March 9, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church

When I was a grad student at Harvard, one of my work-study jobs was helping to catalog a vast collection of what librarians and archivists call ephemera. In this case, it was material related to the history of religion in America in the first half of 19^th century. Almost all of it was from New England, and in keeping with the historical roots of Harvard Divinity School, almost all of it was related to Unitarianism or Universalism.

Ephemera are items printed for immediate use, and rarely preserved by people. There were sermons and pamphlets by the hundreds. Many of the sermons were by prominent New England churchmen and were published because they were delivered on important occasions. Among these sermons were dozens that were preached on various days that had been proclaimed as “Fast Days” either by the governors of one of the New England States, or, more commonly, by the President of the United States. Sometimes these “Fast Days” were declared in response to some national crisis—the coming of war, for example, but more often, there seemed to be no particular reason other than the perceived notion that the state or the nation needed to repent.

Looking back from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the idea that a President might declare a National day of fasting seems either oddly quaint or offensive to our sensitivity over the separation of church and state. Oh, we will grant that the President has to invoke God in his speeches, or even attend a National Prayer Breakfast, but the idea that he might declare a national day of fasting is outlandish. The only time we hear people calling for national repentance is when some national disaster occurs and people like Pat Robertson interpret it as a sign of God’s impending judgment on America for its sinful ways.

The reason for seeking national repentance is clear. There’s a long tradition in America of using texts from the Hebrew Bible to offer insight and commentary on the nation. Texts like the one from Joel, written at a time when Israel faced a dire national threat, argue that only deep and lasting repentance will prevent the nation’s destruction.

The language of Joel is passionate and picturesque: the day of the Lord is near, a day of darkness and doom. A natural disaster is threatening Israel. But there may be hope—Who knows if God will not relent? “For Yahweh is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

It is in hopes of averting God’s wrath that a solemn fast is declared:

Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.
Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O LORD,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.

We might find the overall image of a people so intent on repenting that they leave everything, even their marriage ceremony laudable. I think most of us would find the image of a priest, your priest, weeping between the sacristy and the altar, a bit farfetched. So farfetched perhaps, that our response might be the same as that of the people who listened to the prophet and scoffed, “where is their God?”

The notion of national repentance has gone out of fashion with moderate or progressive Christians, and even for most Evangelicals. But losing that language has meant losing a significant aspect of the Biblical notion of repentance.

When we think of repentance, we think of it almost entirely in terms of personal repentance. We view Ash Wednesday as a moment in our personal spiritual journeys and rarely think about the corporate, communal, or even national significance of the act of repentance. Indeed, we think of sin in much the same way. The powerful idea in the biblical tradition that sin was not only a matter of individual misdeeds—that a whole people could sin—has been lost. Perhaps that’s a good thing, for it prevents us from casting national events in the language of sin and punishment. Still, it may be that something has been lost in that change. Certainly in the biblical tradition, sin was not simply something between God and me. In fact, sin was above all, a transgression against the community, and the consequences of sin involved exclusion from the community.

So sin is not just about our relationship with God, it is about our relationship with our neighbors, and of course also about the way in which we organize our communities—the values by which we shape our communities and treat the less fortunate. Yes, there is individual sin, but as the reading from Joel makes clear, there is also communal sin. From all those sins we need to repent.

During the Litany of Penitence that we will read together later, we will repent of our own personal sins, but we will also repent of sins that we have committed as a human race.

Repentance is not just expressing regret. It is much more than that. It is about changing life and changing our minds. The New Testament Greek word most often translated as repent quite literally means, “Change your mind.” Ash Wednesday and Lent are not primarily times in which we should take the time to rue or bemoan our sins. Ash Wednesday and Lent should be times when we devote ourselves newly and with new vigor, to amendment of life. In a few minutes, I will invite all of us to the observation of a Holy Lent.

The intimate and disturbing act that we will share in a few minutes, when I mark your forehead with ashes in the sign of a cross can be full of meaning and power. It can also, as Jesus warns in today’s gospel, be an act a show of our piety before other men and women. When we focus, not on our dirty foreheads, but on the words with which are foreheads are marked, we remember the most important lesson of the day.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those ominous words put us in mind of the words spoken when a body is placed in a grave: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” They remind us of our mortality. They remind us to of our origin. Human beings are created from the dust of the earth. Our creation, our very existence is a gift from a loving God. The ashes remind us of that. They remind us too, that we have fallen short of God’s desire for us, as individuals and as a human community.

God created us from an outpouring of God’s great love. When we turned away from God, when we sinned, God continued to love us. God loved us and loves so much, that God gave us his son who showed his love for us and all humanity, by giving himself for us on the cross. May this season of Lent be for us a time when we rededicate our lives to follow in his footsteps, to experience anew the wondrous gift of his love, and yes, to share that love in the world around us.