Psalm 51:1-17

Ash Wednesday - Years A, B, C

Here are some words you may not be familiar with. In regard to a medicinal use of hyssop, various sources indicate it promotes expectoration through its stimulative, carminative and sudorific qualities. Definitions include: expelling gas from the stomach or intestines so as to relieve flatulence or abdominal pain or distention, causing or inducing sweat, and discharging matter from the throat or lungs by coughing or hawking and spitting.

Combine hyssop with white-washing and we have internal and external cleansing, a making whole or healthy, through and through.

We yearn for a restoration of joy. It is this energy source that turns us into evangelists (in a good way—O how we yearn for a day we won’t have to distinguish helpful from manipulative evangelism, but for now there is too much bad “good news-ing” that goes on). What are you most joyful about? This is what you will plant more of in the world. For a helpful reference you may want to check out Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism by Martha Grace Reese.

Here we are at Ash Wednesday, setting an agenda for the rest of the Lenten season—renewed health and joy. What disciplines for yourself or your congregation would be helpful this year? What will clean your insides and what your outsides?

- - - - - - -

language can be off-putting
as off-putting as off-putting
technical terms get bandied about
pulling the wool over some eyes
too often used approximately

this season may need plain-speaking
monosyllabic words
five syllables meaning one
hmmm, there’s a long way to go to
help—way—joy

As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience

When we pay attention, our weaknesses do glare and our strengths do shine. These are in relationship to our whole life, not just some deistic god. If we are to love G*D and neighbor as self, we can't get away from our failures reflecting on G*D and neighbor and self.

It is as this point that the issue of enemies can helpfully come in. Here we most clearly see our love and our failure. Here we can begin to fruitfully fast (identify the arena for the fast and see the outcomes of it in our own behavior) from bloodshed and all that it stands for.

Whether or not this is some imputed guilt from before conception is rather beside the point. It is sufficient to know that wrong has been done and needs to be set right. As we fast we do so to one over-riding end that holds within it many blessings - restoration of joy and a willing spirit. It is more helpful to fast from guilt and toward willing joy.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/march2006.html

Psalm 51:1-17 or Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12

We have had difficult days. We have done our best to influence God through our fasting and prayers. That hasn't worked.

"Well, of course not, these are not techniques to manipulate but relationship deepeners. If you keep going at things the way you have been, things are going to be far worse than they are."

Have mercy! Our sacrifices haven't gotten us what we desired. Now we have to choose to keep at what we find to sometimes get us what we want or risk a whole new way that brings no guarantee that it will be as effective as our current results, sometimes.

"Injustice always, eventually, leads to difficulty for all. If your fasts and prayers are not intimately connected with justice, they are ultimately useless."

Have mercy! We are discontent with the current state of affairs and afraid to change for the better because it might not be.

"You didn't arrive overnight at our current position of being damned if you stay the same and scared to be different. Give this one thing an adequate test of three generations -- share your bread with the hungry. You shall then be called "the repairers of the breach" and your healing shall spring up quickly.

Have mercy! Let us gather the people. Call a solemn assembly to refind our joy of being connected, for better and for worse, with one another and G*D. Perhaps we might yet be mercy!

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/february2005.html

Here are some words you may not be familiar with. In regard to the medicinal use of hyssop: It admirably promotes expectoration through its stimulative, carminative and sudorific qualities. Included in the definitions are: expelling gas from the stomach or intestines so as to relieve flatulence or abdominal pain or distension, causing or inducing sweat, and discharging matter from the throat or lungs by coughing or hawking and spitting.

When combined with a whitewashing we have internal and external cleansing, a making whole or healthy, through and through.

We yearn for a restoration of joy. It is this energy source that turns us into evangelists (in a good way - O how we yearn for the day we won't have to distinguish good from bad evangelism, but for now there is too much bad "good news-ing" that goes on). What are you most joyful about. This is what you will plant more of in the world. For a helpful reference you may want to check out Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism.

Here we are at Ash Wednesday, setting the agenda for the rest of the Lenten season - renewed health and joy. What disciplines for yourself or your congregation would be helpful this year? What will clean your insides and what your outsides?

- - -

language can be offputting
as offputting as offputting
technical terms get bandied about
pulling the wool over some eyes
too often used approximately

this season may need plain-speaking
monosyllabic words
five syllables meaning one
hmmm, there's a long way to go to
help - way - joy

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

Penitential approach — wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
Discipleship approach — TEACH ME WISDOM

purge me with hyssop
LET ME HEAR JOY AND GLADNESS

restore me
I WILL TEACH

a broken spirit
DO GOOD, REBUILD

We begin Lent with choices of approach. Some will appeal to some, but not to all. All-in-all, the discipleship approach bears more hope and fruitfulness than the penitential. This also accords with the beginning of Lenten disciplines looking toward baptism and membership in Christian Community. Little-by-little, we shifted from an affirmation to a denial-of-self. That shift carried with it the seeds of destruction. A church cannot last (though it has for a long time) only built on penitence and atonement and other doctrinal formulations. A Living G*D will simply move on and leave it doing its rituals.

May Ash Wednesday find you still moving toward discipleship and living out the belovedness of baptism.

= = =

Comment from reader:

I really like this Blog and couldn’t agree more. How has the Church ever lasted this long with this theology and these rituals interpreted in these ways?

I got back from my only trip to Spain in 1999 overcome by the horror of all the churches, now museums, vying to have the most bloody, tortured crucifix of all, kept behind black grills so no worshipper could get close, and 8% or less of the population ever attending worship except for baptism, marriage, and death. I began to shriek to anyone who would listen, when I came back, WE HAVE GOT TO FIND ANOTHER WAY TELL THE WONDROUS STORY. The Church is its own worst enemy, and what it has done with the Gospel and what Jesus came to show us of God and the job that was left to disciples and us ever after,is criminal.

I agree that the Church as is will die but the message will go on and benefit from its new embodiment, whatever that will be and which is even now emerging all over the world, will be more helpful to the world than anything that has been given it by believers since the middle of the 1st Century. At least, that is my prayer and the end toward which I have worked, as you have.

Thanks, H.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/02/psalm-51.html

Would you attribute steadfast love to your neighbor or environment? If you could see a way clear to do so, you might begin this psalm with:

Have mercy, O Neighbor, according to your steadfast love.
Have mercy, O Creation, according to your steadfast love.

Imagine that this lack of imagination is the reason we have a tradition of imposing ashes. We don’t see mercy in one another and, sure enough, it is never there when it is needed.

We are willing to break our heart and have a contrite spirit before G*D, but not before Neighb*r or Earth. Until we can include these, despising continues. What a blessing it would be to all concerned to be able to enlarge the expression of mercy.

While mercy is difficult to measure in others, we should be able to see what this would mean if we added yet another starting spot:

Have mercy, (your name here), according to your steadfast love.

Where will your ashes of remembrance take you? All the way to remembering your mercy?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/03/psalm-511-17.html