Ash Wednesday 2021

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near — a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.

Yet even now, says the Lord, 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, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain-offering and a drink-offering for the Lord, your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.

Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

Last week before bed, one of my children asked for a story. 

But it better not be a bible story. 
Why not?
Because I don’t like bible stories! They are not very interesting.
Oh, okay. I’ll tell you a different one instead.

I started to tell the story and a few moments into the telling, she interrupted. 

Is this a bible story and you’re just pretending it isn’t a bible story and then at the end, if I liked it, you’ll say, “Ha! I got you. You liked a bible story!”?

It was. I was turning Goliath into a sand dragon and little David into a 7-year-old girl, with the fierce and familiar sass of this very daughter. 

But I ignored her interrogation and continued.

She loved the story and was none the wiser that night. But in the morning she asked and I gave her the truth. I told her all the best stories, the most interesting characters and powerful lessons come from the same handful of ancient tales. 

We tell and retell them because the good stories last. They help us know things about ourselves. They teach us what matters and how to believe. 

She’s still chewing on that and so am I. 

Tonight I’m going to tell you a story. And it’s one of those stories, one we keep telling because it keeps coming true, it keeps finding us in the present moment with a glimpse of where we come from and what is still possible. 

Once upon a time, God’s people thought they had freedom and life all figured out. They declared their values through ritual and war, family and location. They had what they had — until suddenly they didn’t. 

It started as whispers and rumors, headlines in far away lands, a problem that would keep its distance, surely. But soon there were reports of the problem spreading. Patterns and trends. Outbreaks nearby and cities consumed. 

Then everyone knew someone who knew someone who had been affected by the plague. And it crept closer still. They did what they could to prepare, of course, but it was hard for folks to fathom until the noon sun was blanketed by a swarm of night — and they were in it. 

You can call it a plague or a pandemic, but everything they had taken for granted was consumed. The people stayed in their homes, sheltered in place from the locusts that covered both air and land — cutting crops, swarming the scraps, hopping and stripping until there was nothing left — grain or grapes.

Those with a little stored up struggled on, but the poor fell like cattle, starved and parched. Sickness and disparities and sorrow grew, just like they always do when an ecological crisis becomes an economic one. The cities sounded the alarm, but it was too late. They were trapped between death and more death, suffering and more suffering, dust and more dust still.

The priests and leaders looked at one another, just as weary and worried as they people they served. What would they say? What balm could they offer in the midst of so much pain and uncertainty? 

And then a prophet of the Lord spoke. A voice rising to say:

There is a temptation to blame the people, to hold one another in judgment, to spiral in shame and fester in fear, to pray about and at each other instead of for each other.

There is an urgency to fix and solve, to get back to the way things used to be, to paper over what has been revealed — what is still being revealed — because it is so hard to bear. 

But God does not require your excuses, your self-righteous anger or your toxic positivity. God does not need your performative words or your shirt torn in theatrical anguish.

God does not wish God’s own people ill or harm, but God knows that these are the seasons when you are likely to listen, likely to look for a sign from heaven that God has not forgotten, that God is still in the business of love and redemption, making something out of nothing, breathing life into dust — and then calling it very good.

God knows full well that liberation and life lie just beyond your repentance and honest account, your turning around, your letting go, your heartfelt account, your softening to what is true, your remembering of what is right.

The people listened while the prophet said:

I am not here to tell you what to do or to promise what God has planned. This freedom, this faith is not fashioned of answers and certainty.

To be alive is to know suffering. To be in community is to care fiercely. To be a beloved of God is to wonder what’s still possible.

So I am here to pose the question you have been afraid to ask aloud. The question that is older than this story, that hummed in the airwaves even before the first plague, that tears open skies and temple curtains and hearts. 

“Who knows?”

It is on your lips and in your chest already, these words that declare God’s mercy, the mercy that nourished us in the womb of heaven, that loved us even before we were anything, that knows our sin and claims us anyway. 

“Who knows?”

Say it a little louder now, two words that have the power to stop these walls from caving in around us, that stretch and fill the space between loved ones and neighbors.

“Who knows?”

Try setting your hopes inside these words like a boat that is fit to carry what has been too precious to set down, too holy to utter until it is all over, (O God, when will it be over?)

“Who knows?” 

Listen for the echo now, because others are asking too, pondering aloud what could still be possible, if God really is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 

“Who knows?” 

Speak it plain and feel it change you, turn you, empty you, fill you, follow you all the way back to the One who repays seed stolen, who returns land to life, who repairs what is broken and shows us how to do the same.

“Who knows?” 

Maybe we are just dust and to dust we shall return. Maybe this plague has taken more than we had to spare. Maybe we’d prefer a few answers now and then and still feel plenty divided from each other, from the earth, 

from an abundant harvest that tastes like freedom and life…

But we have a sacred story and a brave question. 

So hear Joel’s timeless call, the forever invitation to come back home again. 

Go, gather everyone. The elders, the children, even the babies still nursing. Go get the ones who are lonely, who are frightened. Go get the ones who RSVP with excuses, who are too busy, the ones who are celebrating and suffering — everyone!

Call them in. Bring them together. Not for scorn or argument, but so the question can be asked en masse. It is in all of us. It is for all of us. 

“Who knows?”

Maybe God will be merciful and compassionate. Maybe God’s love can hold us, even in the midst of plague and pain. Maybe God will hear the priests intercede for us, and heaven will be slow to anger, abundant in love. Maybe God’s goodness will stretch and cover the collective sin we share, the hardships endured, the divides we cannot close alone. 

“Who knows?”

The story ends with a question, and with a promise, too. God sees them gathered and hears their cries for help. And the scene is too much for God to bear from far away. 

So God declares blessing, even in the despair of plague. God says, 

“I am never finished creating, so trust that there is more after this. I will repay the land with seed and will help the people flourish, not only from a cosmic distance or hidden away in a temple, but up close and in the flesh. I am making my home with you, so I can gather everyone to myself and pardon every sin and love you into freedom and life that last forever.”

I wonder if that promise ever feels like enough for plague people. Either way, it is the story we continue to tell. It lives because it is true enough and told often, a hook on which to hang our hope, a bit of flesh on which to smudge the ash.

“Who knows?” Maybe it will be enough to hold us.

Maybe it will be enough to gather everyone back to the One who knows what we carry, what divides, what separates. The One who announces blessings beyond the curse, whose story stirs in every generation, whose breath can make everything — even the dust — beautiful.