This evening we begin the season of Lent, a time of contemplation, fasting, confession, prayer, and sometimes, weeping. We use the ashes to symbolize the letting go of our sins, to mark us as those who seek salvation and a reconciled relationship with God. Often we focus so much on the darkness of our desolation and separation from God, that we are dour. We lament and mourn, but we forget to acknowledge the hope that comes from such practices.

For children and sometimes for adults, Lent is a time of giving up and letting go. We choose something we want to remove form our lives for a while. Maybe it’s chocolate or dessert or meat meals several times a week. Maybe it’s shopping or going to movies or watching television, using our MP 3 player, or our computer – except for work. We can feel depressed about what we are giving up. It makes us sad and can fill us with darkness. Joel reminds us that the days of true darkness are yet to come – the powerful army of the Lord will someday come to us and the current age will end. But Joel also reminds us that God does not want us to rend our clothes in sorrow or grief, or to have us focus on worldly things when we are fasting. God wants us to rend our hearts.

More conservative churches, and even some of us who are more progressive, speak of being convicted in our hearts – a way of expressing our knowledge that we have sinned, have moved away from loving God or loving our neighbor. The prophet Joel speaks the words of the Lord and reminds us that rending our hearts is what God seeks. God wants us to come back into reconciled relationship with God and relationships with our neighbors. We are to recognize that God is merciful and just, gracious and slow to anger, offering us steadfast love. God wants to welcome us back into relationship. Focusing on our hearts rather than things is what God seeks from us. So give up what you wish, but remember it is your heart that God wants to change.

Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth reminds us of the same message from God.  Christ entreats us, through Paul, to be reconciled to God. God insured our sins would be forgiven through the sacrifice of the one without sin – Jesus the Christ. We have a day of salvation because Jesus lived and walked, died and rose. We have the gift of grace because loved us so much that love, the incarnation of God’s love was born into the world. Through God we are encouraged in our ministries as Christian disciples – through afflictions, hardships, calamities, beating, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger – through purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God – with righteousness for honor and dishonor, in reprove and good repute, as imposters and the true, as dying and alive, as punished but not killed, as sorrowful  yet rejoicing, though poor and making many rich, in having nothing and possessing everything, we are called to be ministers of the gospel, to renew our relationship with God. In other words, through God and with God in Christ Jesus, we are reminded of our human circumstance but that our humanness does not separate us from God’s grace and salvation. Our mourning and our rejoicing do not separate us from God.

But we are more than just human beings; we are inheritors of the kingdom and we are called to demonstrate that. The piety that God requires, as stated in Matthew, is not a public piety, a bragging about what we have relinquished during this period – it is not the ashes we wear on our hand or on our foreheads as signs of believing, confessing, and reconciling. With forgiveness to Joyce Meyer’s who penned a book titled, “Beauty from Ashes,” the beauty from the ashes that God wants us to share and to proclaim is the good news. To lift ourselves in private prayer and corporate prayer, to seek reconciliation with God and righteousness in life, to be humble in our piety – to know both private piety and public respect for God – to be about the message and not about the boasting of our proclamation. The beauty of the ashes is about God – all about God. It is the reminder that we have accepted the rending of our hearts, the need to focus what is true and evident through the love of God and of Jesus. It is a reminder to us, rather than a reminder to others, that we have let our sins go – we have focused on the rejoicing of the presence of God’s grace. There is truly peace and reconciliation in the ashes, for they are a symbol of us, created by God, loved by God, sanctified by God, forgiven by God, they are a symbol of our acceptance of the peace and contentment offered to us by God. The ashes show us the way, the way Jesus lived and loved and served. The beauty of the ashes is our commitment to follow the Way of Life and Truth and Salvation. May we wear our ashes with humility, knowing the beauty of the ashes is in our hearts and our spirits, rather than simply as symbols on our hands or foreheads. May it be so for each of us this day and unto the end of the world.