Ash Wednesday 2012 (Updated)

I just returned from the orientation session for new board members of Recovery Starts Today.  RST is a volunteer board whose mission is to support the operations of the McLean County Drug Court.  Drug Court itself is an innovative program that seeks treatment and recovery for the non-violent drug offender, rather than jail time.  As I was sitting in the meeting and listening to the judge, administrators, and other board members, I realized that this program has much in common with Ash Wednesday.  The first step to recovery is to recognize, and admit, the truth about yourself and your problems.  So it is with the commemoration of Ash Wednesday.

Today, when we gather, we will admit the truth about ourselves.  We will admit that we are transitory people and at the end of our brief existence we are bound to simply return to what we were before, dust and ash whose subatomic particles will disperse to the atmosphere leaving nothing of "us" behind. We will admit, if honest, that in and of ourselves we are nothing, that we are miserable offenders.  We will confess that compared with God's holiness, anything done in our own strength is empty and worthless.  It is not a pretty picture, but it is the biblical picture.

That is, it would be, without Christ. Yes, today we come together to admit the truth about ourselves, and yet to find hope in the truth of Jesus Christ.  Today, we celebrate that because of Jesus Christ, and because of his work, the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and through our baptism into that death and resurrection, we are adopted as children of God and given the hope of eternal life.  Today, we hear that the old self, the hopeless self, has been put to death. And though this body may decay, and we go the way of all flesh, we will be raised again, and partake of the holiness of God for eternity.  Not through our own merit, but through the grace of God through Christ.

In admitting the truth about ourselves, apart from Christ, we will find the welcoming arms of Jesus thrown about us, and he will exchange our filthy self-righteousness for his own glory. 

So today, remember that you are dust, mean your confession, make your communion, and find or re-find, the freeing, forgiving, forever love of God in Christ.