Jesus Wept...So Should We

This week those of us who use the Revised Common Lectionary heard once the story of the raising of Lazarus, the action in the Gospel of John that led the religious authorities to have Jesus arrested. The passage was 45 verses long (!), so I'm not copying the whole thing here. If you'd like to read it in full, go to The Lectionary Page. 

Included in this story, of course, is the shortest sentence in the whole Bible, "Jesus wept" (John 11: 35).  Of course, the Episcopal Church reads the New Revised Standard Version, which translates it as "Jesus began to weep." The poetry of Scripture is often lost in the NRSV. I personally prefer  “Jesus wept.” 

Jesus Wept by Daniel Bonnell

This is on the short list of most important sentences in all of Holy Scripture. Because it invites us to consider: what does it mean to follow a Savior who weeps? In the Hebrew Bible God walks in the garden, God laughs, God rants and raves, God even changes God’s mind. But God never cries, not even after the Great Flood or when people are held in bondage. The very idea of a mighty, omnipotent, God crying was simply unthinkable. And while the Jesus presented in the Gospel of John is often presented as being totally in control, which is in-keeping with the Gospel’s overall theme that Jesus is not only the Messiah, but God, here in chapter 11, verse 35 we see the rawest, most human version of Jesus in all of the Fourth Gospel. Here at the grave of his friend, Jesus, the Christ, the living embodiment of God, cries.  And not just a single tear down the side of his cheek like a sentimental moment in a Hallmark movie, no, the Greek word embrimasthai literally translates to “he snorted like a donkey,” and already knowing that Jesus was distressed and upset we can confirm that, yes Jesus ugly cried. And if you know, you know. 

This short sentence, one single word in Greek, buried in the longest Gospel reading we do all year – outside of Holy Week – has some major ramifications for us, even now. Especially now. In a culture that tells us – tells men, in particular – that we have to be strong, that we have to keep it together, that we can’t show emotions, can’t show any weakness, can’t shed a tear, this moment of Jesus weeping – ugly crying - over the loss of Lazarus is so powerful. It flies in the face of every convention that we have been taught. Every ounce of pride that we have is made irrelevant in this moment. Jesus has undone what we thought to be true about grief, about death, about life, and about how it’s all connected.

Most of us, I suspect, are familiar with the so-called Five Stages of Grief – to be honest, there are plenty more, but these exist less as an absolute and more as a model, a guide: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness, and Acceptance. And all five are on display in this story:  Denial – Jesus himself says Lazarus sickness doesn’t lead to death; Anger – Jesus is greatly disturbed, and again, the Greek text suggests it’s full-on angry, maybe over Lazarus dying, or maybe the people’s unbelief; Bargaining – Mary and Martha both say that if Jesus had been there their brother wouldn’t have died; Sadness – obviously, Jesus began to weep; and Acceptance – Mary and Martha bear witness to their brother’s resurrection and are therefore able to recognize Jesus in his own resurrection when all hope seems lost. The Five Stages are not meant to be linear, mind you, they are often experienced in a not-so-organized fashion, but because we see them play out right here, because Jesus himself experiences them, we can lean into our own grief in the moments when it takes hold. We can, instead of fighting against it, burying it, or pretending it isn’t real, acknowledge our grief and remember this story, remember that God too has wept, has experienced heartbreaking grief, and in that lies the good news of God in the one called Emmanuel – that God is, in fact, with us, in all of our emotions, all of the actions that make us human. 

The text invites us to befriend our own grief – whatever it may be – but it also reminds us that grief is not all there is. Sometimes our pain can become so great, and all around us are trying to tell us to buck up and get over it and not be so sad, putting us on the defensive and leaning even more into our pain – often accompanied by cries of “You don’t understand what I’ve been through!” While may be true, and our pain deserves to be acknowledged - and no one has the right to tell us when we should “move on” or “be better" -  remaining in the stuckness of our denial, anger, bargaining, and sadness will keep us from getting to the place of acceptance and seeing that there’s life on the other side of the pain.

Fortunately, the good news of Jesus is that those stuck places are often exactly where he shows up. Wilda Gafney, writes in A Women’s Lectionary, that life in Jesus happens here, among the brokenness, failings, and limitations of the physical world. Plato had taught that the physical world was evil, a mere shadow of a greater, more ideal and eternal realm. Christianity picked up on the idea, first among the Gnostics and later among the Puritans, and we still see it today whenever churches preach that everything that is of the physical world is an enemy. Even death. And so we are taught to rage against the world, rage against the dying of the light – thank you, Dylan Thomas – rage against that which is broken, failed, or limited. What can fit that description better than death itself, right? 

Yet it is in this place, amongst the broken, failed, limited enemy of death that Jesus cries, “Come out!” Lazarus has been dead for four whole days, which is significant because it not only hammers home that this isn’t one of those stories, like Jairus’ daughter, where the person may or may not actually be dead, but if it is meant to invoke the old theory that the soul lingers around a body up to two days after physical death, then saying he’s been dead four days means he ain’t coming back. All hope is lost. For Mary, Martha, and the people standing there grieving. Maybe, even, on some level, Jesus feels that hopelessness, but through it he cries to his friend, “Come out!” Death itself hears the cry, and Lazarus returns.  Death is now the enemy that we can learn to love, thanks to Jesus.

Thanks to the model Jesus gives us, of befriending our grief and even embracing the enemy of death, we can hear his voice when he calls to us to “Come out!” Just like Lazarus Jesus cries out to us to come out from the darkness, to come out from the shame, from the place of judgment, from the sin that holds us captive. Would, as Robb McCoy once wrote, the whole Church heed these words. Come out! Come out from our stuckness! Come out from our pain, from our desire to scapegoat and blame, come out from our need for approval, come out from our comfort zones and desperation to hang onto nostalgia, rooted in the fear that death will consume us if we dare change. Come out of the graves we have dug for ourselves and come into the light, the light of life, the light of hope, the light of love, the light of Christ. This is the very light we all received in the form of that candle lit from the Paschal flame when we were baptized. It is the light that is already in ourselves and each other, if we have eyes to see, if we have ears to hear – and listen to – the voice of Jesus. Then, even when all hope seems lost, we can recognize him.

Once and for all, the story of Lazarus helps us remember that Resurrection doesn’t just happen to Jesus, or on the “last day,” but it is a daily reality, one that lays claim on us right here, right now. Jesus wept. We weep. Jesus cries for us to come out. And our grief is redeemed. 

The Risky Business of God

'The LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.'

--Genesis 12: 1-4a

'There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

--John 3: 1-17

Is there a word you would used to describe what being in a relationship with God is like? My word would be  'risky'.  Maybe not what you were expecting, huh?  Perhaps that’s because we tend to think that being in relationship with God means that everything will be easy, that we won’t have problems anymore. But that’s not what we see play out in the stories of Scripture, is it?  Instead, we see stories of men and women who courageously—some might even say, foolishly—follow an unpredictable and at times reckless God into a relationship and on a journey that literally transforms their lives.  That sounds pretty risky to me, especially in the cases of two people we meet in our Scriptures this week—Abram and Nicodemus.

Let’s start with Abram.  This story in Genesis chapter 12 is the first time we meet Abram, whose name means ‘exalted ancestor.’  We find him living in a land called Ur, which is inhabited by the Chaldeans, with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot.  Abram’s father Terrah has just died, and it’s at this point that God speaks to Abram and tells him to take his wife and nephew and set out for the land of Canaan, and from there, God promises, Abram’s name will be great, and from him all the peoples of earth will be blessed.  Without any mention of trepidation on his part, Abram goes, listens to God and sets out for this new home. Eventually God will give him a new name—Abraham—which means ‘ancestor of multitudes’—and he will, to this day, be regarded as the father of the world’s three great religions associated with his God:  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

An Eastern Orthodox icon of Abraham

Contrast the story of Abram, then, with that of Nicodemus in our reading from the Gospel of John.  Nicodemus – whose name means “ruler, or conqueror, of the people” - is a Pharisee, a teacher of the Law, and he has seen and heard of the signs that Jesus has performed—including turning water to wine, feeding thousands, and even his antics turning over tables in the Temple.  Nicodemus is intrigued by Jesus, and under the cover of darkness goes to meet him.  He is stunned by some of the things Jesus says—such as the ever-complicated line “You must be born from above.”  He wants to understand, but there is an apprehension there, something that holds him back.  His position as a Pharisee is a comfortable one, no risk involved at all.  But these things Jesus is talking about?  This oneness with God of which he speaks?  All of this talk about Spirit and inner transformation?  This is complex, scary stuff, and clearly more than a little risky, as Nicodemus will never again speak with Jesus after this nighttime encounter.  

In Nicodemus we see perhaps what Abram may have looked like prior to God calling him; that is, a person whose comprehension of God’s initiative in his life is rather simplistic, meaning he can’t see past his own experiences up to this moment to understand how God could do something new in him.  In the Genesis reading God invites Abram to embark on an adventure of trust, while Jesus invites Nicodemus to be open to the rush of God’s holy and life-giving Spirit in such a manner that his very being will be reborn.  Whereas Abram accepts the risk, Nicodemus does not.  It’s just too fearful.  

Nicodemus and Jesus by Alexander Andreyevich

During the early days of the Protestant Reformation there was a group in Germany called the Nicodemites, who were Christians that sympathized with the reformers, but who were unwilling to publicly identify with them for fear of the ramifications they faced from the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  Such a position of complacency, or clinging to the status quo, rarely leads to growth.  As Walter Brueggemann puts it in his commentary on Abram’s story in Genesis:  “to stay in safety is to remain barren, but to leave in risk is to have hope.”  The catalyst for leaving this state of complacency, for having hope despite the the risk, is faith.  

We’re not talking about mere amazement at miracles or rational conclusions drawn from irrefutable evidence.  There’s no risk involved in that.  No, the kind of faith that drove Abram to leave his home, and the kind of faith that Jesus invites Nicodemus to consider, is an openness to the uncontrollable wind of God, an embracing of the mysterious newness of God.  This does not come from an external force—the word Jesus uses is flesh, that is, the material world.  This is Spirit territory we’re in—or Holy Ghost territory.  We do not control it.  We do not initiate it.  God does.  Our journey of transformation begins with faith, a willingness to be transformed.  Our faith begins with God, who has already placed faith in each of us from the moment we were spoken into existence.  This was the promise made to our great ancestor, and to us, and brothers and sisters we need always to remember that the promise-maker is also the promise-keeper!  When we remember that, remember that God’s faith in us has never wavered and that God’s promise of loving us through our brokenness has always and will always be kept, then we can start moving.  Even a little.  We can start to be more than we ever thought we could.

Abram’s migration that begins in today’s Genesis reading is a model for the movement of any person from despair to hope, from oldness to newness, from death to life.  It’s a model for Lent. Abram’s journey leads to transformation—he literally gets a new name—and so does every other journey that begins in faith.  Even if Abraham doesn’t get to live in the land God promised to him. The same is true for Nicodemus.  No, he will never again speak with Jesus, but his journey leads him to defend Jesus to the other religious authorities in Chapter 7 and when all is said and done, he will be there at the foot of the cross.  The one who came to Jesus under the cover of darkness will be standing in the Palestinian sun on a Friday afternoon, when he will bear witness to Jesus being lifted up on the cross and then prepare his body for burial.  At long last he is able to take a risk for this faith of his.

So much about this season of Lent is risky.  On Ash Wednesday we were invited to recall our sins, our wretchedness, which always runs the risk of us sinking into pits of self-deprecation and despair.  Last week we reconsidered the story of the Fall, of that original sin of Adam and Eve, and how we ourselves have been caught in the same cycle of shame and judgment arising from our temptations for possessions, prestige, and power.  It’s risky to do the kind of hard self-examination that Lent expects of us, and truth be told, it would be easier to stay in the dark, to not budge from our places of comfort.  Do we really want to be exposed by the light, especially the Light of the world?  Surely, the condemnation will be too great.  But condemnation is not the judgment of God but the judgment we bring on ourselves when we forget our belovedness and hide our brokenness from God and one another, like Adam and Eve and their fig leaf clothes.  We remember John 3: 16 all the time, but let’s not forget John 3: 17:  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The journey beyond condemnation and toward true belief in the salvific power of God is the journey of Lent, a journey that begins with the faith God has already placed in us.  It’s a journey not unlike Abram or Nicodemus, yet it is one that is unique to each of us.  It’s not easy—I suspect Jesus uses the term “being born from above” to remind us that a lot of time and energy and pain and even risk go into a birth, so why should faith be any different?  This season let us take the time to ponder the choice that is before us, the same choice that Abram and Nicodemus faced:  do we remain comfortable or do we risk everything for the sake of following such a loving, liberating, and life-giving God?  

Temptation, Sin, and Judgment: An Endless Waltz

'The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.'

--Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7

'As sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned-- sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.'

--Romans 5: 12-19

'Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.'

--Matthew 4: 1-11

Let’s talk about sin.  It seems fitting now that we are in the season of Lent, doesn’t it? You’ve already heard me talk about sin – hamartia – as an archery term that means, “to miss the mark.” Chances are you’ve also heard in one way or another that sin is the result of an event recounted in today’s passage from Genesis, what we often call The Fall.  Well let’s unpack The Fall, shall we?

The Fall

When folks ask me if I believe that Adam and Eve and the Garden were a true story, I always tell them yes. It’s not factual, but something does not have to be factual to be truthful.  This is a story of theodicy, the exploration of why evil exists in a world that God repeatedly declares as good.  What is going on in this story, the point it’s making, is certainly true.  Let’s start with the serpent, a character who has long represented any entity that seeks to undermine God’s creation in some way—the Book of Revelation will go so far as to explicitly say the serpent in the Garden was the dragon John sees in his apocalypse, who is also called Satan and the devil in the Gospels of Jesus.  So we see that the serpent exists within this created order, not outside or against it.  When the woman—Eve—converses with the serpent it appears that God is not anywhere to be found.  But how can that be, since just a few lines earlier we heard about how God walked in the Garden with Eve and Adam?  Obviously, God is omnipresent, but clearly Eve at least perceives that God is absent, and so the serpent’s words are easier for her to hear.  We can relate to this, can’t we?  We all know that God is everywhere we go, yet we have all experienced what we might describe as an absence of God, which produces a very real lack of trust in God’s ultimate goodness, making it easier for us to hear the serpent’s whispering in our own ears.  

This moment of feeling absent from God is what leads to Eve acknowledging the serpent’s words about the fruit of the tree—the text never says it’s an apple, by the way, just fruit—and she gives in to that temptation.  And what is the temptation?  It’s not to disobey God; in fact, disobedience never enters into this story, according to the text itself.  The serpent never lies to Eve, he simply points out three things:  that the fruit is good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise.  All three are truthful points God has already made. So in this perceived absence of God that Eve is experiencing, she struggles by herself with three most basic of human needs:  the need for sufficiency that leads to the desire for possessions—the fruit is good for food—the need for esteem that leads to the desire for prestige—the fruit is a delight to the eye—and the need for autonomy that leads to the desire for power—the fruit is desirable to make one wise.  These, brothers and sisters, are the three base temptations, out of which every single one of our sins arise.  They are the root cause of the Fall and everything that has occurred since.  

In the very next moment, Adam and Eve are Fallen, afraid and shameful because now they know right from wrong.  They sew fig leaves to hide what they have done from God out of fear of God’s judgment.  Before eating of the tree they didn’t know judgment, they had no need of it, but now they do, and because they know the concept of judgment they become like God—making the serpent something of a prophet—insomuch as they begin passing judgment themselves.  Adam blames Eve.  Eve blames the serpent.  Thus begins a vicious cycle of blame and judgment-passing that has had disastrous consequences for us as a species and for our planet as a whole.  This is sin, a constant effort on our part to scapegoat, pass judgment, find fault, and righteously play the part of God in punishing wrong, all stemming from our own fears of being judged, our own shame for the exposure of our frailty, our nakedness.  And in their Fall, they are expelled from the Garden. Every Feast of St. Francis I mention how our animal friends are very much still “in the garden” because they still live into that original relationship between the Creator and created, built on trust and intimacy with God.  That relationship is broken and devolves into distrust and estrangement in Adam and Eve’s case, which ultimately leads to the killing of their son Abel by his brother Cain, who does so out of a sense of feeling like God had treated him unjustly.  The blood of Abel still cries out from the ground every time we repeat this cycle of temptation, sin, and judgement, like some kind of endless waltz.

What then is the answer to this cycle of blame and scapegoating that stems from our own fear and shame.  What, then, is the answer when sin sounds like an inevitability? It’s Jesus, y’all, and we know this because Jesus himself faces these same three temptations:  the desire for possession—turn these stones to bread—the desire for prestige—throw yourself down if you are the Son of God so that the angels will catch you—and the desire for power—all the world can be yours.  Jesus confronts these temptations, like Eve, in a moment when it appears God is not present, out there in the desert.  Notice that, like the story from Genesis, God doesn’t intervene to offer any assuring words.  But like Paul points out in our reading from Romans, which is a kind of commentary on the Fall, Jesus succeeds where the first humans failed.  He overcomes what theologians have called the “original sin” by resisting that same voice and maintaining his intimacy with God.  In doing so he exposes the whole mechanism of scapegoating and judgment-passing as the fraud that it is, an illusion we buy into when we give in to our temptations toward possession, prestige, and power. This is why Jesus is the only one worthy of passing any judgment, because the judgment he will pass—which we affirm in our Nicene Creed—is one based not on blame and punishment but on the love of God that has always been there since the beginning of creation.  It is as if Jesus—mentally and emotionally speaking—has always been in the Garden, in a place where he knows the intimacy of his relationship with God, and he never truly lost it.  And in our own relationship with Jesus, while we may lose it, we can return to that intimacy again and again through confession, fasting, prayer, and worship.

An ancient mosaic of the Temptations of Christ.

It’s never mentioned in the story, but there is another tree in that Garden:  the tree of life.  We never hear of anyone eating from that tree, but the implication is that it was the tree from which all creation ate—including Adam and Eve.  In many Christian pieces of art Jesus is depicted as the tree of life, in part because, it could be said, he never ate of the tree from which Adam and Eve ate.  So we who are the children of Adam and Eve, and who are followers and lovers of Jesus, have a choice, every day:  eat of the tree of our first parents, the fruit of which leads us to wallow in shame, blame others, and pass what we believe to be righteous judgments, or eat of the tree of Jesus, the fruit of which is intimacy with God and all creation.  When we eat on him, as we do at this table, we abide in the one who never knew separation from God and who knew the truth that we so often forget, as Adam and Eve forgot:  that there is no such thing as being absent from God.  

Lent is the time when we intentionally remind ourselves of that fact, as we ponder our own temptations for possession, prestige, and power and remember that Jesus has already faced these same temptations, and it was his intimacy with God and creation that kept him from giving in.  The  event in Genesis has also been called the felix culpa, the Happy Fall, because it ultimately led to Jesus coming and showing us that it is, in fact, possible for humanity to fall and yet still be raised, a scene often depicted in art as the Harrowing of Hell, showing Jesus pulling Adam and Eve out of their graves. As we move toward Easter morning, let us take time this season to ponder our own cycles of temptation, sin, and judgement, and remember that Christ has already succeeded where all others—including ourselves—have failed, and in doing so he has given us power to be resurrected even from our own Falls.  

Jesus, the Tree of Life

Acknowledging Our Wretchedness, Reconsidering Our Fast

Many of you have heard me talk about my great-grandfather, Preston Epps, who was a Greek professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Granddaddy was also a gifted singer. He loved Amazing Grace and had it played at his funeral. But there was one difference. He changed the words from “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me” to “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound to a believer’s ear.” My dad asked why Granddaddy had insisted on that change to the hymn, to which my great-grandmother replied, “Well, he just didn’t really think of himself as a wretch.”

In the Collect that we pray for Ash Wednesday, we ask that, “lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, we may obtain of the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.” It does hit pretty hard, doesn’t it, the notion of our own wretchedness, that we are, in fact, wretches? 

In the spirit of my great-grandfather, no, I do not believe we are wretches, nor do I believe that it is the Church’s job to tell people that they are. But by the same token, it is disingenuous to think that we are not capable of wretchedness, that any of us, myself included, have not sinned, have not missed the mark, and offended against the God who loves and forgives and calls us to do the same. 

It seems at times that we Christians – especially in the mainline denominations– find ourselves caught between a binary: on the one hand you have churches that preach total depravity and the idea that we are all just miserable, horrible people who deserve nothing less than to spend eternity in the dungheap of Gehenna; and on the other hand you have folks who are slow to condemn any action at all for fear of offending someone or re-traumatizing them, preaching a Gospel that God only wishes for us to follow our bliss, regardless of the consequences. Binaries aren’t cool, and as usual, we humans forget that God doesn’t operate within them but instead is always calling us to find the Middle Way between such extremes. 

This is what Ash Wednesday and Lent call us to consider. No, we are not horrible, miserable people and we shouldn’t fast to the point that it makes us physically ill. And also, we are flawed, we are broken, we do hurt one another and ourselves and we do disappoint God and need to own up to that, with one way being to fast in some form or fashion. It is perhaps better to think of the season of Lent as a both/and, not an either/or.

The prophet Isaiah, speaking in chapter 58 for God, calls out people who fast only for the purpose of being noticed by God – something Jesus later condemns in his own day. They follow the letter of their Law, but their heart isn’t in the right place. The fast God wants, the prophet declares, is one from injustice and oppression. The rending God asks for is of your heart, not your clothing. Modern audiences, though, have often heard these words and interpreted them to mean that Isaiah – and by extension God – doesn’t think fasting and rending one’s garments are needed or necessary, so let’s just forget them entirely; after all, it’s a fast of the heart, of the spirit. You can draw a line from this kind of thinking to the end point of there being merely a spiritual resurrection, rather than a real, bodily one.

But our God is one who uses real matter, real stuff like water, wine, wheat, and ash to get the point across because our God took on real human matter to show us how to be fully and authentically human ourselves. This is why some safe form of physical fasting is needed, because God did it in the form of Jesus. Actually speaking aloud to another physical human being – in a safe space in the presence of God, of course – is important to our spiritual health and to our relationship with God and one another. These actions – yes, physical actions, not just spiritual or mental exercises – redirect our motivations, help reconcile us to our neighbors, and most importantly, remind us that our total dependence is on God alone and that, oh yeah, God is God and we are not. They put us in our place, and honestly, that’s not really a bad thing. 

A friend of mine is a Russian Orthodox priest in Kentucky, and his congregation developed a really good self-reflection to help them prepare for the period of confession that begins what they call Great Lent. This document asks the confessee: how have I turned away from God and my neighbor. What are the ways I have been self-centered, the addictions I’ve fallen to, the scapegoating and blaming I’ve participated in, the resentment and rage I’ve felt toward others, the lies I’ve told, the ugly truths I’ve hid from everyone, including God, the facades I’ve hid behind, the ways I’ve tried numbing my emotional and spiritual pain, the blame I’ve placed on others for my own actions, and the ways I’ve beaten myself up and participated in self-hatred. Such a practice is not about self-pity or loathing but conversion. This is the Christian journey; not so much getting into heaven later, but being converted day after day so that heaven can be a present reality. As the medieval Coptic Saint Isaias of Scetis put it, “The voice of God calls to us until the day we die, saying be converted today!” Not to a specific religion or denomination, but to a right relationship with God and our neighbor. That’s a voice that is a sweet sound to a believer’s ear, right there.

The ashes we take up remind us that we will die, every single one of us. And too often humanity tries desperately to ward off that inevitability. In death we are all reconciled to God – that is what Jesus did in his own death and resurrection – but by taking up the ashes and remembering our own deaths, we remember St Isias’ words and the call from God to be converted every day until all that is left of this mortal existence is the dust. 

How will you spend this season acknowledging the ways you’ve missed the mark – dare I say, wretchedness – and your utter dependence upon God? One of the best manners of doing this that I know is the Jesus Prayer, a practice that can be traced back to the desert fathers and mothers of the 5th century. It’s simple but powerful: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I’ve used it often and intend to incorporate it into my daily Lenten prayers and invite you to do the same. You may find, as I have, that when you admit acknowledge your own sinfulness, the burden of  having it all figured out is lifted, and you are able more and more to let God be God, so that you can do what God put you here to do: to love God and love your neighbor. And that, in the end, is what Lent is all about.