Ash Wednesday Reflection

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day which reminds us of our mortality. Bound up with our mortality is another dreaded word: sin. The word itself is most unpleasant despite the action itself being very pleasant because we struggle with the weightiness of what sin represents. Seeing sin (especially in others) doesn't require much effort. Newcomers to faith can easily become bogged down in their own faults. Too much focus on sin leads to despair in God's grace. However, aren't the pages of the Bible are filled with references to sin? 

In one of today's lectionary readings, God, speaking through the prophet Amos, says, 

For I know how many are your transgressions 

and how great are your sins - 

you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, 

and push aside the needy in the gate. (5:12)

Being my own worst enemy, I can know just how much an asshole I can be at times. Do I really need God keeping tabs, as well? 

However, this verse is part of a larger text which resolves itself by adjuring,

Seek good and not evil,

that you may live;

and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you,

just as you have said. (5:14)

Taken together, it's not only a call for repentance but a promise of grace. It finds an echo in another one of today's lectionary texts:

Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1b-2)

Christ meets us on Ash Wednesday in order to say, "I died, too, in order to overcome sin even though I wanted to live, just like you want to. But because I died and rose, your physical death is not the end for you, either!" 

As we begin the season of Lent, it's a time for us to interrupt the way things are in order to remember how things ought to be.