Ashes to Ashes

 

Happy Ash Wednesday, everyone!  First my birthday and now Ash Wednesday, when will the fun stop?!?  Here.  The fun stops right here as we begin Lent which is that church season drenched and doused in guilt and apparently not eating meat on Friday for some reason?  I know it was about giving something up to symbolize Jesus’ loving sacrifice, but I wonder if Jesus would rather we give up hurting and harming and treating each other as less than fully human. Lent is a holy (sometimes hard) season to be honest about the places where we do not see clearly.  The coming forty days shine a spotlight on where you and I (being human size) do not practice what we preach, where we resist and downright refuse to love another human being because of who they are or what they believe or how they hurt us! 

 

As we begin this holy season of Lent, hear these words from Jesus:

 

 Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.  Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone?  Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake?  If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will God will give good things to those who ask!

 

What are you asking God for right now?

 

When was a time you asked God for something and it felt like the answer from the Holy was, “No!”?  Perhaps you prayed that a family member would be cured, or a marriage would be reconciled or that as people we would stop killing each other!  While I do not know for certain, it makes sense to me that people in Jesus’ day were praying the Roman Empire would be overthrown.  We know people came to Jesus pleading, which is to say praying, for healing ~ so do we.  And we know that Jesus didn’t heal everyone.  Prayer can be contradictory.  On the one hand, we know God is not Santa Claus or a Genie or a vending machine giving us what we want.  On the other hand, our most fervent prayers are often for others who we love to be freed from pain, suffering, discrimination or death.  Hold the messiness and un-answerability of this passage ~ because I don’t think this is a puzzle we can solve, but a mystery we seek to live with lots of questions and doubts and faith.

 

Keep reading with me ~  In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

 

What was one action you offered another in love this week?  Did it feel like love was returned or did the person trample on your tulips or make a sarcastic, snide remark?

 

Where is one place today you can enter the room with love?

 

Finally read this with me ~

Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

 

For me, these two verses help shed and shine light on what we have read above ~ not just today but all the way back to the beginning of Chapter 5 over the last several weeks!  This way of Jesus is not a highway we zoom down, but a twisty, turning, difficult dirt road with ruts and bumps that damage the suspension system in our logic and disrupt us in ways we’d rather not discuss.  To be sure, I think the gate to God’s way is wide open!  You don’t have to show your baptism card or badges on your heavenly sash or show that you are worthy.  You are welcome.  There are no qualifications, no resume and cover letter needed, no gate keeper.  Jesus welcomes you as you go stumbling through the gate single file into the spaciousness of God.  What is on the road right now for you?  Look around your life on this Ash Wednesday.  Open your heart and be held by a mystery that knows your prayers, doubts, disappointments, joy, anger ~ that great stew in your soul ~ spiced with flavors from your life from the spice shelf of your soul.  Amen.