Life, Love, & Lent: Ash Wednesday

Our call this Ash Wednesday and throughout Holy Lent is to exercise our mouths by confessing our sins. We are beckoned to empty our hearts and our bellies from sin and instead fill them with faith, hope, and charity.

The march has begun towards Jerusalem. Do not be left behind as the Lord God’s victory march has begun. Christ’s face is set towards Jerusalem – is yours? Follow after the Lord Jesus and walk as “more than conquerors” after the new Joshua, who leads us to victory over the Jordan.

However, before we cross over Jordan and take possession of the Promised Land, we need to hear the law a second time, and what better way can we remember the Lord’s perfect law than through the book of Deuteronomy?

Therefore, the Commination service in the traditional 1662 Book of Common Prayer opens up our Ash Wednesday immediately after the reading of the Litany by requiring the congregation to respond, “Amen” to each of the curses in Deuteronomy chapter 27. Listen to the service of our ancient Anglican forebears:

Minister. Cursed is he that curseth his

father or mother.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that maketh the blind to go out of his way.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that perverteth the judgement of the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that lieth with his neighbour’s wife.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the innocent.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, and taketh man for his defence, and in his heart goeth from the Lord.

Answer. Amen.

Minister. Cursed are the unmerciful, fornicators, and adulterers, covetous persons, idolaters, slanderers, drunkards, and extortioners.

Answer. Amen.

Each heart is manifest to thee;

Thou knowest our infirmity;

Now we repent, and seek thy face;

Grant unto us thy pard’ning grace.

This service boldly reminds us sinners that when we violate the Ten Commandments, we are not merely breaking arbitrary rules set by God. Instead, we are initiating rebellion anew, rebellion as old as Satan and his demonic horde, rebellion as old as Adam. Sin is more than rebellion however – it tears against creation, threatens chaos, and reaps corruption. Moreover, we invite and heap curses upon our heads. This vivid and stark reality is buried and abandoned by contemporary Christianity that forgets, omits, and contradicts the need for Christ as Savior. However, the ancient liturgy of the Commination vividly reminds us that all is not well from within. We are poisoned in our thoughts, acts, words, misdeeds, and hearts.

The heart is the root of the matter. It is a weed that requires plucking, and the roots run deep. Therefore, the prayer book beckons us to affirm with our mouths that the sins we hear pronounced by the Holy Scriptures, do indeed merit God’s curse.

Yet, before we pat ourselves self-righteously on the back for “never committing” one of the sins from Deuteronomy chapter 27, we would do well to remember Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount – all have killed by calling their brother fool; all have fornicated and committed adultery by looking lustfully with their eyes; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God as St. Paul reminds us.

Therefore, what are we to do in this dark day reminding us of our hearts of coal?

We are to confess. We confess directly to God this Ash Wednesday of our sin. We confess corporately to our Lord of our failings. And we confess to one another we are unrighteous and in need of cleansing and transformation.

Spare us, O Lord, who now confess

Our sins and all our wickedness,

And, for the glory of thy Name,

Our weaken’d souls to health reclaim.

The required sermon baked into the Commination service reminds us, “But let us, while we have the light, believe in the light, and walk as children of the light; that we be not cast into utter darkness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let us not abuse the goodness of God, who calleth us mercifully to amendment, and of his endless pity promiseth us forgiveness of that which is past, if with a perfect and true heart we return unto him.”

This short homily turns our attention towards the character of our Lord, which is always to have mercy. Indeed, this homily echoes the words of Psalm 51, which is sung directly after the homily’s conclusion. Here the service turns from the law’s righteous condemnation toward God’s great, mighty, merciful, and gracious love towards his erring humanity. We need this reminder and we need it daily, but once a year the Church’s liturgy brutally reminds us we are lost, and yet God has found us.

Are you ready to be found? Perhaps you find yourself in the middle of spending your Father’s fortune without a care in the world – but this will come to a crashing end. Maybe your trust is not in money but in the happiness of a career or the joy of family and friends. Life is short, and the joy and pleasures of anything in this evil age can and will be stripped in a moment. Then again, perhaps the honeymoon of this life is over and has been for some time. Making ends meet is not a challenge, but a near impossibility. There is pain, and so much pain that you are looking anywhere to fill the dark pits in your soul, but without satisfaction. You find yourself working with pigs, hungry, and even envying the slop you feed them. Were we to dedicate this day, nay, even an hour in honest reflection before the Lord God, perhaps we would admit the real problems that trouble us are a bit more personal. Sins of the flesh, sins of the world, sins of addiction, and ultimately no matter how big or how small sins lead to one end: death.

Such is the end for us all until we give up and give in. If we give up to the Lord while we live and should we dare to die this day to our sin then we shall truly live and death shall have no claim nor sin any hold upon us. Only when we stop turning inward and feeding our addiction to sin will we then find its cure: God Himself. Who shall undo the daily curses we heap upon ourselves? Why, the prayer book homilist tells us:

Although we have sinned, yet have we an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins. For he was wounded for our offences, and smitten for our wickedness. Let us therefore return unto him, who is the merciful receiver of all true penitent sinners; assuring ourselves that he is ready to receive us, and most willing to pardon us, if we come unto him with faithful repentance; if we submit ourselves unto him, and from henceforth walk in his ways; if we will take his easy yoke, and light burden upon us, to follow him in lowliness, patience, and charity, and be ordered by the governance of his Holy Spirit; seeking always his glory, and serving him duly in our vocation with thanksgiving: This if we do, Christ will deliver us from the curse of the law, and from the extreme malediction which shall light upon them that shall be set on the left hand; and he will set us on his right hand, and give us the gracious benediction of his Father, commanding us to take possession of his glorious kingdom: Unto which he vouchsafe to bring us all, for his infinite mercy. Amen.

Give us the self-control that springs

From abstinence in outward things;

That from each stain and spot of sin,

Our souls may keep the fast within.

As we move from the Commination service into Holy Communion, the prophet Joel greets us with words of wisdom and grace, “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.” (Epistle lesson, Joel 2:12, KJV). Now is the time to mourn our sins, so we may find the Lord in our fasting from flesh and the world. Today is a new start, a restart, a new birth, and a rebirth.

Joel teaches us the God the world rejects is the same God who loves those within His world. Should we simply turn our hearts to the Lord in honest and open repentance then He will rush to us and meet us before we enter the door’s threshold. Our Father is dying to see us and reconcile us to Himself. Turn away from your sins and return to your Father’s household. He has slaughtered the fattened calf to celebrate your return and the feast the Father provides is the Holy Communion of the broken body and shed blood of the Son so that we might be reconciled, reunited, and reinvigorated in the Holy Spirit.

Grant, O thou blessèd Trinity;

Grant, O unchanging Unity;

That this our fast of forty days

May work our profit and thy praise! Amen.

Ours is not to mourn with ashes and sullen faces to the world. Ours is to anoint our faces with the righteousness of Christ and to fast our mind’s eyes away from the treasures of the earth. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Gospel lesson, Matthew 6:19–21, KJV).

This Lent, examine where your heart lies. It naturally is hostile to the Creator and friendly with the serpent. Cast out your eye, cut off your hand, rip out your heart, and avoid entering hell with your body intact but your soul lost. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36, KJV). Or as the newly elected Bishop of North Africa, Ashley Null, writes regarding Archbishop Cranmer’s anthropology, “What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” Do not trust your natural loves, instead trust the One who is renewing your nature. Jesus gives us His pierced living heart from the cross so that our dying bodies will beat with His cleansing blood and His eternal life living abundantly within us.

Fast, dear beloved ones in Christ. Fast from gluttony that we may feast on Christ Easter morn. Fast from lying lips that we may receive the Holy Sacrament on our tongues. Fast from consuming destructible goods and feast with the neighbors who need your charity. Fast from covetous and envying eyes that we may feast in seeing the glorious Resurrected One. Above all else, deny yourself so that Christ will fill you up.

Let us start the fast by praying to the Father of all gifts, all mercy, and all joy for His mighty and powerful Holy Spirit’s double portion, so that we may keep a Holy Lent and maintain a holier life:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.– Collect of the Day, Ash Wednesday, to be prayed throughout Lent

Life, Love, & Lent: Ash Wednesday

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