Call to Worship                                                                                                    Joel 2:12-13

“Yet even now,” says the Holy One, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” 

 

Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and who relents from punishing.

 

Hymn                                                                                                                     Congregation

 

 

 

 

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent. Create and make in us, we pray, new and contrite hearts, that lamenting our sin, our separation, and acknowl-edging our wretchedness, we may receive from you, the God of all mercy, perfect forgiveness and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

 

Leader: Friends in Christ, we begin today a forty-day journey toward Easter.

 

People: We enter the Lenten season to prepare ourselves to welcome the risen Christ with lives renewed by the breath of his Living Spirit.

 

Leader: We assume a discipline of self-examination, confession, and penitence.

 

People: We dedicate ourselves to meditate upon the Scriptures and to converse with God in prayer.

 

Leader: We seek to be more faithful disciples of Christ whose lives are shaped by the One whom we confess to be Lord and Savior of the world.

 

People: To this end, let us worship God!

 

 

Leader: Shout it aloud; do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins.

 

People: For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.

 

Leader: “Why have we fasted,” they say, “and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?” Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.

 

People: Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

 

Leader: Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a person to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

 

People: Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cord of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

 

Leader: Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter, when you see the naked to clothe them and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

 

People: Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

 

Leader: Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help and God will say, “Here am I.” If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

 

People:   …And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leader: Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.

 

People: When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself… No, when you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.

 

Leader: And when you come before God, don’t turn it into a production either…

 

People: Here is what I want you to do: find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense God’s grace.

 

Leader: And when you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don’t make a production out of it…

 

People: Act normal outwardly. Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn’t require attention-getting devises. God won’t overlook what you are doing. God will reward you well.

 

Leader: Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten, corroded, or worse, stolen.

 

People: Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it is safe. It is obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

 

 

In our meditations on these Wednesdays of Lent… (At noon today on Ash Wednesday and then at 5:15 p.m. for the rest of the Lenten season. We also have several services during Holy Week that will help us prepare for the celebration of the resurrection.) During these times together on Wednesdays, we are going to be focused on prayer. We are going to be using Henri Nouwen’s wonderful book With Open Hands. That is going to be our guide.

 

If you don’t know Henri, let me just say that Henri is one of the great spiritual giants of all time. We have a great deal to learn from Henri. With our time today, let us begin.

 

Let me begin by saying what most of you know. Praying is no easy matter. It is not easy, because prayer demands a relationship. It is a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your being.  It is to see deep inside of you what you would rather, quite frankly, leave in the darkness. To touch what you would rather leave untouched.

 

Why? Why would anyone really want to do that? Why would you want to allow anyone, even God, into that place where your innermost, intimate life is shaped?

 

The fact is, most of us don’t. Oh, we’re pretty good at offering blessings. We’re pretty good at offering thanksgiving prayers for the things we have received. We’re pretty good at lifting up others and asking for a special touch from God for their healing. We’re pretty good at offering prayers for the needs of the Church, and, indeed, even the wider world. But to open ourselves, deep down inside, that’s when it gets dangerous. That’s scary, and for many, quite frankly, it’s out of the question.

 

You see… The resistance to that kind of praying is huge. It’s like the resistance, Henri says, to a tight-clinched fist. That is the image I want you to focus on today: a tight-clinched fist. Your desire and my desire to cling tightly to those things that make us afraid.

 

What are we afraid of? Maybe a quick story will help.

 

The story is told of an elderly woman who is brought into the psych unit of a hospital. For a variety of reasons, she is wild, frantic, swinging at everything and everyone. Indeed, she is creating such a disturbance in that place that the doctors decide they have to take everything, literally, away from her. But there is one small coin that is gripped in her fingers. It is a coin she refuses to give up. In fact, it took two adult people to pry open her hands, her clinched fist. It was as if she lost that coin, somehow she would lose everything. If she were deprived of this very-last possession, she would have nothing. She would be nothing. That was her fear.

 

Now, here is the point. When you are invited to pray, you and I are asked to open your tightly-clinched fist inside and to give up your very-last coin. So, who wants to go first?

 

No. No. That’s not what I want to tell you. Who would want to do that? 

 

What you find, Henri says, is often your first prayer – if it’s a real prayer – is often a painful prayer. It’s painful because you have discovered you really don’t want to open, to let go. You would rather hold on to what’s familiar, even if you are not particularly proud of it. You find yourself saying things like, “You know; that’s just the way it is with me. There’s a part of me that wishes it were different, but it can’t be that way now. It’s just the way it is. That’s the way I want it left.”

 

Of course, once you say that to yourself, you have given up believing your life might be something other. You have wrapped yourself in, what Henri calls, “the destiny of facts.” (That’s a great phrase.) You feel it is safer to cling to a sorry past rather than to trust the possibility of a new future. So, you fill your hands with small, little coins. Little clammy coins. 

 

Coins like the coin of bitterness. Some of us are bitter. Some of us are bitter because someone or some group, somewhere, really screwed us over. They treated us unjustly. Just the thought of them or that person is painful. It’s pungent. It’s sharp.

 

Or perhaps one of the little coins we hold on to is the coin of jealousy – that feeling of envy that creeps in when we are inordinately a person who wants something that really belongs to someone else. We have absolutely no claim or right to that something, but we sure wish we could.

 

Or perhaps it’s the coin of revenge – that desire you have tried to stuff down deep into the darkness of your soul, but it’s there. It won’t go away. You would like very much to inflict harm, to hurt someone who has injured you or somebody you love, or people who have suffered at the hands of others. You would like to make it even.

 

Or possibly the coin of disappointment. That is the intense feeling of sadness, because your hope, your dreams, your expectations are just not going to happen. It is like some dear friends of mine put it not too long ago: “We never imagined our lives would turn out this way.”

 

Coins: there are lots of them. I’ve only named three or four. All of us have them. Most of you, like me, just sort of live through it. We live along with it. It really doesn’t bother us until you really want to pray. When you really want to pray, that is when all this stuff comes back. It all returns. 

 

Those coins – those feelings – aren’t just there. You clutch them. You hang on to them. You cling to them as if they were, somehow, treasures. We sit wallowing, sometimes, in all that sourness. It’s as if to give those things up, we would somehow lose our very selves.

 

So, there you are. Trying to pray with a balled-up fist inside. You are very closed to the One who really wants to heal you. So, says Henri, “When you want to pray, the first question is how do I open this closed first?”

 

Perhaps you can find a way to prayer by hearing the words of the angels that spoke to the women. Do you remember the women who went to the tomb of Jesus? Do you remember their encounter with the angels when they first got there? What were the first words out of the angel’s mouth? “Fear not. Don’t be afraid.”

 

Don’t be afraid of the One who wants to enter into this most intimate place where you are shaped. Don’t be afraid to show the Holy One those little clammy coins that all of us have. Don’t be afraid to offer up the sadness, the anger, the hatred, the bitterness, the deceptions, the disappointments – whatever is lurking and hiding down there where it is pretty dark. Don’t be afraid to open that up to the One who is love, and only love. Even if you don’t have a whole lot to show that is down there, don’t be afraid to let it be seen. 

 

The spiritual guides tell us that every single time we dare to let go and to surrender just one of those clammy little coins, your hand opens just a little bit more. Eventually, they say, the palm somehow becomes spread out. Of course, what is one of the most powerful gestures in the community of faith? It is the sign of receiving.

 

Now, they also say, you have to be patient. You have to be very, very patient until your hands can, literally, be completely open. Furthermore, here is the catch. The truth is, it is a pretty-long spiritual journey to get to the place of really, really trusting. That’s because behind every one of those closed fists, you find there is another one hidden right behind it. Sometimes the process seems endless, because so much has happened in your life that has made for those fists. 

 

Now, perhaps, someone along the way has suggested to you that what you have to do is to forgive yourself. I’m here to tell you today that is impossible. What is possible is for you and I to be able to open our hands without fear, so that the One who really loves us can just blow away those things the Church calls “sins.” Those coins you thought were so deep right inside that they were going to be there forever, prove to be just a little more than dust. When they are opened and seen for what they really are, there seems to be a soft breeze that just blows them away. 

 

Miracle of miracles, you actually start to feel freer than you have ever felt. Prayer becomes a joy. You see? Then, they say, prayer becomes rather effortless, inspired, lively, peaceful. Then you gradually realize that to pray is to live. 

 

It takes some time. You have to be patient. That’s the kind of prayer we’re going to be talking about for the next few weeks. Deep, serious, intimate prayer, inviting the Spirit of the Living God into the depths of our soul. So pray with me, for just a moment, as we bring this part of our service to its close.

 

Lord, the truth is, I am pretty afraid to open my clinched fists inside. I mean… Who am I going to be if I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be if I stand before you with nothing but empty hands? Lord, in this time of reflection and quiet, I simply want to say I need your help. Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but I am really what you want to give me, and what you want to give me more than anything else is love – unconditional, everlasting love.

 

And all the people say… “Amen.”

 

 

 

Jacob Thorne: At this time we invite all who are present to come forward and receive the sign of the ashes. The ashes, taken from the palm branches of last year’s Palm Sunday Service, are a sign to ourselves and to the world that we sin, that we are mortal, and that we are absolutely dependent upon God’s graciousness and forgiveness as seen through and demonstrated in the death of Christ on the cross. I invite you to come forward and receive the sign of the ashes in the form of a cross either on your forehead or on your hand.

 

Merciful God, the ashes are our pledge to take up the cross of life. We came from the earth, and we will go back to it. In the meantime, continuing on as we have for years, or beginning for the first time these forty days, we will try to live here and make it a better home for everybody. Through Christ our Lord. Amen!

 

 

 

 

 

My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

 

 

Holy God, through the discipline of these forty days, make your Spirit’s cleansing fire burn within us. Lift us from the dying embers of our inattention. Mark us with the sign of your holy passion. Make us ready to respond to the call of Jesus Christ! Amen!