This is the aim of a day of repentance: To come face to face with God and, therefore, face to face with our sin.
Ash Wednesday is about confession and absolution, repentance and faith. It is about truth-telling and same-saying, hearing God speak and speaking back to Him what He has said. Ash Wednesday is about acknowledging our personal and individual, as well as corporate, shared status before God and one another. And that status is dust. It is a good day to remember that dust you are and to dust you will return.
One of the most effective proclamations of law I have heard in the last year came from my pastor as I was warming the pew one Sunday morning. I forget the day and the text (to my discredit), but the move was timely for a sinner like me. It was pretty simple stuff, but he repeated it as a theme with variations for the first three minutes of his pulpit time, and the depth of the simple rhetorical questions made that five minutes seem like an hour to me. He simply asked questions along the lines of, “Did you really think you could get away with it? Did you really think no one would find out? Did you really think God was ignorant of what you had done?” As I think back to that sermon in retrospect, I appreciate the “really” in there. It is a keen counterpoint to the first question ever asked in scripture, introduced with the Hebrew ʾap̲ kî, which English generally translates as, “Did God actually say,” “Did God really say,” a doubt-spin spewed by the serpent into Eve’s ear (Genesis 3:1). Refusal to trust God’s Word is turned on its head with this preaching dynamic. It moves the hearer from hesitation about God, rather, to doubt about herself, her own reason and strength (not to mention strategic hiding places and rationalizations for her own sin). It places the onus of responsibility right back on the sinner, who is forced to come face to face with the God she distrusted in the first place.
As you pray and prepare for preaching this week, think about your listener’s own quandary with sin. This is the aim of a day of repentance: To come face to face with God and, therefore, face to face with our sin. Left to ourselves, all we can do is sorrow over it. Contrition, etymologically the state of being reduced to rubble, reduced to dust, rubbed away, and worn down, is not good news. There is no promise of, “It will all come out right in the end,” no promise of any mitigation, appeal, commuted sentence, or plea deal, no way out of changing the fact of sin and sinfulness, no way of gluing the broken bits back together or arguing a way out. No nothing, not unless God wills it so. There is no compulsory move by God to do anything about your feelings, your sadness, or your brokenness, much less your hard-heartedness, your intention to ignore, rationalize, excuse, or in some other way deal with the problem of sin. The agitation and inner conflict, the war with God and the war within, sin itself, all these things remain, in defiance of the self-help wisdom of our age, to turn inward in meditation and self-care, to turn outward in generosity and gratitude, to do, do, do the things that make for peace. In Jesus’ day, this was the Jewish piety tripod of alms, prayer, and fasting (which Jesus teaches and cautions His children about in the Matthew 6 gospel reading). In today’s psalm, which narrates and prays David’s confessional quandary, the “do, do, do,” was ready at hand. Sacrifices and offerings surely could bribe God to look the other way? But profoundly and prophetically, he proclaims to himself and all his progeny that God, “Will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17). No self-starting spirit, no get-up-and-go gumption, no works can generate lasting peace while the jagged edges of brokenness continue to poke, prod, claw, and cut their way through the fabric of our lives with reminders of sin and the fear of its consequences. And God does not have to do anything about it.
That is why it is a miracle that the Lord actually does. My encouragement in preaching the epistle text for this Ash Wednesday is to feel the awe and embody the urgency the Apostle Paul felt as he proclaims the atoning work of Christ and appeals to his Corinthian hearers:
“We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with Him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2).
Focusing on just these four verses is sufficient to get at two things above all: One, the theme of reconciliation is peace with God and peace in self; Two, there is a profound credit given to God’s work in doing the reconciliation, and, therefore, absence of any work on the part of your hearers.
Theme One: Reconciliation Is Peace with God and Self.
This is peace, this is shalom. Peace, I leave with you, my peace I give you, says the Lord, not as the world gives give I to you (John 14:27). The peace the Lord gives is not just common small talk, a banal hello, farewell, aloha, or hihowaya. It actually carries with it the whole work of peace-making that is finished at the cross (John 19:30) and confirmed at the resurrection (John 20:19-21). This work of Christ reconciles God to man (2 Corinthians 5:21). It begins with God in Christ, it is finished with God in Christ, and the fruit of that work is delivered as a gift, to be received as grace (2 Corinthians 6:1), God’s favorable attitude towards sinners in light of Christ’s person and work. The Wesley carol reminds us how this work is first revealed in Christ at His incarnation: Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled (refer to Luke 2:14; on earth peace). Help your hearer see from scripture that peace with God because of sin forgiven is also a peace which is personal, the kind of inner peace so many strive for but fail to attain. This is because it must be given, not worked for. Luke 7:50: “Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’” Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Reconciliation means not only that God has accepted sinners back to Himself because of the work of Jesus, but also that a sinner like me can live with himself knowing my sin is forgiven. This is what it is to trust the savior. This is the definition of faith. Reconciliation is, “The peace of God that transcends all understanding,” which, “will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).
Theme Two: Reconciliation Is Peace You Do Not Work for Yourself.
It is God’s work on your behalf. “Come let us reason together,” says the Lord; “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isaiah 1:18). God reaches out to the sinner even before the sinner repents (this resonates with the Old Testament Ash Wednesday pericope: “Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God” (Joel 2:13-14)? God is the one who turns in love towards His fallen creation. If it were not for God doing the reconciling, no reconciling would ever happen! Here is no compromise position, in which two offended parties are compelled to swap favors and bury hatchets so we can coexist in political civility. This is not a quid pro quo transaction. God has all the offense. God has all the credit for putting it away. God embodies it Himself, in His own body. He becomes sin so that, in Him, you might become righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). God did it in history in Christ’s incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection. God continues to do it historically even to this very day, the today of this Ash Wednesday sermon. It is still God making His appeal, and promising: In a favorable time, I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you (2 Corinthians 6:2). Now is that time! Today is the day!
The sermon which will land in a way that heals your hearer, delivers salvation, is the one that turns the volume up on what God Himself does in Christ for your hearer. To accomplish this, you may find it helpful to turn the volume down on other tried and true Ash Wednesday emphases, like encouragements to fasting, prayer, alms, and other good works. These are certainly fine things (fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training!), but I encourage you to reserve your pulpit time most for giving your hearer something to believe, a promise to trust. In this epistle text, it is God for them, in Christ, God and sinner reconciled this Ash Wednesday.
God bless you as prepare for this week, and the entire season of Lent!
