for the coming
of resurrected Christ.
Pray more deeply, in this season that
has a chasm’s depth to it.
Hold more loosely those things that you
wish to grasp for
—for our Lord did not consider equality
with God as something to be grasped, but humbled himself all the way to the
cross.
Give to those who ask of it, for all
has already been given to you.
Yet
listen to the words of Jesus and the Prophets—heed them well. Do these things from the heart and for the
sake of your neighbors.
The
Danger is we will try to practice piety in pubic in order to point to
ourselves; we get caught on showmanship instead of sorrow for sin.
This is the opposite of true religion;
it’s the opposite of a true Lenten calling. Our actions are not for
ourselves—they are to de-center
ourselves… to catch us off balance
so we are caught in God’s mercy.
Hear
the words of the Prophets—they are cries for repentance, not for public
consumption, but as an act of
restitution
—justice is not admitting a mistake
and moving on, it’s admitting the
mistake and making amends.
In
short, it’s not about you. It’s about love of God and love of neighbor—no big surprise there I suppose, we’re
Christians after all
Worship,
pray, fast, and give alms, knowing that
you will fail at it
—and in that failure you will find
the dust of the cross upon your brow again
—you’ll find yourself at the feet of
Jesus again
—you’ll find that a space in your
soul has been opened, that God might sanctify you in your failure.
As
dear Brother Martin Luther wrote on his death bed 469 years ago today, “We are
all beggars; that is true.”
That, that is what we find in this sacred failure of Lent
—we find ourselves dying and being
brought back to life by the one who was so profoundly a beggar that:
He veiled himself,
He entered the darkness
He knelt down in the dirt and dust
—the ashes of this Wednesday.
Christ is found in them, Christ is
found here.
Amen.
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