Repent! [Ash Wednesday]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE
        - Jonah 3:1-10
        - 2 Peter 1:2-11
        - St. Matthew 6:16-21

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

 

Who speaks to us today, saying,

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”

I call for this day to be a day of repentance. For God calls all to repentance. We need it as a lost and condemned creature, as an holder of a holy vocation, and as a citizen. In fact, our entire country should be called upon to repent, for there is wickedness everywhere.

What sins does the great US of A have to repent of, you ask? There are the red sins of stealing the election and race shaming white people. There are the blue sins of greed and poor stewardship. There are the bipartisan sins of non-compliance and overspending. But those are just red herrings.

The real sins of our country, on top of those already mentioned, is its continuous wars, its thievery and plunder of the people, and its enslavement of those in poverty to its debt-based system. Among other things such as fostered division, lies, corruption, and breaking of its own laws. Is this really a government given by God and worthy of obedience?

You would not think, that at the peak of prosperity, the depth of sins would be so deep. But what a dark time to be alive. Repent or God may not relent of the disaster that is about to befall us. Do not think you are exempt from God’s Word just because you won the lottery and are alive in the greatest country in history.

This Word from Joel is for you: “’Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning’”. There is no time to lose. Now is the time, for today salvation is nearer to us than it eve has been. Our Lord returns, will you be ready?

Make no mistake. We do not live in God’s country. We dwell in Babylon. The Book of Revelation gives us nice, concrete announcements that this is so. 14:8 says, “Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”

In chapter 18, Babylon falls by God’s hand and yet everyone on earth weeps for her and even, how Ash Wednesday of them, “…threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out,

‘Alas, alas, for the great city!’” (v. 19). And in v. 4, Jesus must call out His elect from among Babylon’s ranks, saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.”

Babylon is our home, ashes are our lot, and repentance should be the way of life, as Dr. Luther taught in his 95 Theses. Not only that, but it is our Lord’s words to us in His first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5, in which He begins by preaching “Repent, for the Kingdom of the heavens is at hand, from the chapter before (4:17).

This is not penance, as the monks and Romans teach it, for penance is simply an outward work. Yet we should be as specific as Dr. Luther. He says it doesn’t mean inward or outward only, but both, for there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work diverse mortifications of the flesh. (LW 31:25)

So it is that the prophet Joel already told us today to repent, but to rend our hearts and not our garments. How do you rend a heart? Well, you could follow Jesus’s example and have a Roman spear shoved into your side for the sins of the world. Or, you could let the Church of the Holy Spirit guide you.

The hard part about repenting is agonizing over sins as the monks and super-spiritual do. It is easy work to be alone, when no one is watching, and weep on our beds over the horrible sins we both commit and acquiesce to and then to tell everyone about how repentant we are. 

What is hard is admitting those same, agonizing sins to someone other than a spirit. In the days of Jonah, everyone was so repentant that they were having a whale of a time. Partying, marrying and giving in marriage, and enjoying how great their blessed nation was. 

Little to their delight, someone stepping in front of them and said, “Repent”. Of course, they thought they were repenting. They thought they were doing everything right. God was blessing their nation, was He not?

Of course He was. God blesses everyone in this Age of Grace through the Body and Blood of Jesus. However, God’s blessing is on more than seedtime and harvest. God’s blessing also reveals how much we need a Savior, I would say even moreso, because of the words of Jesus to repent.

Job repents in dust and ashes, after the Lord chastises him in chapter 42. Nineveh repents at Jonah’s words, in sackcloth and ashes, Jonah 3:5-9. Daniel gave his “attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes” (9:3). And our practice of not sitting in dust, but putting it on our heads comes from Lamentations 2:10, “The elders of the daughter of Zion Sit on the ground, they are silent. They have thrown dust on their heads; They have girded themselves with sackcloth.”

Just as we are body and soul in one person, so does our inward reflect on the outward and the outward influences the inward. What we practice on the outside is what our soul looks like on  the inside. Likewise, what look like on the inside reveals itself on the outside. 

So we repent. Not just anywhere, but in Church. For it is God’s Church that gives us an easy, straight-forward, biblical, godly way of Confession. Not Ash Wednesday every day, but Confession and Absolution any and every time we need it. 

In this way, God allows us a place to approach Him on bended knee, not just on the inside, but on the outside as well. How daunting is it coming into church, indeed, coming in for the first time? That is the presence of God, ready to either retain your sins or forgive them. Which will He do?

that answer lies on the cross. Fro everyone who has been bitten by the Serpent, if he looks to His God on the cross, he will live (Num 21:8-9). Everyone who feels the blessing of God, convicting him of his sins, may sit and contemplate the dust and ashes upon His savior and receive forgiveness in body and blood.

for that is the true meaning of ashes upon the forehead and the rending of hearts. that God and man, in Christ, sat in the ashes of our humanity, was covered by the dust of the tomb of our sins, and repented towards the Father on our behalf. 

While Jesus was smothered by the ashes, we bear a tiny cross on our heads to remind us that from dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. But the dust is no longer an eternal dust, but a peaceful sleep. For we sleep in the dust of our Lord, baptized into His death, and we will be raised without ashes, baptized into His resurrection.

In these last days, we grieve over our sin and the sins around us. knowing that both continue to threaten to drag us into hell and destroy the peaceful times we enjoy. However, it is the blessing to recognize sins and faith to believe in forgiveness, that lets us walk around with our heavy cross, following Jesus. 

Because Jesus doesn’t stop at sin or death. He doesn’t stop at the confessional booth nor the penance we think we need to do in payment. Jesus continues on to His suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus continues on to the Eternal Eighth Day of Easter, that never ends.

This is part of the reason we begin counting down towards Easter, even before we get to Lent, because we want to make it to Easter that much quicker. Our sins destroy us and weigh us down. We are tired and we beg for rest from the Crucified and Risen Lord Who promises both in eternity and even today in Word and Sacrament.