Ash Wednesday is about mortality, but it is also about recognizing our need for God as limited and flawed human beings. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season, we often talk about repentance, turning away from our sins and towards God. This year, through Lent, we will focus on ”lament” (expressing our sorrow, pain, and suffering to God in prayer). Lament invites us to face our humanity. Lament is a natural part of our faithful, loving response to a world marked by sin and brokenness. A lament is also a form of praise. It is not ”just complaining.” When we lament, we are bringing our complaints to God because of who God is. We know we cannot handle our pain on our own. God is the only one capable of changing things. Scripture illustrates for us what this looks like. The psalmist laments to God, knowing who God has been (steadfast in love,) and who God has promised to be (one who saves), with a spirit of trust (Psalm 51:6). The praise doesn’t cancel out the grief or vice versa.
When we bring our grief, sorrow,
anger, and pain all to God in prayer with honesty and trust, it is
proof of our relationship with God. It shows that we need God and we trust God
to show up when we are in need. Some of us may have been taught that
’complaining’ to God or about God’s perceived absence is a sign of
unfaithfulness. However, part of being in a relationship is being able to go to
the other party when we are hurting or things aren’t right. So our honesty with
God around our grief or despair about any circumstance is proof of our
faithfulness. Our God is big enough for our honest perspective on things and
cares more than we can imagine about everything that grieves us.
God is in the resurrection and redemption business,
so we can rest assured that our God will have the final say. And that Last
word will be “Jesus.”
There can often
be a connection between repentance and lament, though this is not always the
case as when, for example, we are lamenting the loss of a loved one. In
Psalm 51, David is Lamenting his own sin.
Psalm 51:1-17 THE MESSAGE
The Psalmist laments his own sin. He is expressing his grief
and sorrow to God about the things he has done that have separate him from God
(verses 1-9). The way this psalm is written is deeply personal (I, not we).
Especially in the beginning of the Lenten season, we must start where we are as
individuals with deep self-reflection. However, not all suffering is a result
of sin, or a result of our own personal sin. With that said, the psalmist
recognizes and laments his suffering but is self aware and truthful in
acknowledging that at least parts of it flow from his own actions and
transgressions.
In verse 5, the psalmist claims he has ”been out of step”
with God and in the wrong since he was born. Though this may seem off-putting
to think of a baby with sin, I wonder why David felt this, prayed this, and admitted
this? Observing the broken world he/we all are born into and knowing there is
something wrong that needs God’s love and forgiveness to fix it? Looking at our
human state and recognizing all humanity needs mercy, love, and grace. It is that
innate sense in us that there is something separating us from God. And yet, our
God pursues us, desiring that we would choose to be loved, that we would choose
to experience grace, that we would choose to turn from our sin sickness and that
which separates us from God toward God and into relationship.
In lamenting his sin, the psalmist moves to repentance. It
is one thing to know that something is wrong and to name it. It is another to
recognize our own role in it and take the next step of inviting God to work in
us and through us. Verse 17 speaks of ”a heart-shattered life” as the sacrifice
acceptable to God. This broken spirit comes from being uncomfortable and
dissatisfied with what is contrary to God’s way for us.
Throughout the passage, David speaks of God’s presence and
what God can do in and through us as a result of repentance. On Ash Wednesday, we
are invited to reflect on something that needs to change in our lives, to
identify the suffering that has come from it, and to both lament, express the
pain and sorrow we’ve experienced because of it to God in prayer, and repent, turn
away from the sin and towards God. Perhaps
it is a deeply personal lament you bring to this season, something you are dealing
with or going through. A loss or grief that is weighing you down and in that
case, there is a need only to allow Jesus to carry the load with you and by the
power of the Holy Spirit, take you through the valley of the shadows into the joy
that comes in the morning. Maybe you lament the systems that bog down our
ability for all people to live with dignity and fullness of life. The things
that make food insecurity, homelessness, prisons, scarcity, and fear run rampant
in society. As we “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms
they present themselves” perhaps we begin to recognize our role in perpetuating
a status quo that does not resemble the Gospel we have learned or proclaim. And
so we lament, we repent, and we turn our mourning and our knowledge into a call
to action that guided by the Holy, will be about bringing God’s way on earth as
it is in heaven. Lament can move us to action in the face of injustice. It
is our call for God to break our hearts with what breaks God’s.
As we walk through this series and this season, may we seek
to root out evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present
themselves and work together toward God’s preferred vision for our congregation
and community. We will do so by using the ancient disciplines this season calls
us to. Observing a holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer,
fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word.
Whatever you choose to give up, I would invite you to fill that void with
scripture from our daily reading plan, with journaling about your lament and how
God is revealing to you day by day how to heal and act for the benefit of the
kin-dom.
We begin the journey of this season together, grounding
ourselves in the two ancient facts of Christian existence:
1 our own human failings and our
mortality, symbolized in ashes
2 our Lord who has conquered sin
and death, symbolized in the sign of the cross in which those ashes are applied.
May Trinity make it so.
