Thursday, February 23, 2023

Rend Our Hearts -- Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2. 12-17

February 22, 2023

 

            Am I a thing that dies?

            When I was a new seminary student, one of my professors told us a story about his oldest son, who at that time was a little boy. The story went that my professor, his wife, and their two little boys were visiting friends and enjoying a meal together.  After dinner, while the grownups sat and visited, the children went outside and played in the long summer twilight.

            On the way home, it was clear that the older son – who was really very little – had been frightened by the older children. Whether they had teased him or talked about things that scared him, his parents weren’t sure, but on the ride home, in the darkness of the car, he broke the silence by asking,

            “Am I a thing that dies.”

            My professor shared that his wife did not deflect the question or lie to her son. She answered honestly; yes, you are a thing that dies. But then she began to list all the things that he would do before that happened in the distant future. He would start school, learn to read, make new friends, etc. And soon the little boy was adding his own ideas to that list, things he hoped to do in all the life that he had yet to live. And by the time they pulled up to their house, their son was laughing with his little brother and asking if he could play in the bathtub for a while and making the plans that little boys make.

            Am I a thing that dies?

            Ash Wednesday is the day in our church year when we proclaim through word and through deed that we are things that die. Yes, this is also the day when we acknowledge that we are sinners, that we need both confession and absolution, and this service helps us to walk with humility through this season of Lent. But the crux of this day and this service is that from ash we came, and to ash we will one day go.

            And for that reason, some people have a hard time with this particular ecclesial tradition. I understand that. Death is not easy. With death comes grief, in all the ways that it manifests itself. Death can break our hearts. Death can break our hearts wide open.

            It would seem from reading these words from the prophet Joel that God wants us to have hearts that are broken.

            “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, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.”

            Rend your hearts, not your clothing. I looked up the word rend in my Merriam-Webster dictionary app. It is an emotionally charged word, much more than I realized. When the people are called to rend their hearts, that conveys a passionate action. It is not just about opening our hearts in the way that a flower blooms; it is about tearing them open. It implies a forceful, physical act.

To think about rending our hearts in this way puts these words in a different light – at least for me. Why would God want us to do something that carries this kind of connotation? Why would God want that? Does God want us to suffer? Does God want us to be miserable and grieving? Does God want our hearts to break? I don’t think so. I don’t believe so.

            I think God wants us to rend our hearts not for the sake of suffering but so they will be wide open. And like it or not, what most often breaks our hearts wide open is grief. But it is when our hearts are broken open, when we are open-hearted, that we are finally able to make room and to make way for God to rush in. When our hearts are open, we are open – to God and an abiding relationship with God – and to an abiding relationship with one another.

            But the trouble with being open-hearted is that when we are open-hearted, we are vulnerable. Being vulnerable is uncomfortable and scary and often overwhelming. So we devise ways, without even realizing it, to avoid that vulnerability. We say the right things, and we offer the right rituals, but if our hearts remain closed, we’ve missed the point. So, I don’t think that God wants us to suffer as much as God wants us to be open-hearted, to risk being vulnerable to the heartache and the heartbreak that the world and just living brings. God wants us to abide in relationship with God and each other. If rending our clothing makes us open-hearted to God, then fine, but if not, we must rend our hearts instead.

            Four weeks ago my mom died. When I flew to Minnesota after she fell and required surgery, I didn’t really believe that it would be the last time I would see her on this side of  Heaven. But I’m grateful that I was able to be with her in those last days and in her last moments. When she died, we just sat with her for a few minutes. We didn’t move. We didn’t rush out to find a nurse or immediately begin the process of calling and texting family and friends. Instead we just sat there in the quiet, in that stillness. And I was overwhelmed with grief. I’ve read recently that grief is love with nowhere to go, and when my mother died, I felt that keenly.

            But even in my grief, I was also filled with wonder. How overwhelmingly powerful it was that I witnessed the last breath of the woman who witnessed my first?

            My mother’s death was quiet and mostly expected, but we also know that death can come with great trauma, and I would never try to diminish or minimize that truth. We feel that trauma by looking at the heartbreak in the world around us due to natural disasters and war and violence, and we feel this trauma up close in our community with the unexpected death of beloved children.

            But it seems to me that this is why God calls us to rend our hearts, to be open-hearted even when it is grief at the sadness of the world around us that breaks our hearts wide open. To walk in the world with open hearts is to know that death walks with us, but the gift of knowing that is that we can more fully see one another and ourselves as God sees us, and I believe that God sees us as precious. Our lives are precious. Each one of us is precious. And our mistakes, our sins, are failings and faults, our falling away and falling down doesn’t change that. Not even a little.

            And I think that is what is at the heart of this service, this liturgy, and this ancient practice of bearing ashes; it is a reminder that God calls us to be open-hearted, because when we do, we feel the terrible grief of the world, but we also feel the glorious joy that the world holds us as well. To be open-hearted is to see not only what is ugly and brutal but to see what is beautiful, to see what is precious. So, in this season of Lent, I encourage each of us not to give something up but to let something go – to release what keeps our hearts closed, to let go of what prevents us from seeing the beauty and the preciousness of each life.

            Rend your hearts not your clothing. Open them wide and know that it is a gift to say that we are precious children of God who live, die, and live again in the Lord.

            Thanks be to God.

            Amen.