WHAT A FRIEND
Ash Wednesday 2010
This has never been a popular day in the Church Calendar, nor is the
season of Lent that it begins. Unlike Advent, which is filled
with anticipation and liturgical excitement, Lent seems to be bleak,
solemn, and void of much of anything…
These 40 days (Sundays excluded!) are purposely designed to be void of
much of anything; and if we try to fill them with extra events we’re
likely missing the point. God, our Creator, who has been waiting
for us all of our lives to come to our senses, needs and wants a
relationship with each of us. What does it take to get our
attention? A critical illness, a primary loss, a relationship on
the rocks? Actually, these sometimes can be used by God to speak
to us.
Lent is a gift, a chance to re-connect with the God who made us; a time
to reflect on why it is that we are so busy, so preoccupied, that we
have little or no time for him. To put it in familial terms,
we’re like the children who never call, or e-mail – until we need
something. Lent isn’t about our piety, our prayers, but it is
about a relationship with God who loves each of us, and wants to show
us that love, if we’d only stop for a minute to receive it.
When we received the ashes a few moments ago, many of us might have
thought they were to remind us of our mortality…and that is true.
They also remind us that everything we rely on: our security of home
and hearth, what we have in assets, our very selves, will all one day
be dust and ashes.
Over and over God tries to remind us of that and most of all tries to
tell us in so many ways that the one thing we can count on after we
leave this world, likely as ashes ourselves, is an on-going
relationship with him.
Jesus is our guide throughout Lent. We have the opportunity to
walk with him all the way to the cross. Let’s turn that around;
we can offer him the opportunity to walk with us all the way to Good
Friday, and all that that means. He is the friend that transcends
friendship; he is the friend that walks with us to the grave. No
other friend can offer us that. He is the friend that meets us in
life after our death, when we have left all others and all things
behind. Isn’t that relationship worth deepening? Lent is
just for that purpose.
So, as we come to the end of a long-enough winter, and find ourselves
another year older, but perhaps no better off than we have been, once
again the invitation to a devout and holy Lent comes to us. The
invitation is packed with promise if we accept it, and find a place in
our heart, claim a place in our heart, for time with Him. This is
when we say, “I don’t have all the answers, but I am beginning know the
one who does,” and get to know him better.
Getting to know him better means turning away from the things that
distract us, whether it be food, the internet, family obligations or
the list of demands we allow to be imposed on ourselves. Finally,
and ultimately, the response to the invitation is ours to make.
When all we can say about government is that we want less of it, rather
than demanding that it be just; when a lot of technology from which we
benefit in daily life comes from what is developed for tactical weapons
that destroy the children of God; when all of our brilliant
breakthroughs for medicine are too often unavailable to most people;
when good men and women begin to leave public office in droves because
of the partisanship and personal attacks they have to endure; then is
it not time for us to remember the God who made us, formed us and loves
us – first, so we can return to sanity and common sense ourselves
before the world destroys our very being?
The closing lines of T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday, written in 1927
after his conversion to Anglicanism, speak poignantly to our situation
today:
Blessed
sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer
us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach
us to care and not to care
Teach
us to sit still
Even
among these rocks,
Our
peace in His will
And
even among these rocks
Sister,
mother
And
spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer
me not to be separated
And
let my cry come unto Thee.
The Rev. Ben Helmer
St. James' Episcopal Church
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
17 February 2010