LENT

For almost the first time in 43 years I sat in the congregation for Ash Wednesday. Instead of telling people what it meant, I had to ask myself!

                ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

                Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’

I am dust. Literally humbling words (humus = earth) which bring me down to earth, which ground me in my reality. It’s not just about sin; it’s a reminder of my finitude, my limitations and my mortality. I’m not made of stardust or pixie dust; as the funeral service also hammers home at the interment of one’s body – ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes.’

It’s a curious modern delusion that such thinking is morbid. It is actually liberating! It sets me free from thinking too highly of myself, to set myself unattainable goals. I am earthly and earthy, and so I cannot and must not expect too much, or imagine I am ever going to be perfect. And because God made us from the dust of the earth, he does not demand unrealistic achievements. Too often, believers turn God into an oppressive and judgmental figure, and either mistrust him or convince themselves that they cannot hope to please him. That God loves us sometimes seems to be a forgotten truth.

If we combine that fundamental truth, of the Father’s love, with the Ash Wednesday message of our essential limitation, we are taking the first step on a realistic and joyful pilgrimage of growth in trust and closeness to God. The Cross can then be seen, not as a dark and awful warning, but as a beacon of light and hope. God knows us and our weaknesses. That is why the Word becomes flesh, sharing our existence in dust and ashes. That is why the Son joins the crowd by the Jordan to be baptised for forgiveness of sin, and allows himself to be tested and tempted in the desert. He identifies with us in those things, as he will ultimately identify with us in failure, rejection and death.

Our mortality is also not cause for regret or depression. Endless life might appear attractive, but given our condition of our ‘dustiness’, it would become intolerable. We are not going to live for ever, and so we must – and we can - seize the opportunities each day gives us, to be aware of God, to use well the time we are given and aim not for ‘success’, but for peace and contentment.

So though Lent is a ‘penitential season’, it is much more (as its name, denoting it as the spring, when the days lengthen, suggests) a time for growth, for flourishing and for bearing fruit.

The challenge is to turn away from all that diminishes us and denies our reality, and in faithful trust in Christ, to become the people he enables us to be: dust that is destined for glory.

Candlemass

I have always enjoyed and been touched by the Feast of Candlemass. It has liturgical power, with its candles, processions and chants, which has been enhanced in recent Anglican Liturgy with the closing ceremony of a symbolic turning to face towards Lent.

Above all, I am moved by Luke’s telling of the event. Outwardly this was an insignificant happening in the Jerusalem Temple, repeated frequently with parents bringing their first born sons (and no doubt more than a few daughters – as in the legend of the ‘presentation’ of Mary by her parents) in thanksgiving and dedication. And so would this day have been – except for the parents themselves – but for the intervention of two old people, Simeon and Anna.

The fact that Luke comments on their age is clearly important, as we are seldom told the age of those who encounter Jesus. What are we to see here? Partly, no doubt, an echo of Old Testament types, like Noah, Abraham, Mordecai and Tobit: old men noted for their faithfulness more than anything else. Simeon is a faithful man, but he is also one of the poor of the land, who are often ignored and marginalised; Anna more so, being a woman and a widow. But it is these two ‘non-persons’ who see in Mary’s child the bringer of salvation and light to the world. In this they follow the example of those other marginalised people, the Bedouin shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, in being drawn to the one who will ignore castes and break down barriers.

Simeon and Anna remind us of the value of those who watch and wait, who are notable not for their strategies and achievements, but for their quiet faith and their ability to see beyond the external and superficial. Simeon, we are told, was filled with the Holy Spirit, and guided by that same Spirit to declare that now he has seen the salvation of the Lord, bringing light and glory for his people and the whole world. Physically, all he has seen is a baby – another non-person in the eyes of the powerful and important. But the man or woman who is open in faith to the leading of God’s Spirit sees what those who are impressed and enthralled by influence and wealth often fail to see. Anna, we are told, has been praying and fasting for years, putting the Lord before other things, and so she too can see – and witness to others.

Perhaps that is one reason why the Christmas season, which now comes to an end, has so much power and meaning. For a start, it centres on the bringer of salvation in his helplessness and vulnerability, as a new-born child.  That in itself puts into perspective our obsession with success and achievement. As he will tell us when he grows up, the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the meek and powerless, those who are ready to become like little children. But Christmas also celebrates the wisdom that powerless older people can embody, if they let go of power, and of nostalgia and guilt. Simeon and Anna are clearly old, but they are open to God. Tradition also sees Joseph as an elderly man (perhaps because he has left the scene by the time Jesus is baptised.) Matthew’s magi are also often depicted as older, wise men. (To balance that, we note that Herod the Great was around 70 when he ordered the massacre of the children in Bethlehem! Old age in itself does not guarantee spiritual discernment.)

But God often speaks to and through unlikely people. The values of the Kingdom contrast with those of our world. So let us finish with old Simeon, holding the baby and declaring that here is light, here is glory, here is the peace that comes with hopes fulfilled; and with Anna witnessing to that light. May that light shine on us, within us and through us!