Come Home!

Come Home! Says God to his people, in their most desperate time of need. Come home.

A few years ago I was having lunch with a colleague who was in the most painful and broken moment of his personal and professional life. Years of labor suddenly lost, and lost through his own negligence and his marriage having crumbled, he look across the table and with tear-filled eyes he said to me, “my mother called me last night and said, ‘Why don’t you just come back home.’ He paused and continued…”It’s all gone to hell. It’s time for me to go home. There is this natural and deep sense of longing for home when life comes tumbling in, when sorrows like sea billows roll, when it feels like the only thing left to do is sit in sackcloth and ashes and grieve. There’s a pull toward home that’s rooted in an unconditional love, that broken is allowed and embraced.

The prophet Joel and the people of God are living in the midst of an unprecedented locust plague in Jerusalem. Crops are destroyed, and people are starving. And we here God, calling out to them, to come home, “Return to me with all your heart” he says. In their desperation, God starts talking about a renewed worshipping community…call an assembly, blow the trumpets, gather the people at the altar…even now, especially now, in one of the worst moments in the nation’s history, EVEN NOW says the Lord, come home, return to me, bring your hearts back, why? Why? Remember, says God, remember that I am gracious and merciful, full of steadfast love, relenting from punishment. It’s a message of both judgment, along with an unconditional love.

King David is living in the shadow of his adultery, and all kinds of deceit that has led him to become a murderer too. Brutal honest confession of sin follows, along with David’s own awareness that a “broken spirit” is an acceptable to God, that his own broken and contrite heart is the road home to God. He hears on his life’s most difficult day that God is calling him to come home. This sense of coming home that we embrace tonight, in the dark of Ash Wednesday, is grounded in two realities that are reflected in our Ash Crosses. Those realities are our sin, and the grace of God. Our sin, and the grace of God.

Ashes, The darkest symbol of our sin and death, and our grieving, of all that it means to be human, the ashes of last year’s palm branches are streaked across our foreheads, and we are firmly and finally gripped by the words we usually hear at gravesides…”From the dust you have come, and to the dust you will return.” We’re told to remember that everything real about our life turns to ashes. The houses we live in, the clothes we wear, our money, the hands we hold things with, the people we love, our beating hearts, its all dust. And on that fading way, we must say with honesty and grief, each of us to God, “I know my transgressions, my sin is ever before me. Lord, you are justified when you speak, upright in your judgment.” Ashes. Confession, apology, remorse, repentance…Ash Wednesday is the preeminent day in the Church year for us to come to terms with ourselves before God, Here we fall down, our sin is ever before us. There is no denying this reality. This is the moment when, like the prodigal Son, we come to ourselves….and in the words of my friend, we sit with the sense tonight that “it’s all gone to hell.”

And in that brutal honesty, we turn our faces toward home, because we know that the one who loves us even so is there. Because of who God is, and what God has done, even in the brutal truth of Ash Wednesday, we don’t need defenses and barricades. We don’t need the medication of self-deception, we don’t need to lie anymore to ourselves or others. We don’t need to live out an exhausting, lifelong charade of pretense lest someone else discover the truth, that we are not what we appear to be. You see, the ashes of our sin and death are formed into the shape of a cross, because, thanks be to God, there is another who has taken our sin and death upon himself, and in so doing, has nullified it. Jesus, the Son of God, embodies the grace of God, the mercy of God. Like that youngest son that wanders back home to share in honesty his unworthiness, Our confession is indeed embraced by this God who is full of steadfast love for us. It’s time to come home. Even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart.

Rev. Susan Johnson talks about the memory of a daughter coming home on an Ash Wednesday from school with an assignment to write a poem for her Spanish class. “I need an oxymoron for ‘HOPE’” she announces. She says, “We work together on it as I’m reading the prophet Joel, and the desperate King David, and the 6th chapter of Matthew, and I feel like I want to write a poem of my own, because the ashes of Palm Sunday really are an oxymoron for hope.”

Ashes (the dark, dusty reality of the promise of sin and death) are made into a cross (the symbol of our salvation, the grace of God, forgiveness). Alas, an oxymoron for hope, indeed.

May you know this night the deep and unavoidable reality of your sin and death, and deeply grieve as you reflect on your life that “it’s all gone to hell.” May we together deeply sorrow in the brokenness of life which we experience and to which we contribute. May we as different people and as one people come to ourselves, and confess our deepest regrets to the God of our creation…

And, in so doing, may our hearts turn us toward home tonight, as we get up soon, and come forward, dipping our hands into the waters of our baptism, hearing still, even now that we are God’s beloved, remembering that Jesus is baptized and crucified for sinners, may we return to God with all our hearts.

Repent. Return to the Lord your God, who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Weep for sorrow, and weep for joy too. Come home! Come home! You who are weary, come home. Amen.

Prayer. Almighty God of power and love, we fall down. Sorrow and hope mingle together in our tears that carry both our iniquities and the holy grace you bestow on us. Praise to you, for calling us home again, and again, and again, and for coming to be at home with us. On this holy night we cling to your Christ and Holy Spirit, As we consecrate ourselves again to you. Form us from our weakness and despair into a holy people. Call us into your righteousness, and give us courage To follow Christ in the lent before us, That we would be transformed into a people, suffering For the sake of your glory, and our neighbor’s good. Send us home this night with your peace, Letting go of the year past, Looking ahead into the budding possibilities of mercy and justice. We offer our lives to you, as we now follow your blessed Son, Who offers his life for us. Amen.

Peter Hawkinson