Readings: Joel 2:1-2;12-17; Mt.
6:1-6,16-21 Ash Wednesday
February 13, 2002
The Rev. Karen Siegfriedt
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
One of the readings that is assigned on Ash Wednesday is the reading from the prophet, Joel. Joel was a "minor prophet" who lived about 300-500 years before the birth of Christ. The reason he is considered a minor prophet is not because his message is unimportant, but because the length of his recorded prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures is short. During his time, Israel suffered a terrible plague of locusts followed by a long drought. If you have ever read about a locust invasion, you know the devastating impact such a plague has on the lives of people. During an invasion, millions of these insects will swarm into an area and eat everything in sight. They will eat not only the food and grain, but they will also eat the clothes off of a person's back, books, wallpaper, and anything that is edible. In those times, a locust invasion usually meant death to many people because the locusts destroyed the food supply (and airlifts of food relief were thousands of years away.)
In those days, the people of Israel believed that bad things happened only to bad people. Thus, the Hebrew prophets interpreted natural disasters, pain, and suffering, as punishments from God for not being faithful to the covenant. The occurrence of a disaster was seen as an opportunity to preach repentance. Repentance means to take a serious look at one's life and then to redirect it towards God. In today's reading, Joel calls the people of Israel to repent with all their heart, with fasting, weeping, and with mourning. One of the postures that the people assumed as they were repenting and mourning, was to put on sack clothes and ashes. It was a pious way of changing one's daily routine so that time could be focused on confessing one's sins, asking for forgiveness, and purifying the heart.
Today, we have a different understanding of natural disasters, pain, and suffering. We do not interpret natural disasters as punishments from an angry God. We know that bad things happen to good people and that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. So, is there a place for repentance in our national life together? The answer is "yes." While we can not prevent natural disasters from happening, we can prevent about 85% of the suffering that does occur in the world. Most of our suffering is derived from fear, woundedness, poor life-style changes, worshipping other gods (such as money, power, and security), greed, and ignorance. Repentance is redirecting our gaze from selfish desires to God who cares about all creation, not just Americans.
Instead of putting on sack clothes and covering our bodies with ashes, we gather together today in this service of Ash Wednesday, to repent of our sins, ask for forgiveness, and open our hearts wider and deeper. How do we do that? From the Book of Common Prayer, we pray as a community of faith, a litany of penitence. In this litany, we admit to God, ourselves, and to each other, that we have not loved with our whole heart, mind, and strength; that we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We then go on to examine different ways in which we have not loved enough.
For instance, we ask God to accept our repentance "for our waste and pollution of creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us." The News recently reported that the latest fleet of cars, truck, and SUVs that came out this year has the lowest gas mileage in twenty years! This is because people are not buying the lower gas mileage cars but rather are buying the larger, gas-guzzling styles. Think about the impact of this life-style choice on our environment! The incidence of asthma among children is almost epidemic. The air quality is to blame. With our dependence on foreign oil, what implications does this have for the future? Are we going to use up most of the natural resources so that future generations are left with little? When disaster strikes from our misuse of resources and poor treatment of the environment, innocent people will be hurt. Bad things will happen to good people. Will we then like the Israelites ask: "Where is our God?"
Ash Wednesday is the time to take a deep look into our lives and to repent of those ways which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. Repentance is a self-less act, done on the part of religious or conscious people who care about others and about the future of this planet. One of the ways that we symbolize our contrite heart is through the imposition of ashes. It is a subtle ritual whose purpose is not to impress others with our acts of piety, but rather to remind ourselves that we are children of God, created in God's image, and as such, are to act in accordance with God's laws. Ashes also symbolize a contrite heart and our mortality.
The mission of the Church is to transform lives. I hope you make the effort to observe this holy season of Lent as an opportunity for transformation so that you may become a beacon of light, an icon of hope, and an agent of transformation.
| Updated 2/15/02 |
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