If you attempted to join our Ash Wednesday service via Livestream you would have noticed the issues with the audio preventing much of the service from being heard. Pastor Keith Boyd of Lake Highlands Church has generously provided a manuscript so you can read his message to our congregations from that night.
Many of you have been observing Ash Wednesday for as far back as you can remember; it’s been part of your religious tradition and upbringing. But for some of us—like me—this is a fairly recent observation. The first time I really observed this day was about a decade ago. Before that I really never understood the whole ashes on the forehead thing. I grew up in Ft. Worth in a religious tradition that didn’t observe Ash Wednesday, and before I became a pastor here, I pastored in New York City for 26 years and when my wife and I first moved to New York I’d see people walking around the city with these smudges on their foreheads and I’d want to walk up to them and say, “hey, you’ve got something … right…here.” But then it occurred to me, “oh wait, this is Ash Wednesday.” So for those of us for which this observance is relatively new, as it is for many of us at Lake Highlands Church, I want to give a little context for why we do this, and for those of you who know all of this stuff I hope this will be a little refresher.
Throughout the scriptures, ashes are often used as a sign of repentance, and you can see examples throughout the scripture. You can see it in the book of Jonah when Jonah calls the Ninevites to repent and the king responds by putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes. Some of us get a little self-conscious about a little mark on our forehead, but what if your whole backside was covered in ashes? In the gospels, Jesus refers to ashes as a sign of repentance. For instance, in Matthew 11 he says, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”
Ash Wednesday is known as a day of repentance. Repentance is the Greek word metanoia, which is the combination of two Greek words, meta, meaning “change”, and noeo, meaning “to perceive”. Repentance is more than confession, though it does begin with confession. You see, repentance means a change of mind that involves both turning from sin and turning to God.
The prodigal son is a wonderful illustration of this. We’re all familiar with the story. He asks his dad for his share of the inheritance, he goes off and squanders it in wild living, and then after all of it is gone and he’s living with pigs, Jesus says, he came to his senses. He went back to his father, he confessed his sin, and he renewed his relationship with his father.
That’s what repentance is: it is coming to our senses, recognizing the reality of our sin, confessing our sin, and renewing our relationship with our loving heavenly father.
Jesus began his ministry with a call to repentance. In Matthew 4 he says, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The idea is, turn from the way you are living and turn to the life that God has for you. In essence, repentance is turning from our selfishness, our sinfulness—dying to self—that we might give of ourselves to God and to others and in so doing experience the fullness of life in the kingdom.
Let me read what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 6, verses 8-14, as I think it helps us appreciate what this season of Lent reminds us of:
8 Now if we died with Christ (and ashes also represent death in the scriptures) If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
I think this is what Ash Wednesday and Lent is all about. It is about recognizing the consequence of sin—namely death—but also celebrating the fact that we have been set free from sin and death by what Jesus did for us through His death and resurrection. Therefore, we are to count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, recognizing that we live not under law, but under grace.
Have any of you ever watched that great theological series on tv called “The Simpsons”? In one episode Homer is told by his doctor that he has only a few days to live. He is understandably frightened, but very soon he musters some courage and makes a list of all the things that he would like to do before he dies, like ride in a blimp and tell off his boss. But the list also contains items like making amends with the neighbor who he’s always borrowing things from but never returning. Homer also realizes that he hasn’t been the best father to his children. So, he spends quality time with Bart, and listens to his daughter play the saxophone without telling her to “stop with all that racket.”
Now, you may be thinking, “Keith, it’s Ash Wednesday and you’re talking about the Simpsons.” Yeah, because I think there’s truth to the notion that when we come face to face with the temporary nature of life and the certainty of death, we immediately wonder if we’ve used this gift of life as God intended. We think of our sinfulness, and all the areas where we have fallen short. That’s the point of Ash Wednesday. To recognize our fallenness and to turn from that fallenness to God in repentance.
There’s an ad on television that I see periodically for this product—I think it’s Life Alert—where this elderly woman is on the floor and she says, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” That’s what the ashes remind us of, that we are fallen, and we can’t get up on our own. We need a lifeline; we need God’s help. We need God’s forgiveness and God’s grace. We need God’s love.
So while the ashes remind us of our fallenness, they are also a reminder of the hope we have in Jesus; that God’s love has reached through our sinfulness, through the shadow of death, to the dust and the ashes of human life. We may be dust, but we are dust that is dearly loved.
So as the ashes are imposed upon us tonight, let it be a mark of our repentance in which we die to self and turn to the life that God has for us, recognizing that though we are fallen, by his grace, demonstrated in the cross, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.
We are so thankful to have hosted and heard from our neighbors at Lake Highlands Church and look forward to partnering together again.