Burn to Shine

Scripture: Ash Wednesday, A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

What a remarkable thing to say. Not that in Christ we might earn the righteousness of God, or even be given the righteousness of God, but that we might actually become the righteousness of God, righteousness given bone and flesh. Even for St Paul, this is some pretty radical stuff.

Why do we do the things that we do? Why mark our heads with ash and embark upon 40 days of fasting and repentance? The things we talk about during Lent—self-denial, delayed gratification—in our world they’ve rather gone the way of the buggy whip, haven’t they? Yet here we are, embarking together on a journey through the valley of the shadow of death, a journey that culminates upon that terrible Cross.

Often this time of Lent is portrayed as something of a pilgrimage toward God, turning toward God: drawing closer to Him as if He were somewhere beyond the horizon and we must endure toil and strife to meet Him at last atop the hill of Calvary. But such is not the case. God is not “over there” somewhere. He is all around us, surrounding us. We cannot draw any nearer to Him, for indeed He is ever closer to us than our own jugular. All we can do, really, is to get out of His way.

The discipline of Lent aims to remove the barriers that we erect to keep God out of our lives, barriers of pride, avarice, envy, wrath, sloth, lust and gluttony. We pull down the walls of our egos to let Christ permeate us, like water into wood, to infuse our lives and bring us peace, bring us resurrection, here and now on earth. This is what Paul means when he speaks of it no longer being he who lives but Christ who lives in him. By the waters of our baptism we are joined irrevocably to Christ’s own death on the Cross, and to Christ’s own eternal life bursting from the Easter tomb. Jesus makes us into Jesus, if only we would let Him.

This is the Paschal Mystery of our faith: that given His Word and His Spirit, given His own Body and Blood, we might become His hands and His feet still at work in this world, still healing and forgiving and resurrecting the dead, all of us reborn as little Christs each reflecting in our own unique manner the one true Light who has come into the world. Jesus Christ is God made Man, God in the flesh. And as we are made one with Him, so we become members of His Body, the Incarnation of God, continuing through this community, through this Church, throughout all generations. And so Paul is bold to say that we do not earn the righteousness of God, we are not given the righteousness of God, but in Christ Jesus we truly become the righteousness of God for one another.

How does God answer prayer? How does God forgive sins? How does God feed the hungry and heal the sick and clothe the naked and comfort the afflicted? Through us, brothers and sisters! Through you and through me. We are the Body of Christ now. We are the righteousness of God sent to save the world. God is not at the end of our Lenten journey; He is right beside us, all the way. And marching as one, with Him as our head, we are bold to make our way into the valley of death, into the suffering of our fellow Man, so that we may witness that Christ has come, that God walks on earth, and that nowhere and no one is too corrupted, too wounded, too wicked for His mercy to raise them from the dead.

We don’t spend these 40 days trying to earn Christ. We’ve already got Him. Rather, we spend these 40 days offering our lives to Him, even as He offers up His own for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God for others: for strangers, for sinners, for the entirety of Creation. Lent calls us to remember that life is not about being yourself, or doing what’s best for you. It’s about the superabundant love of God poured out for us in Christ Jesus while we were yet sinners, and how that love will overflow from us to fill the entire world, if only we would let it flow freely through our lives.

Get out of God’s way, and let Him remake us into who we were always meant to be.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.