Remembering

Two weeks from today is Ash Wednesday, perhaps the most direct reminder in the Christian calendar of our need for a dose of reality when it comes to our relationship with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I realize that “Ash Wednesday isn’t in the Bible.” But neither are church buildings, church by-laws, church boards, paid staffs as we know them, Christian colleges like the one I’ve spent my entire life in ministry involved in, and a host of other approaches to following Jesus that we routinely do. If the argument is that it isn’t in the Bible, then we have a ton of house cleaning to do before Jesus returns!

I honestly don’t mind if you prefer to ignore Ash Wednesday. I hope you don’t mind that I plan to attend (and help lead) an Ash Wednesday service two weeks from today. What does bother me is that we would dare think we don’t need a stopping point in life occasionally that says, “Repent – get right with God!”

I grew up in a part of the United States where you could often see signs nailed to a tree alongside of the road that said, “Prepare to Meet Thy God – Amos 4:12.” They were typically homemade signs, with red letters on a white background. Is that not a Southern-evangelism way of doing Ash Wednesday?

In January of every year, my personal Bible reading has me reading through Psalms and Proverbs. Every time I read through the Psalms, I finish convinced we don’t read them enough in our public worship as evangelicals, who claim we believe the Bible is the trustworthy Word of God! 

About ten days ago, while reading Psalm 106, these words caught my attention in ways that made me stop and think for a moment. “Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.”  (Psalm 106:6) How is that verse not in the normal liturgy for Ash Wednesday?

That verse is followed by a litany of God’s mighty acts, from the rescue out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, drowning of their enemies, etc., that ends with “they believed his words; they sang his praise.” (106:12) So far, so good.

But the very next verse declares not only their story, but far too often, our story. “But they soon forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel.”  (106:13) In verses 21, 22, the psalmist says, “They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wonderous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.” 

Most of the content of Psalm 106 seems to be a confession of Israel’s sin committed in the midst of the mighty acts of God – not just on the wilderness journey, but even when they had reached the promised land at last. (Psalm 106:34ff) N.T. Wright notes, “Whereas Psalm 106 celebrates God’s choice of Abraham and his family, and his deliverance of them from slavery in Egypt, Psalm 106 immediately goes on to tell the dark side of the same story.” (The Case for the Psalms, page 54)

We easily realize the kind of God we love and serve when, in 106:45, the psalmist declares, “For their sake he remembered his covenant and showed compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.” What we fail to do – remember the mighty Works of God – God does for us because of his steadfast love. 

Ash Wednesday is not a destination; it is the beginning of a journey to Easter. It was during that final week that Jesus instituted what we often call The Lord’s Supper – Eucharist – where we remember what God has done for us. “Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19)

I think what stopped me in my tracks while reading Psalm 106 is this question: “Is it possible that in my own ‘remembering Jesus’ in the Lord’s Supper, I can walk out the door and ‘forget his mighty works’ until I’m back in church next Sunday?” 

The mightiest, of God’s mighty works is the very thing that the Lord’s Supper points us to. I can’t compare the crossing of a little bit of water with the promise that in Christ I shall live eternally – from everlasting to everlasting, as Psalm 90 would describe it. How could it not be a good thing that we use Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent to help us remember the mighty works of God?

Sometimes it seems like, in our Reformation heritage, to make sure we are not like the Roman Catholics who had Luther and his colleagues so disturbed, we are guilty of “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” 

I promise I have no desire to become a part of any denomination. But I’m not so blind as to think I can’t learn from and benefit from healthy spiritual practices of other groups. Read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Holy Envy if you want to be challenged to think about this for a while!

I actually think those old roadside signs I grew up seeing all over the place probably didn’t do a lot to change the world. But . . . I think my focused thought for the season of Lent this year may very well be, “Prepare to Meet Thy God.” I’d be happy for you to join me on that journey. 

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