Mrs. Suzette Cayless, AHC
RCL - Ash Wednesday - Wednesday 06 February 2008
Joel 2:1-2;12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
When I was at school I had a Physics Teacher named Miss Shaw. She did not like the fact that most of us simply tried to memorize formulae in order to solve the many problems she set. Her constant message was “Go back to first principles!” She did not approve of our desire for shortcuts. She wanted us to be able to work out solutions by understanding what was going on and being able to find the answers by really working through the problems. “Go back to first principles!” That, I think is the message of Ash Wednesday.
As Joel puts it: “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your hearts and not your garments.” St. Paul urges his friends to “be reconciled to God” and “not to accept the grace of God in vain.” The Gospel today shows up the conflict in our turning to God, warning about simply practicing piety in order to gain recognition from others and not as a sign of truly returning to God.
There is a conflict here for all of us. We like to find the shortcuts; we like pious practices that at least make us feel we are doing something - memorizing the formulae without understanding the first principles. T.S. Eliot displays this conflict in his strange poem “Ash Wednesday” part of which goes like this:
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
for what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us.
Our repentance is meant to be real, a going back to first principles, being reconciled to God, hearing the commandments of God “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” To love God and to love our neighbor is the basis of our faith. As Jesus made clear throughout his ministry, without love we are nothing. Only love can change us and only the acceptance of God’s love can enable us to access and live by the grace offered day by day. Love is the means by which we serve others, by which we delight God, by which alone we can be saved. It is through Love that we become and develop as authentic human beings.
I want to read an extract from “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams that illustrates this first principle very nicely:
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is real?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully handled. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are Real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Hose only smiled.
“The Boy’s uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
As we receive the imposition of ashes today, as we prepare to practice our Lenten disciplines, let us recall to mind the first principles of our faith. Let us determine that we shall turn to God in heart and mind; that we shall receive God’s Love and love God in return so that we may become Real and truly be what God calls us to be; that we shall recall the Cross at the center of our faith and the arms spread wide to touch and embrace in love all humankind; and ourselves endeavor to love our neighbor for Jesus Christ’s sake.
Amen.
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