How It Started . . .

 

Jesu Juva

Joel 2:12-19                                                                         

March 2, 2022

Ash Wednesday                                                 

Dear saints of our Savior~

          One down, thirty-nine to go.  Lent is a curious season.  For some Christians Lent is just forty days to endure—forty days of purple—somber and serious, sackcloth and ashes—the drudgery before the victory of Easter.  Lent always seems out of place in our feel-good culture of comfort and consumption.

          This is day one of Lent.  How’s it going so far?  A popular meme on social media highlights the contrast between how things begin, versus how things actually go:  How it started . . . compared to . . . how it’s going.  With Lent, there can be quite a disparity between how it started and how it’s going.  Last year at this time, an acquaintance of mine resolved to give up alcohol for Lent.  Bravo.  That’s how it started.  That evolved into giving up alcohol—except for beer—during Lent.  That evolved into giving up alcohol—except for beer—except on the weekends—during Lent.  Not too difficult to spot the difference between how it started . . . and how it’s going.

          How this Lenten season will go for you I cannot predict; but let’s at least get this season started on the right foot.  Let’s at least begin these forty days led and

directed by the Word of the Lord.  And the Words of the Lord for Ash Wednesday are all rooted in action and activity—in doing and undertaking the disciplines that flow from faith in Jesus Christ.  Lent is not a time to sink deeper into your pew cushion and to contemplate the solemnity of the season.  Lent is not a time for quiet introspection and navel-gazing.  Lent is a time to get busy with what really matters.

          Did you catch all the action words in tonight’s Scripture readings?  Return to the Lord with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning; and rend your hearts . . . . Blow the trumpet, consecrate a fast, call an assembly, gather the people, gather the children, assemble the elders.  Be reconciled to God.  Jesus, tonight, urged caution for how you practice your faith publicly; but, He nevertheless assumed that you will practice your faith publicly . . . when you give to the needy, when you pray, when you fast.  This is how it starts.  It starts this way—when you interrupt your regular routines—when you rend your heart in repentance—when you return to the Lord with all your heart.

          Lent has its start in the heart—but not in just any heart:  A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.  The prophet Joel tells us to rend—literally to tear—our hearts and return to the Lord.  Fasting doesn’t come first.  You can fast if you want to.  You can weep all you want.  You can wear sackcloth and douse your head with ashes.  But Lent begins—it starts—with a broken heart.  A broken heart God will not despise.

          This broken heart has nothing to do with the romance of human relationships.  It has to do with sin.  Our sin is heartbreaking.  What we have done to others, what others have done to us, what we have done to ourselves—our sin in all its forms is heartbreaking.  And if our sin doesn’t break our hearts, well, that’s just further evidence of how hardened our hearts have become.  If sin doesn’t break our hearts, that’s an indictment against us.  It shows how calloused and comfortable we’ve become, and how insincere we really are. 

          We work overtime to avoid feeling the heart-break of our sin.  We avoid it in a variety of ways: We justify our sins.  We excuse our sins.  We tell ourselves, “God will forgive me, so why let it bother me?”  We lie to ourselves.  We deny our guilt.  We pretend that the good of attending church outweighs any bad that we do or say.  And in the process, we become self-satisfied and hard-hearted.  And for that there can be hell to pay.

          There’s a reason why Lent starts with the heart.  In the Bible, the heart wasn’t only the emotional center of the body; it was also the seat of the intellect.  Whereas we separate the two with our intellect in the head, and our feelings in the heart, in the Bible it was all in the heart.  When Joel says to rend your heart and not your clothing, he’s telling us not just to go through the motions—not just to come here and sit in pew and say some words and think that’s good enough.  When it comes to your sin, he’s saying, you should feel it in your heart.  It should break your heart.  Hearts that are smug and self-satisfied and cold as ice have no need for a Savior.  But a broken heart—a contrite heart—your God will not despise.  The heart is where it starts.

          Return to the Lord with all your heart.  Turn to Him, for He’s already turned to you.  Turn to Him because He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Whenever we confess our sins, God is always faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  And we know the price He paid to cleanse us:  “Not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.”  Turn to the Lord with your sin, with your broken heart and your broken life and your death.  For only He can cleanse you and heal you and forgive you.  Believe me when I say, there’s nothing He wants more than that.

          And don’t overlook those first little words from the prophet:  “Even now.”  “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart.”  Do you hear the good news in that phrase?  Yet even now—even after you’ve made a mess of your life and burned all your bridges and hurt the people you ought most to love, and hardened your heart—the Lord says “Yet even now” it’s not too late.  Even now He wants you back.  He wants your broken heart.  He wants to wash away your sins and make you whiter than snow.  He wants you.  And “even now” it’s not too late to turn.  Now is the time of God’s favor.  Now is the day of salvation.  Right now—this . . . is the start of something good.

          None of this is easy, and you can’t do it on your own.  In the end, only God Himself can create in you a clean heart and renew a right spirit within you.  But the start for a clean heart is a penitent heart—a broken heart.  Coming to terms with our sin is not pleasant, but painful.  I often tell broken people—penitent people—that they’re in a very good place.  A broken heart is like the broken soil of a plowed field.  It’s ready—it’s ready to give growth to the seeds of the gospel.  Good things start—good things can grow—in those who view their sin with sorrow—good things like peace, joy, gentleness and faith.       

          Being penitent is indeed a good place to be.  For that’s the place where Jesus comes to meet us.  You see, whatever our sin may be, Jesus became that sin.  We heard it tonight:  God made Him to be sin who knew no sin.  Jesus on the cross is the adulterer and the murderer.  Jesus on the cross is the thief, the liar, the abortionist.  Jesus on the cross is the unfaithful spouse, the rebellious child, the cheater, the abuser, the addict.  Jesus became all of that so that you don’t have to be that anymore—so that you in Him might become the righteousness of God—so that you might have a clean heart created in you—so that in Christ you might be a new creation.

          One down, thirty-nine to go.  This is how it’s starting.  It’s starting with a broken heart on this Ash Wednesday—a heart that feels the pain of sin—a heart that breaks on account of sin—a heart where Jesus has promised to re-create a whole new you.  So savor this season.  Rejoice in your repentance.  This is how it starts.  This is how it goes.  This is exactly where you need to be.  For a broken and contrite heart your God will not despise. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.