NewCreation

Homily for Ash Wednesday

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Rather than do my usual, which is to concentrate solely and specifically on the Gospel text, I want to think a little about this season of grace into which we're entering: the season of Lent. It seems odd to think of a season of penitence as a season of grace, but that's because one of the best things that God can give us is penitence. And this is a very odd thing that I want to explore with you a little bit. I don't know, obviously, how you have been living through this period of confinement — this now more or less a year in which we've been through this strange shared experience of different forms of lockdown, very little being together. But one of the things that has come clearer is how we've been forced to live what today's Gospel tells us to do anyhow. In other words, we have found ourselves in a very difficult space of standing outside the forms of approval which we get from outside, and having to spend time in the equivalent of our parlor, our pantry, the closeted room where no one can see us and where we find who we are called to be. And this can be very difficult, very painful. It's a process of a sense of loss, a feeling of loss of personality. Who am I if I am not in the eyes of those who I need to approve of me? I think a lot of us have been through that and continue to go through that, and this is what our Lord asks of us. It's as though we've been in this long Lent. And at the same time we've been witness around us in the public sphere to really quite extraordinary and sad upheavals: self-destructive violence, conspiracy theories, purely binary ways of dealing with things which seemed to have been got over years ago but now people return to with a vengeance, as being the only exciting way of keeping alive and having flavor in their lives. We begin to get a sense of why God wants to give us the gift of penitence, why someone who loves us knows that actually we are inclined far too easily to get caught up in self-destruction. There's the old joke that Luther thought that humans were basically very, very highly intelligent but somewhat diabolical, and St. Thomas Aquinas thought that humans were basically good-natured but not very intelligent, and therefore constantly getting into problems with each other. I think that the understanding of God giving us the gift of penitence is this: "I do love you — let's see if I can help you get out of your self-destructive ways of being together, so that you can actually…" come to belong and share and enjoy being with each other, because that's what's best for you. And this is so difficult for us, so we get this gift of this season of grace. In the season of grace we're invited to come closer to the one who makes penitence possible. In the reading from Saint Paul we have the famous passage of how he made him to be sin who knew no sin, meaning that in our midst we have one who occupied the place of sin, of rejection, of shame, of having been cast out. The one who was just like us except in sin, which means that he's occupying that space and looking at us knowingly, so that we can inhabit our shame rather than running away from it, rather than being triggered into cover-up, into rushing to find new fake identities over against other people, so as to give us some desperate form of belonging, some desperate form of being together, which will only do us and others harm. He occupies this space and asks us to spend time with him in this space outside the gaze of approval, allowing ourselves to feel, often, shame, self-awareness, things that are painful, becoming aware that we're not who we project ourselves to be for others, that there are bits of our stories that are not as we like to tell them, and yet that we are liked and loved as we are. We'll be encouraged to come into being as people whom our Father does love in secret. But oh, the pain of those glimpses in the lantern mirror, or the pain of sitting in the place of shame rather than running away from it and gilding it with some new passion. And yet, oh, the gift that it is to be enabled to sit in our closet, in our pantry, in our larder – the one without any windows, so that we can't act up for others. And be aware that one who loves us is bringing us into being, melting our hearts, showing us how to relate in ways of peace and collaboration with others. That's, I think, part of the gift of this season of grace. Penitence is the gift of enabling us to come together in ways of peace. So I ask you to join me in praying for the gift of penitence during these next weeks. We'll be following the Gospels through the Sundays of Lent. You will all have your different practices, ways of showing the Lord that you're in this, That you long to be on the inside of his heart as we go through this time together. And may you be full of blessings as we share this time of penitence together. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.