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Today is Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the beginning of Lent. Today many will mark their foreheads with the mark of the cross in ashes, a symbol of their repentance before God, mourning theirs sins and the price it exacted.
To mourn. To feel deep sorrow and regret. To grieve for that which is lost. It is no wonder that ashes come to symbolize mourning, reflecting the emptiness of what once was whole, but is now destroyed. Do we really mourn for our sins? All too often, as Christians we have traded genuine confession and repentance for a therapeutic acknowledgment. We have become so entitled to God’s unparalleled grace that we think we can skip contrition and jump directly to a clean slate.
And yet, standing in our way is the cross of Christ. The stark reality of His sacrifice for our sins, the loving grace He offers for our salvation, should cast a blinding light on the depravity that is our hearts. We must mourn, we must grieve. Why? Not because we have offended some transcendent Being of moral perfection who is threatens us with judgment lest we fall in line. Rather, we grieve and mourn because we have betrayed the purest and truest Love we have ever and will ever encounter. We must let our hearts be broken as we look into the eyes of the One who gave all for us and see the devastation and pain our unfaithfulness causes Him.
We must mourn.
And yet, Jesus proclaims the impossible: “Blessed are those who mourn”. How can our mourning be a blessing? How can we be blessed in a state of grief and regret? We are blessed in our mourn because we most assuredly will be comforted.
That Christ comforts us even as we mourn our betrayal of him is an act of startlingly radical grace- a grace we receive from God that is no more deserved by us than by the most hated sinners we can imagine. God, in his infinite grace, mercy and love, chooses to suspend his judgment and instead promises us his comfort.
Why, then, do we so often fail to extend to others what we have so freely and undeservedly received ourselves? After all, what would the world think if we did? While some would see and embrace the beauty and hope of such love, others would inevitably reject it as offensive. Sitting across from a friend who has just beaten his girlfriend in a fit of frustrated rage, his pleas of contrition sounded empty to me. I am not proud to say that I was tempted to give him a taste of his own medicine. But as I recognized my own sinful brokenness and saw past the hypocrisy of my judgment, I saw in his tear-filled eyes a desperate longing to be free of his anger and a deep shame for what he allowed it to produce in his life. So I placed my arm over his shoulder and mourned with him, inviting the only One capable of bringing healing into such sorrow. And we were both comforted.
Christ’s call for us to mourn together in the face of sin and suffering is a humble declaration of our own brokenness. This humanizing admission of our absolutely mutual and common fallenness should subvert our impulse to seek vengeance and retribution, moving us instead to comfort one another in the only true hope—that which we find in the undeserved and undiscriminating grace of Jesus Christ. This same Christ, who alone claims the right of judgment over us all, comes first and foremost with long-suffering love and forgiveness.
And so we mourn, not without hope, but without fear. We can (and must) truly come to terms with the costliness of our sin, the infidelity it represents to God, and in so doing, we must grieve in genuine contrition. So today, if you choose to place that ashen cross on your brow, consider the gravity of what it represents. Do you truly mourn for your sin? We must! For unless we truly mourn, but cannot truly be comforted.
(The preceding is an edited excerpt from my book, “The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis & Life in the Kingdom”)
Tags: confession, lent, Missional
Mourn my brokeness?!?! I don’t even want to acknowledge it! I live in a reality of fierce independence with the ultimate value being placed on self reliance, success, and competence. Mourn my brokness.. no no, I must fix it.. by myself, thank you very much. Brokeness is about doing and what I did.. that I can fix.
But what if brokeness really is something more than choices and actions.. what if it is in fact a fundamental shortfall in my very existence. Then mourning it is more than something that can be fixed, it means having to exist in and sit with imperfection, an imperfection that can’t be learned, acted, or designed out of. It means incorporating that shadow into my understanding of myself and the world. It means admitting to vulnerability, even admitting to the need for something/someone/someones outside of myself. It means that to be whole I have to risk, to God, to people, to myself. I do not like this.
So, when it comes to Ash Wednesday I wish with all my being that it could really be “forgive me for what I did”, because I can always figure out a way to DO different. I run screaming from the idea that it needs to be at another level “forgive me for who I am”, for my stubborness, for my refusal to trust, for my refusal to admit I am just like everyone else, for my pride, and for my unwillingness to risk exploring who God might want me to be, or could make me, or where God might put me to do that.
So, I will likely head off to the imposition of ashes tonight and at the front of my mind I will be repeating.. sorry for what I DID, I won’t Do it again… and maybe, just maybe, God can find a crack in the fear and wedge in something more, deeper, and ultimately more healing… maybe…..
Mourning is never fun, Maria. Thanks for your honesty!
Peace.
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