Ash Wednesday 5th March 2025

 Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12   - Psalm 51:1-17  - 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 - Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

 

Ash Wednesday, we begin the season of Lent and we prepare for the journey to the cross, and to resurrection, and the receiving of the Holy Spirit.  The end goal is to restore us as the people of God as God intended before the fall, where His people are not just physically alive, but also spiritually alive.  Being then, so filled with the Holy Spirit, we can’t help but be witnesses to the Good News of God. 

 

The Good News of God is that Jesus Christ came to make atonement for our sin and bring us eternal life.  In doing this he did away with the old system, where animals were sacrificed as a way to cover our sin.  However, the fact that God required a different kind of sacrifice was known about since the time of King David in the Old Testament.  We are told in our psalm; “The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

 

This tells us that there is something in our attitude that is more important to God than the traditional sacrifices.  In other parts of the Bible, such as Isaiah we learn what God would like us to do.  Isaiah 58:6 tells us, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

 

A broken spirit is not seen as being a desirable characteristic in our modern age, yet we are told in the New Testament, “blessed are the poor in spirit”.  The word for contrite in the original language, means to be crushed. In my mind I imagine the sugar cane.  For us to have sugar the cane needs to be crushed.  

 

I don’t naturally like the idea that perhaps I need to be crushed and broken.  However, in reality, life has a way of crushing and breaking all of us.  What do we do when this happens?  Some people refuse to break, and they harden their hearts towards God.  They don’t understand that God loves them and desires good for them, not evil, but they feel betrayed by life and blame God, so they harden and refuse to be crushed or broken – or at least they refuse to admit it.

 

Do you remember the story about the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, breaking the jar of expensive perfume?  The jar had to be broken for the perfume to be used.  There was exquisite substance inside, which would never have done anything if the jar hadn’t been broken.  The breaking allowed the good stuff to come out – just like the crushing of the cane brings the sugar out.

 

You and I are like the jars of expensive perfume.  God has a planned purpose for us, but we need to let Jesus in, in order that his purpose can be achieved.  To let Jesus in, we need to confess our brokenness.   We ARE broken.  That is the reality.  We all fall short of the perfection of God, and we need him.  In admitting this, we let God into our lives and our brokenness is not a weakness, it is simply a reality that Jesus understands, and in this brokenness we allow God to work and only in that brokenness can he live through us.

 

God knows all those bits that hurt… those bits that are broken, but he asks us to bring them to him, confessing our need for his saving power.  We continue to be broken, but we are filled with God and as we live our lives, we pray that it is the Jesus leaking out of the cracks that others might encounter as we touch their lives. 

 

During lent we often give up things, but when we look at what God requires, we can see that he would prefer our brokenness, allowing Him to live through us.  He calls us to care for others, to break the yoke that is heavy on them and to share bread with them.  When we do this, God breaks through our brokenness and touches our broken world, transforming it.

 

This Lent perhaps we can choose at least one thing we can do that achieves this breaking someone’s yoke or sharing bread with the hungry.  The power to do this is in God living through us.. and in our brokenness, those around us can experience the love of God.  This is what it is all about.  God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that anyone who believes in him might have eternal life.  Let us happily confess our brokenness and allow God to work in us as we reach out in love to those around us – transforming the world around us.