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“Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin … Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me … The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
–– Psalm 51:2, 10, 17
Tomorrow evening, as dusk devours lines of latitude in its perpetual westward journey, Christians will step into queues –– casting off concerns of personal space; waiting their turn to sense the goopish slime of oiled ash; feeling the awkward finger to forehead touch of the celebrant; and simultaneously hearing her tell them they are dying. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Is it a mockery of Christmas Eve’s Joy To the World, an immunization against Easter’s Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, or is it something else, something elemental that crafts a vessel capable of receiving the life-redeeming, good news that gave birth to these hymns?
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a season of solemnity and self-reflection meant to heighten our awareness of our mortality and our dependence on God’s mercy. Granted, it is not exactly an advertiser’s dream. “For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me” doesn’t lend itself to a snappy church banner. Yet, Easter praises come across as superficial when we do not comprehend the reasons behind the celebrations.
Along with the imposition of ashes, it is typical for the service to include a reading of, or at least an allusion to Psalm 51, a psalm I knew as an occasional liturgical prayer before I realized its scriptural home. Three hymnals and forty years ago, we also sang from a red book, that for some, still sparks feelings of regret over things lost to time and change. Along with The Apostles’ Creed and The Lord’s Prayer, the first pages also contained a prayer of confession for use in worship, included, no doubt, to save weekly wear and tear on the office Gestetner.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me…
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me –– From the time I could read until the hymnals turned to blue, I recited that prayer in worship. Not having Ash Wednesday services as a child, it wasn’t until I entered seminary that I came to experience the prayer as a Psalm with a rich role in the liturgical life of the church, and it wasn’t until later that I spotted what seems, at first glance, to be a contradiction in the Psalm. A few verses after the psalmist prays for the introduction of a Tide pod to the human heart, the psalmist declares –– The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. So, what’s the goal here, a clean heart or a broken heart, a right spirit or a broken spirit? However, what appears to be a contradiction is actually a process, and though it may seem that the elements of the process are listed in reverse order –– clean heart––>broken heart –– it actually mimics the work of grace where mercy precedes transformation and justification initiates transformation. In the New Testament, we marvel at the father running to welcome the prodigal home. What is left untold is how the mercy of the father changes the son, who had come home broken but was received as if he was whole. The father had forgiven the son before the son could even confess his brokenness. Yet the son was still fully aware of his brokenness, and his heart and spirit were finally in a place to welcome the transformational movement of God’s Spirit. Forgiven, though still broken, is where healing, cleaning, and renewing are born.
The late songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” Perhaps the next time someone tells me I’ve cracked up, I’ll just say, “Thanks be to God.”
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