Welcome! At midnight tonight begins
the Season of Lent, a time of forty days leading up to Easter. It is a time of
prayer and reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ presence in our lives and in the
world; a time to look within ourselves to see what needs changing and healing
as we seek to follow Jesus more willingly and more completely.
In Bible times when people sinned
and were sorry they would sometimes put ashes on their heads as a symbol for
their sin, and as a way of saying they were sorry for doing wrong. Sin is when
people act and think as if they don’t care about God or about themselves or
other people or about God’s world.
Tonight, we too will use the symbol
of ashes to express our sadness about sin. The ashes come from the palms we
used last Palm Sunday as we welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. They remind us that
Jesus is King and that we are God’s creation of the earth. They also remind us
of new life, from which new plants grow and abundant life comes. The ashes are
mixed with oil, which in Bible times was a sign of God’s favor and God’s
healing. –– Sara Webb Phillips
Matthew
6:1-6,16-21
There’s no evading the odd fact
that Matthew 6:1–6 and 16–(18)21 seems to be an anti-Ash Wednesday text
assigned for Ash Wednesday. The passage apparently warns us away from every
kind of visible piety. In order to live out Jesus’ injunctions everyone should
stop at a restroom on the way out of Ash Wednesday services and wash off those
ashes. Matthew’s gospel more than any other is a manual for discipleship—piety
is done secretly; charity is done openly. How do we relate the appropriate
concern with liturgical faithfulness to the warnings against showiness and
hypocrisy? –– David Bartlett
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
In the Hebrew Bible, fasting and
repentance are often prescribed in times of suffering and danger or under
threat of such concerns. Here the threat is not attack by a human army, but the
“day of the LORD” and the destruction and terror it brings.
. . . Joel calls for fasting, but
in a redefined form. He calls upon the people to return to God with fasting and
repentance, but rather than rending their clothes as a sign of that repentance,
they are asked to “rend your hearts and not your clothing.” –– Jonathan Lawrence
2 Corinthians
5:20b––6:10
Just as the psalmist pledged to “teach
transgressors your ways,” Paul seeks to reconcile the Corinthians to God,
serving as an ‘‘ambassador for Christ.’’ In many of the readings for today, it
is not the act but the motivation that counts, the way we respond to God’s
gifts. So too here, he urges them “not to accept the grace of God in vain.” He
cites Isaiah 49:8 in its reference to an acceptable time, a day of salvation,
which Paul says has arrived. –– Jonathan Lawrence
David Bartlett, an
ordained American Baptist minister, is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and Lantz Professor Emeritus
of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut.
Jonathan D. Lawrence, an American Baptist Church ordained
minister, teaches Religious Studies and Theology at Canisius College, Buffalo,
New York.
Sara Webb Phillips
is a United Methodist minister serving North Springs UMC in Sandy Springs,
Georgia.
Homily Service 39, no. 4 (2006): 2-12.
No comments:
Post a Comment