Why We Need Ash Wednesday

Create a clean heart for me, God;

put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!

Psalm 51:10

Two unrelated events are on my mind this Ash Wednesday.
First, a story on our local news last night about an apparent hate crime in nearby Shepherdsville.  Our family lives in Mt. Washington and the church I pastor - Hebron Presbyterian - has a Shepherdsville address, but is actually several miles north of Shepherdsville; at the end of the day though, it's all Bullitt County.  So this was local.  The crime took place in a storefront in an older stripmall type structure.  It appeared to be something of a convenience store and was identified as a "Smoke Shop".  The place was ransacked, the stores contents thrown every which way and paint splashed here and there with vile words and messages included.  Ugly.  The owner of the store was reported to be from another country, but it was never clearly stated as to where.  It's an important detail I guess, but the basic ugliness of what this appears to be needs no further explanation.

Second, I just read news accounts of the death of American print journalist Marie Colvin and French photo journalist Remi Orchlik after they came under intense fire while reporting the events currently going on in Syria.  The story of reports filed in the past couple of days by Ms. Colvin were especially poignant as she pleaded with the world to pay attention to the slaughter taking place in Syria and very specifically reported of the death of a two year old child as a result of the shelling.

Somehow these two unrelated events make me even more aware of why we need Ash Wednesday, why we need Lent, why we need Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter.  We need today because there is much that we need to turn from, much in our lives and in our world that requires repentance.  There is a brokenness that is at times beyond our comprehension.  It's in far off places like Syria and it's much closer by in Shepherdsville and it's still closer in myself.  I need and we need the space of Lent to prepare and to reflect.  And I/we need to embrace the reality of how very much we need what Christ has done for us - how completely necessary is this Lenten journey.

Lots of Water

I'm guessing no one has ever played a football game with John 3:23 emblazoned on their eye blacks.

"John was baptizing at Aenon near Salem because there was lots of water there, and people were coming to him to be baptized."

I've surely read this verse before, but it's never caught me like it has today.  It seems so almost innocuous.  Kind of telling us something obvious.  John was baptizing at a place because there was lots of water there - of course he was.  He's John the Baptizer, it's what he does and what he does what he does with.

Maybe it's saying something about the water.  It puts me in the mind of another New Testament passage - from Acts 8 - Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  Phillip shares the good news with the Ethiopian and then "As they went down the road, they came to some water."  Yep. They just happened to come to some water on a desert road just when they happened to need some.  "The eunuch said, 'Look!  Water!  What would keep me from being baptized?'"  Well...nothing.

John's got plenty of water for baptizing.  Phillip, it turned out, had plenty of water for baptizing.  John needed lots.  Phillip just needed some to show up in a pretty unlikely place.  They both got what they needed - water.  I think neither John nor Phillip was surprised to find the water they needed.  I'm afraid that too often the surprise to we mainline Christians wouldn't be that we have water, but that we could need "lots" of it.  We have received a wonderful gift - baptism, named and claimed as God's own people.  And we, like John, have lots of water.  John was expecting to use it - he knew he'd need lots of water.

I want to have that kind of expectation.

Our seminary student at Hebron, Maureen Clark, has guided us into a practice that our denomination has suggested churches make a part of the service of worship.  Each week we pour water into our baptismal font.  Sometimes at the prayer of confession and assurance of pardon.  During the sermon.  During the children's time.  Call To Worship.  Benediction.  It could happen any time.  It's been poured by Maureen, by myself, by children, youth and adults.  People like it best when the big pourers do it.  Folks who hold the pitcher high and let them see the water fall and hear the unmistakable sound it makes as it reminds us of our baptism, as it reminds us of the endless ways water winds its way through the stories of Scripture.

It reminds us that water is not scarce.  Water is available and abundant.  We have lots.  No need to imagine that it's scarce or that the font is maybe even empty.  We have been blessed.  Folks came to John, a man came to Phillip (okay, technically I guess Phillip was led to that man), God sends people to us and we are sent to people.  And there is lots of water.  Lots.