Feb. 7: Penitence

We observed Ash Wednesday yesterday, and had close to 50 people attend between our two services. Thanks to Stephen Sikorski, our organist, who was able to play for both. Special thanks also to Paula and Ginny, our Altar Guild. The altar guild sets up for all of our services and cleans the linens—not an easy task when the central image of the service are actual ashes!

Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite liturgies we celebrate. One of the things I love about being an Episcopalian is the way our liturgy uses the ordinary things of life—bread, wine, water—and helps us to experience the God’s eternal truths in the midst of them. Liturgy is a full-body experience; we sit, we stand, we kneel, we sing, eat, drink—we do liturgy. It’s not about being a spectator.

Putting ashes on our faces reminds us who we are—“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We were made of the earth, and that’s where we go back to. We put it on our faces to symbolize our penitence and our knowledge that we in ourselves aren’t terribly much to look at or get too excited about. On Ash Wednesday we confess in a litany that is as exhaustive a list of sins as we will ever see, from garden variety dishonesties and selfishness to consumerism to our abuse of the earth.

The season of Lent is about penitence. What’s important, though, about Lent and Ash Wednesday is that they aren’t an end in themselves. The point of penitence is that it brings us to forgiveness—this is part of the story we sometimes forget. Our American culture is relentlessly focused on being positive. It’s easy to look at a service like we celebrated yesterday and ask, “What’s the point of that? Life is hard enough. Why do I want to go and dwell on such negativity?

The thing is, though, that when penitence is understood as it is intended, it’s about restoration, not punishment. We confess all of those sins because it’s a realistic assessment of what it is to be a person in this world; our inner moral landscapes are intensely complicated. To kneel down in church, dirt smeared on your face, to say, I am sorry, please forgive me and please welcome me home, is what we are all in such desperate need of. And God is always willing to hear that confession and to forgive us.

Peter asks Jesus, ’How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.’ (Mtt 18: 21-22). That’s a lot of forgiveness! If that’s what Jesus asks of us, how much more so will God, who understands our hearts better than we ourselves, forgive.

This Lent, I hope you’ll be able to find some time in your prayer to hear God’s forgiveness as loudly and as clearly as you hear your own sinfulness. Take some time to pray for forgiveness, and allow yourself really to hear how God answers you. If you are in conflict with someone, maybe this Lent is a good time to try to reconcile with them. God’s forgiveness can be a pretty ethereal reality, and asking forgiveness of each other is a good way to ask God, too. If you have something specific that’s heavy on your heart, the sacrament of reconciliation may be appropriate for you; Episcopalians don’t practice “Confession” quite like they do in the Roman Catholic Church (no one ever “has to”), but it can sometimes be a good thing.

Prayers to you for a holy Lent.

Blessings,

Sara+