Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12–19 ESV

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ” Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people. The Lord answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.

In the Name of Jesus, the Suffering Servant, Amen.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. These are stark words. Ashes on the forehead in the shape of a cross are not for boasting. Rather, they are the horrific reminder that the curse that rested upon Adam’s head rests on ours as well. Death, the great equalizer, awaits to swallow each one of us and return us back to the dust. And if death is not bad enough, eternal judgment follows death. Even when we are reduced to dust we cannot escape it.

That is the message given by the prophet Joel to a rebellious Israel. Because of their sin, God allowed locusts to plunder their land, eating everything in sight. No analogy here, the locust don’t represent anything in this case but themselves. They are not a symbol of an invading army; they swarm the land as a sign of God’s judgment against His people. And, as Joel reminds them, the locusts show that the Day of the Lord is coming upon them rapidly— that day of wrath and mourning, that day of destruction, that day of judgment.

Death also was

The ashes on your foreheads bear the same message. While locusts destroy the land in Joel, the real destruction comes from sin.

But those ashes upon our heads are in the shape of a cross. Marked with the Cross- symbolically on Ash Wednesday, but literally in Baptism gives us the sure and certain hope that your dust will rise not to judgment but to glory in the Light of Christ.

In the midst of Joel’s proclamation of oncoming, head-on judgment, he breaks into this glorious Gospel proclamation showing the love and mercy of God.

There are four brief points, all beginning with the letter “R”. First, Joel pleads with us to RETURN to the Lord. Second, Joel calls us to REND our hearts and not our garments. This is done through REPENTANCE. Finally, because of Christ, God the Father RELENTS with His forgiveness.

RETURN TO ME

“return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; ..... Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. It is the Lenten verse sung before the Gospel.”

God calls us to return because we have wandered. Wandered away from Him in our sin, wandered away from Him in our self sufficiency, wandered away from Him in our selfishness. Like the Prodigal Son, we have taken our inheritance, run far from him and squandered it.

But instead of calling down judgment upon us, the Lord Himself calls us to return to Him. He is the gracious Father who stands waiting for us, looking for us, expecting our return. The gracious Father who receives us back as sons and daughters, not as servants. He does this because He is gracious and merciful.

When we see the enormity of what should separate us from Him in our lives, it leads us to fasting and weeping and mourning.

Fasting is good. It doesn’t mean “giving up something for Lent” as if that had any merit. It means dying to ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Jesus to the death.

Rend your hearts and not your garments

God doesn’t care about our outward appearance. We see that with the Pharisees, with Jesus calling them “whitewashed tombs.” You can show off your holiness, but to paraphrase our Gospel, when you do that, you have your reward. What God wants is real, inner change. A change of heart, a change of life, a change of mind.

The word for this kind of change is metanoio, the word used for REPENTANCE. It means to change your mind. We are not talking about some kind of mental indecisiveness, but rather it is the Greek way to say that you make a U Turn. That no longer does sin control us, but the Spirit of God. We rend our hearts through Repenting of our sins and all the more firmly believing that God’s Words of absolution through Jesus’ Cross, stand. That the ashes on your head don’t have the last word on you, but Christ does through His Cross.

In Christ God relents

The Gospel today is that God relents. He does not give us what we deserve. He gives that to Jesus instead. He gets what we deserve. That is the mystery of the Cross— Jesus becomes my sin, I become His righteousness. We are Holy in God’s eyes because we were marked with His Cross in Baptism. We embrace Jesus through faith. Jesus’ holy life becomes yours. Your life of sin becomes His. And He becomes the perfect sacrifice to take away our sin.

Lent is not a time to beat ourselves up because we are sinners. It is the time where we truly give thanks to God that Jesus has forgiven our sin.

This leads us to a life lived out in the Light of Christ given by the Holy Spirit. A life where we truly do love the Lord our God above all things. A life where our neighbors truly do become more important than ourselves. A life of prayer and sacrifice, fasting and tithing, a life that reflects the very cross that you have on your head today.

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