A Theme For The New Year

As I searched through my Dad's sermons for material for a New Year-themed post, I stumbled upon an outline from a talk he gave for a secular community group around New Year's Day of 1989. I was startled when I realized the timing of this message. Dad had lost a kidney to cancer just months earlier, but he didn't know that his cancer would re-emerge and take his life in the year ahead. 

Here's the heart of Dad's New Year's talk, which I've re-created for you from his notes ...

Did you make a New Year's resolution this year? I didn't make one. I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions, mostly because of the trouble I inevitably have keeping them. In fact, I recommend that you choose a theme for the New Year instead of a resolution.

I've asked a few friends what their themes for this new year might be. One suggested "Fun and Frolic." Another came up with "Limber and Trimmer." Here's my suggestion: "Nothing Wasted."

Why "Nothing Wasted"? you may ask. One of the most debilitating fears that attacks us is the fear of failure. We can't imagine anything worse. Inherent in that fear is the feeling that when something doesn't go the way we planned, when we lose, when tragedy strikes -- that this is all wasted time and effort. There is no good to come out of it.  Everything has gone "down the tubes."

So many of our choices in life are based upon "not failing" rather than "trying it." We make safe choices which do not challenge, stretch and test our abilities. Sometimes, this fear of failure causes us to get stuck in familiar ruts. We don't do jobs we could do, we don't get to know people we could get to know, we don't go places we could go -- all because we are afraid to fail and we look at failure as a waste. So we stay right where we are. Prisoners of our own fears. Stuck in the status quo.      

There is another way. We can risk failure if we can put our trust in God -- the ultimate safety net.

I believe I can talk about God here. I think it's safe to assume that community-minded people such as yourselves are here because of a responsibility you feel -- dare I say a spiritual responsibility -- to make your community a better place in which to live. And so, I'm going to talk about God.

God is always there to catch us when we fall. Not if we fall. When we fall. Failure is inevitable; it is how we view it that counts. When we realize this, nothing in life is wasted.

I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German-Lutheran pastor and professor who was jailed by the Nazis during World War II. Under similar circumstances, many of us would be done in. What a waste! Right? No! From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer wrote: "Much as I long to be out of here, I don't believe a single day has been wasted. What will come out of my time here, it is too early to say. But something is bound to come out of it."

I was in the hospital for major surgery this past October. What a blow! What a waste! That's how I was tempted to feel. But I also felt God's hand. Odd as this may sound, I can't begin to tell you the good that has come out of it: mental and spiritual health, confirmation of my faith, love and support of family and friends, greater sensitivity as I minister to the sick, an ability to take life one day at a time, to prioritize and attend to the important things first.

I am learning that nothing that happens to you need be considered a waste. "Nothing wasted" -- I recommend it as your theme for 1989.     

Notes from: "A Theme For The New Year"

Presented on or about January 1, 1989

to a community group in Paoli, PA

Grace In The Tall Weeds

Ever feel like you're stuck? Like you're struggling to walk through tall weeds that hinder your progress and obscure the path forward?

Sometimes, those tall weeds mark the very place where we meet God. I'll let my dad explain: 

"You know, of course, that the Peanuts gang loves to play baseball. In one Peanuts cartoon, Linus the outfielder is shown standing in tall weeds beyond center field, looking frustrated. 'I can't find the ball!' he shouts to the other players. 'How do you expect anyone to find a ball in weeds like these? What did you hit it out here for?' Linus goes on: 'It's impossible! Of course I'm looking! This is hopeless! Nobody could find anything out here! You couldn't find a battle ship in these weeds if it ... Wait ... I found it.'

Linus has just experienced what all of us are privileged to experience and are so apt to take for granted and perhaps even miss - an undeserved moment of grace in the tall weeds of life. What are the tall weeds in your life - the things that get you down and make you feel hopeless before you even get started? Do you ever react as Linus did - virtually paralyzed by frustration and defeatism as the tall weeds engulf you? When Linus happened to glance down at his feet and spied that ball, it was a moment of pure grace. He had done nothing to deserve this find, in fact, quite the opposite. His negative attitude would seem to keep him from ever being able to find the ball. He couldn't focus on the ball; all he could see were the tall weeds. 

It is true that negative thinking prevents us from capturing the victory, and yet it is not true that positive thinking alone brings us the victory. My point is not that we will prevail over the tall weeds if we just believe strongly enough that we can. That is a popular modern gospel, but it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Just believing that he would find the ball might help Linus find it and it might not. No matter what he believed, the weeds might just be too dense. Sometimes no matter how much we believe in ourselves and in the rightness of our cause, the challenges and problems are too great for us to manage. But as Christians we are supposed to be hopeful people. If positive thinking and believing in ourselves is not the basis for our hope, then what is?     

Our hope is based upon those moments of grace that break in upon us, unexpectedly, through no effort of our own, courtesy of God himself. They are like finding the ball in the tall weeds. They are those moments of reprieve, no matter how small, no matter how brief, that remind us that this is still God's world, and we are still his children, and he has not taken his eyes off of us. The Gospel of John puts it this way: 'The Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.' It's pretty dark, but there is still a light - God's light.

The way to experience a moment of grace from the Lord is to stop all the frustrated and frantic flailing about in the tall weeds. Just be still; wait and watch for the Lord to act. ... The message of the Gospel is that in all situations of life, no matter how desperate, God sends his salvation - maybe not the salvation we expect or want - but God's salvation, by God's grace and not because of our efforts. How important it is to remember that. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says, 'I can do all things if I just put my mind to it and try hard enough.' No, he doesn't say that at all! Paul says, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' This is the key to experiencing grace in the tall weeds. Remember it is Christ who created us; it is Christ who saves us; it is Christ who will bring us with him to glory."

From "Grace in the Tall Weeds"

Scripture: Philippians 4:8-13

Preached at Paoli United Methodist Church

December, 1984       

The Profound Mystery of Marriage (Part 2)

Today is Independence Day, and it also would have been my dad's 76th birthday. Thinking of him today made me wonder what advice he would have given my daughter Adrienne and her new husband Earl on the occasion of their wedding last Saturday. It didn't take me long to find a clue in one of his sermons. I suspect that Grandpa Bill might have told Adri and EJ about the "profound mystery" of marriage - that spouses feel most fulfilled and empowered not when they are focused on meeting their own needs, but when each of them is focused on the needs of the other in "mutual subjection" to one another. Dad called this mutual subjection the "binding agent" of a successful marriage union.

EJ & Adri @ Tyler Gardens, Bucks Co. C. College

"What is it about being subject to one another, out of reverence for Christ, that creates such a union?

We must be careful about how we talk about this because subjection is not a welcome word in our society. Today the by-words are freedom, liberty, doing your own thing, self-actualization. Many modern marriages fail because this is the dominant philosophy of both parties. 

There is nothing wrong per se with this modern drive to discover self, find fulfillment, and get the most out of life. The only problem is that in the plan of God, the way to life is not going directly after it. You remember the words of Jesus: 'For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.'

It is really hard to describe, but no less true, that in serving the needs of another one discovers and strengthens oneself. And if this is true in general for all relationships, it is doubly true for marriage, the most intimate of all relationships. Here a wonderful cycle of giving and receiving is set in motion. The more I give to my partner the stronger her self-esteem grows, and the more she is able to give to me, and on and on the cycle goes.

The conventional wisdom is that subjection is galling and demeaning to the subject. But in the context of mutual subjection in marriage, nothing could be further from the truth. It's true that if you have a low self-image, subjection galls you because it seems to speak to your inferiority. A person with a weak ego is threatened by the servant role. But in the case of the mutual subjection of marriage, at the same time you are being a servant to your partner, she is being a servant to you. In serving you she is affirming that you are worthy and lovable. Thus, feeling good about yourself, you are able to serve her needs without feeling demeaned by this subjection.

It is truly a profound mystery, but it works! It really does, and it gives one of the deepest satisfactions and provides one of the greatest sources of strength available this side of heaven." 

So there is Grandpa Bill's marriage advice for you, Adrienne and EJ. May it serve you well, as you each serve the other.  I love you both. -Dad

From: "Christian Marriage - A Profound Mystery"
Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33
Preached August 21, 1988 at
Paoli United Methodist Church 

The Profound Mystery of Marriage (Part 1)

Several people have asked me why I hadn't posted anything new on this blog of late. Truth is, I've been busier than usual. Last weekend was my daughter Adrienne's wedding. She married a wonderful young man named Earl, who I'm proud to call my son-in-law now. Here's a look at the bride and her groom:

Earl & Adrienne

When Adrienne and Earl chose a passage of scripture to be read at their wedding ceremony, they passed over Paul's famous instructions for wives and husbands set out in Chapter 5 of Ephesians:

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. ... Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her[.] ... This is a profound mystery[.]" Ephesians 5:21-23, 25, 32 (NIV).

I'm not surprised that Adrienne and Earl didn't select this passage for their wedding ceremony. My daughter definitely views marriage as a partnership of equals, not as a chain of command - with the husband at the top no less. Let's be honest: plenty of bad "Christian" marriage advice has flowed from Paul's admonition that wives should "submit" to their husbands. But I wonder if Adri and EJ might have reconsidered these verses if they had heard what Grandpa Bill had to say about them in a sermon he preached about marriage. My dad wrote:

"This passage is like a seed that holds the promise of what marriage later became in the Christian tradition. Of course, in Paul's day, wives were subject to their husbands in both the Jewish and Greek communities. If you were to suggest the equality of the sexes to anyone in the first century, even in the church, you would have been laughed out of the room. Women were property, not persons.

With this in mind, a passage that said, 'Wives, be subject to your husbands,' came as a breath of fresh air to its readers because of what it also said, because of all the qualifiers it added. It said that husbands should love their wives to the point of self-sacrifice. It said that marriage is a true union of husband and wife, so that the way a man treats his wife is ultimately the way he treats himself. 

All of this was a 'profound mystery' says Ephesians. Now, marriage was not a profound mystery to first century men living in a man's world. It was a matter of comfort and convenience; it was a matter of economic necessity; it was a matter of ensuring one's own posterity; but it was not a profound mystery! 

Paul, and other first century Christians, began to liberate marriage from this bondage. They didn't yet realize all of the ramifications of this, but they did know that men and women had to sit together at the Lord's Table, and that Paul had said some startling things like 'in Christ there is nether male nor female.' This didn't automatically result in a full-blown doctrine of Christian marriage. Nevertheless, considering the cultural and historical context, these verses were revolutionary! The seed was sown for the unfolding of the profound mystery of Christian marriage.

Verse 21 is that seed in its essence. The writer could have stopped here and said it all. This is the Word of God on Christian marriage: 'Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.' This is the timeless foundation on which believers build their marriage unions. Did the old writer know what he was saying? In an age of  male dominance and female subservience, did he know he was espousing 'mutual subjection,' wife to husband and husband to wife? Was this a slip of the pen, or was it the Spirit giving us the Word?

Time has told, and continuing revelation has given us the answer: what holds a Christian marriage together and makes it work is not romance, not good sex, not a legal marriage contract, not psychological compatibility - but mutual subjection. Mutual subjection is at the heart of the profound mystery of the marriage union. It is the binding agent." In the words of Ephesians, it is how "the two will become one flesh."  Ephesians 5:31 (NIV).

From: "Christian Marriage - A Profound Mystery"

Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33

Preached: August 21, 1988

Paoli United Methodist Church

A New Church Is Born

April 23, 2018 is the 50th Anniversary of the birth of The United Methodist Church. It's the church in which I was raised. It's the church in which my father first, and later my wife, answered God's call to ministry. Flipping through some of my dad's sermons, I found one he preached just weeks after the 1968 merger that produced the United Methodist Church. Here's some of what he had to say about that union:

"Amid pomp, drama and color, the United Methodist Church became a reality at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, April 23, 1968 as two bishops joined hands over a cluster of symbolic documents. Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church and Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke of the former Methodist Church joined their voices in saying, 'Lord of the Church, we are united in thee, in thy Church, and now in The United Methodist Church.' Then, 10,000 persons filling the Dallas Memorial Auditorium exclaimed in one booming benediction, 'Amen!'

And so it was done. A new church was born. In the twinkling of an eye, you and I as former Methodists and former Evangelical United Brethren became the inheritors of a church. Off and on since 1802 there had been union negotiations between Methodists, Evangelicals and United Brethren. And then in this brief ceremony, 166 years of talking find a consummation."

The United Methodist Church was a product of the "ecumenical movement," and my father was quick to note that "[t]he word 'ecumenical' means the whole inhabited world. It means that all together we are one in Christ. It leaves no one out. Hence our subject this morning of 'Union with Unity.' You may have all the union you want, but it's all an empty sham unless that union is filled and flows over with unity. Church union without unity may be compared to the hollowness of what we call a 'marriage of convenience.' In true union, in true marriage, the parties must love each other. Love. That's what we're talking about, isn't it? We're all United Methodists now; that is a fact. But do we love each other? ...

Throughout the years of negotiations for this union, leaders on both sides were careful to point out that a new church was being formed. The product of a union, they said, would be a renewed church, not Methodist, not EUB, but entirely new. This assurance was probably felt to be necessary for the little EUBs, who may have felt a loss of identity from being swallowed up by a church ten times its size. This assurance probably was resented by some Methodists, who felt a certain smug complacency with their size and success. But, you know, somehow I always felt that this promise our leaders made us of a new church was something they couldn't deliver. They knew that, I'm sure, and so they meant it to us as a kind of challenge and not a promise. You and I make a new church by realizing our unity in Christ here and now.

Unity is a hard thing to come by even in this age when we talk so much about it and run around madly tying up unions. Still we are divided. All Christians cannot sit at the Lord's Table together; local churches cannot see their way clear to enter into group ministries; individuals within a local church can bicker and fuss and criticize and divide and paralyze. Too much ego; no room for love. Too much investment in self; no room for the mutual subjection Paul said was so necessary for a true marriage union.

Now practically speaking, how do we who are now united in the United Methodist Church receive this gift of unity that Christ offers us? Our differences, born in ego, can dissolve in our devotion to a common task to which we give our strength. Not just any task, but THE task - the only task worth our life's devotion - service to the King of Kings. 

Our sole purpose for unity within the church is to perform our ministry, our mission, our work in the world. Only as we plunge into that work, that mission, do we realize our unity. The 'church' does not refer to an organization; it is an action word describing a fellowship of people who are doing things, actively demonstrating to the world the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives. 

We get union by sitting down and talking about consolidating committees and drafting rules of order. We get unity by rolling up our sleeves and sweating and working together in our common mission.

Amid pomp, drama and color, the United Methodist Church became reality at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, April 23, 1968. Did it? That's up to us." 

From: "Union With Unity"
Scripture: John 17:6-21
Preached May 19, 1968
at Adams Shore Community Church
Quincy, Massachusetts

Christ in Disguise

I don't remember that horrible day when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis fifty years ago; I was only two years old when it happened. My father was 27, having graduated from seminary a year before to become the pastor of a small community church in Quincy, Massachusetts in the shadow of next-door Boston. King was murdered just three days before Palm Sunday. As other preachers no doubt did, my father sensed a contemporary version of Holy Week unfolding before him on the evening news. In his Palm Sunday sermon, my dad said this:  

"Palm Sunday is a tragic symbol of Jesus' brand of messiahship and our response to it. If there's anything that Palm Sunday points to, it is how fickle and insincere we really are. And to some extent it's a lack of understanding, too, I suppose. We don't understand what sort of messiah Jesus is, or if we do understand then we don't want him. Like the crowd at the Jerusalem gate, for a while Jesus appears to be fulfilling our fondest dreams. We want a warm, comfortable home, a good family to be proud of, a secure job, a friendly little church where we're all alike. Here comes a king who will secure it for us! 'Hosanna!'

'The king is coming! The king is coming!' Yes, the king is coming, but not as earthly kings with pomp and circumstance and every detail attended to. This king comes as the Christ, the suffering servant, riding on a borrowed donkey with a shabby crowd to greet him. The kingship of Christ is not seen in terms of a crown and a throne but rather in terms of a basin and towel as he washes his disciples' dirty feet. The kingdom of Christ is not seen in terms of a royal procession with him at the head but rather in terms of his teaching, 'whosoever would be first among you must be your servant.' 

Can't we see that he is riding a donkey? Can't we see that there is no splendor surrounding him at all? No, we can't see. Like the Jerusalem crowd we are blinded by our wishful thinking that finally a king has come to restore our Israel. It's only Palm Sunday now; we are cheering. Give Jesus the King just a week to force our hand, to make us demonstrate in a bloody way how we really feel about his brand of kingship, about his way to redemption.

You know, there is another very ironic sort of 'Palm Sunday happening' going on today and these last few days which clearly and cruelly points out what we've been saying here. Today we are shouting the praises of another king - The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  We are piously yielding up our hosannas to this man who we say has been the champion of his people. Civil rights leaders, politicians, religious leaders, newsmen, even George Wallace -- are deploring the tragedy of his death and offering eulogies to this great man. In the mass of news that has been released so far, I have yet to hear a single negative comment about this great apostle of non-violence. We're all shouting 'Hosanna to King!'

But where were our hosannas while he was actually doing the non-violence, when he needed our support? Where were the politicians, the religious leaders, the newsmen and the George Wallaces when King was showing this nation that servant-hood meant leading a bus boycott or defending the cause of garbage men in Memphis? Where was this adoring crowd when King was saying that the way of the cross this summer would be a massive demonstration by the poor in Washington, D.C.? No. There were no hosannas then. There were only countless statements by public officials and editorials denouncing this self-styled messiah as un-American and un-Christian. All too frequently we heard someone yelling that terrible anathema, 'Communist!', and sounding curiously akin to another shout heard 2,000 years ago: 'Crucify him!' Yesterday, it was 'Crucify him!' Today he is dead, and it is 'Hosanna!'

The sequence of our emotions is reversed from that first 'Palm Sunday happening' to this one, but the dynamic is still the same. It is our sentimental cheering when the challenge of the Gospel is distant and our utter repulsion when the challenge of the Gospel is aimed point blank at our hearts. The happening has occurred. And similar happenings will, over and over again, whenever Christ in person, or Christ in the disguise of his many suffering servants, enters and challenges our way of living.

May God give us the grace to do more than shout 'Hosanna!' and waive a palm. May God give us the grace to be counted with Christ at his trial and death."

From: "The Happening"

Preached Palm Sunday, April 7, 1968

at Adams Shore Community Church 

Scripture: Luke 19:29-40  

Where's Calvary?

One thing that took me by surprise on my trip to the Holy Land was the existence of competing holy sites -- dueling locations where different groups contend that the same event from the Bible took place. My father was struck by the same thing when he visited Israel thirty years before me. He wrote: "Many of the holy places in Jerusalem rival one another in their claim to be the site where Jesus did this or that. While there, we visited the traditional and alternative sites of Calvary, also called Golgotha or the Place of the Skull, the site of the crucifixion.

Altar at Golgotha - Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The first one has a more ancient claim. It was the place designated in the 4th Century by Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the first Christian Roman emperor, as the place where Jesus was crucified. It is nothing more than a small rocky outcrop no more than 14 meters high. Now built over this location is the magnificent but somewhat tarnished Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, which is shared by Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian Christians. Under one of the altars in this church is a socket or hole in the floor where they will tell you the cross was erected. This is probably close to the actual place of the crucifixion, but somehow in the strange atmosphere of this ancient church I personally did not 'feel' close to the original Good Friday event -- that is, until later when I combined it with a visit to a rival site of the crucifixion.

Gordon's Calvary

North of Jerusalem's Damascus Gate is a rocky knoll which, British General Charles Gordon was one of the first to point out, resembles a skull. The hill is sometimes called Gordon's Calvary, and it is preserved in its natural state. However, as you stand on the visitors' overlook, visualizing what may have taken place on this hill outside the city 2,000 years ago, it is impossible to block out the mundane sights and diesel smells of a bus station immediately below it. There people come and go, doing the everyday business of Jerusalem, with never a glance up at the supposedly sacred hill above them. It was a dramatic moment for me as I realized that wherever the real Calvary was, there may well have been nearby, not a bus station, but a depot for the unloading and loading of camel caravans, a place of commerce and business with people scurrying about as unheeding as they were that rainy afternoon of my visit. Jesus died in the world, for the world.

That dual experience of being at two supposed places of the crucifixion of my Lord Jesus Christ left me with a question: Where is Calvary?

Now I know that Calvary is wherever the dynamics of the Calvary event take place. Calvary is wherever the Lord's people slink away and forsake him while others, whom you would never suspect, recognize him and pay homage to him. One of the saddest verses in the Bible is Mark 14:50 where Mark reports what the disciples, Jesus' friends, did immediately upon his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane: 'They all forsook him and fled.'  And so it was not one of the twelve, but a stranger from Cyrene, who carried his cross. It was not one of the inner circle, but a dying thief, who expressed belief in him. It was not a friend, but a Roman Centurion, who said 'Truly this man was the son of God.' It was not a disciple, but one from his group of enemies in the Sanhedrin, who took his body, prepared it for burial, and laid it in a tomb.

One recent Sunday afternoon, as I was busily trying to get ready for confirmation class, a battered old car rattled up to the church carrying a young couple who I judged from years of experience with these things to be looking for someone who would listen to their story and then assist them with money for food or gas. I was in the hall near my study grumbling to myself about what poor timing this was and how I couldn't deal with this interruption right now. A few minutes passed, and although I knew the couple had entered the church, I thought it strange that they hadn't yet come looking for me. I went to the narthex to see what was up, and there they were in the sanctuary praying! They finished and came out to me in the narthex and asked where they could make a donation to the church. I showed them the donation box. They put something in and left, and I was greatly taken aback and humbled. Who was faithful to the crucified Lord that day? Who stood by him? The annoyed and busy clergyman of this very proper church, or the rag-tag couple who came in to pray?

Where is Calvary? Calvary is wherever Jesus' followers forsake him while others surprisingly rise up to praise him and minister in his name. Calvary is many places:

• As Pilate discovered, Calvary is wherever you decide to do the expedient thing rather than the right thing, where you're willing to make human life secondary to political necessity. Calvary is wherever you hand the Christ over to the angry crowd for crucifixion.

• As Peter found out, Calvary is wherever you compromise what you know in your heart to be good and true in order to save your own skin. Calvary is wherever you deny that you know Jesus.

• As Judas must have finally realized, Calvary is wherever we turn against those who have disappointed us and have not lived up to our expectations. Calvary is wherever you betray your Lord.

Calvary is not in an ornate basilica or on a hill overlooking a bus station. Ultimately, Calvary is in our hearts. The old hymn asks, 'Were you there when they crucified my Lord?' Yes, all of us were there. Some have shouted the curses; some have driven the nails; some have gambled for his garments; some have just run away, but all of us were there. And the Gospel in the midst of all of this is that Jesus looks down upon us from his cross and he says, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

It is this word from the cross, this word of forgiveness, that gives us hope. This is the word that brought eleven miserable, frightened, and guilt-ridden disciples out of hiding and turned them into the powerhouse that the early church became. It is the word that will free you and me to move on past our Calvary to the Easter we are longing for."

From:"Where's Calvary?"

Scripture: Mark 15:21-47

Preached: March 27, 1988

at Paoli United Methodist Church  

World's Greatest Valentine

Isn't it strange that Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine's Day this year? One holiday is a somber day for reflection, a day to repent for our missteps and failings, the beginning of Lent's 40 days of self-sacrifice to prepare for Easter. The other holiday is a time for romance, for extravagant celebrations of love and lovers. Ashes and fasting versus roses and fine chocolates. How odd - even jarring - to have both holidays on the same day. And yet, maybe it's fitting to have Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day happening on the same day.

"On Ash Wednesday, many of our Christian brothers and sisters receive the mark of ashes on their foreheads. As the mark of ashes is made, the priest pronounces the words, 'Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.' The ashes are a symbol of humility and repentance. The ashes remind us that we have nothing to boast of, that we will not live forever, that morally we are something less than perfect. On Ash Wednesday we are told what most of us already know all too well -- that alienation from God and from each other is a fundamental fact of our existence.

The question that burns, then, deep in our hearts is: How can we be lifted out of this helpless state? The answer that, hopefully, we will learn along our Lenten journey this year is that God's reaction is not to condemn us, but to save us ... by loving us. 

What does a suitor do when his or her verbal professions of love are not heard or are rebuffed by the beloved? Quite often he or she steps up the campaign to a higher level by turning from mere words to acts of love and devotion. The old stand-bys are flowers, candy, or other gifts.

As we move into Lent, God, the 'hound of heaven,' who has been pursuing his wayward world for centuries through the words of the prophets, is about to step up his campaign. He is about to act personally, not through the spoken word, but through the incarnate Word, his Son, Jesus, to show us how much he loves us.

The Cross is God's great act of love for us. It is a graphic display of God reaching down and providing a way for us to lift our heads and become really human - in the highest, most wonderful sense of that word. The whole rationale for the cross is that I am helpless to free myself from cares and troubles and worry and idolatry and all the evils that enslave me, so God provides a man, a man just like me in all respects but one - he is free from sin. The man is Jesus Christ. So if I bind myself to him in faith, I can rely on his obedience, his righteousness, his victory. He can count for me before God.

What grabs me the most, what changes me down to the core, is the realization that God loved me and thought enough of me, valued me so highly, that he sent his Son to die for me. He did that all for me! What affirmation I feel when I realize how far God was willing to go to save me. Can I do any less than to so love and affirm you?" 

The best relationships make us better people. That's certainly true of a relationship with God. Understanding how much God loves you -- ashes and all -- is life-changing. When you are filled with gratitude for that love, and when you realize that God loves your neighbor just as much, how can you help but extend God's love to your neighbor, too? What starts out as Ash Wednesday ends as Valentine's Day -- between us and God, and between us and our neighbors. That's a February 14th to remember.

From: "Love's Last Invitation,"
"Ashes," & "Ash Wednesday Meditation - 1988"