Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!
At around 900AD there was a Swiss monk named Nokter Balbulus. One day as he looked out at a construction project in the Swiss Alps he was horrified to watch as one of the workers fell to his death while working on a bridge. It is said that this tragic event caused him to write the medieval Latin antiphon known as Media Vita in Morte Sumus:
In the midst of life we are in death; from whom can we seek help? From you alone, O Lord, who by our sins are justly angered. Holy God, Holy and mighty, Holy and merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death. Lord, You know the secrets of our hearts; shut not Your ears to our prayers, but spare us, O Lord. Holy God, Holy and mighty, Holy and merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death. O Worthy and eternal Judge, do not let the pains of death turn us away from You at our last hour. Holy God, Holy and mighty, Holy and merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death.
This terrible event and this subsequent antiphon encapsulate the essence of Ash Wednesday. By nature, human beings are builders. From all the way back to Genesis where people invented the brick and started to build the Tower of Babel to today’s mega projects from the heights of sky-scrapers to depths of mines, we spend our entire lives testing the very limits of what we can do in hopes of achieving glory, wealth and power.
And then, death comes along. It reduces glory, wealth and power into rubble. It robs us of everything and everyone we hold dear in the earthly kingdom. The ashes of Ash Wednesday are a sobering reminder of exactly this. It takes us all the way back to Genesis 3 and God’s righteous curse upon humanity: “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (19).
And because of this, ashes have always been associated with repentance - a ready acknowledgement of our sinful condition that has been caused by humanity’s embracing of death. Abraham, Job, Jeremiah and Jesus our Lord all reference these ashes of repentance (Genesis 18:27; Job 42:6; Jeremiah 6:26; MT 11:21). And these verses have led to our practice of the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, a practice going all the way back to Tertullian in around 200AD. And it remains a good practice today because we must never forget that one day, death will reduce us and all we have built and striven for to ashes. Our hearts must be reduced to ashes now in repentance that we may receive forgiveness, life and salvation from Christ Who is our life in the midst of death.
And to this goal we look at our Old Testament lesson from 2 Samuel. King David and the Prophet Nathan. The events of this story penned the now famous Psalm of repentance that we prayed this evening, Psalm 51. If you recall the back story, you will remember that God hand-picked David to be King. Smaller and ruddy in appearance contrasted to his older and stronger brothers, David was called from the flocks in the pasture to be anointed as King over God’s people. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him from that day on. He played the strings to refresh the former King Saul when he was oppressed by an evil spirit. He slung a stone and killed the gigantic Philistine warrior Goliath. He grew and arose to command armies and won great battles and had success after success so that his fame and reputation grew far and wide.
But then, David’s esteem and glory was suddenly reduced to ashes in iniquity. We most likely remember the story well. David beholds Bathing Beauty Bathsheba on the rooftop! Who is she? Is she not the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite? But just like Eve looking at the forbidden fruit on tree, David regards the forbidden fruit of Bathsheba that belonged to someone else. A short while later David gets word “I am pregnant” (2Sam11:5). Repentance would have been the right course of action. But instead, mighty and powerful David goes down path of destruction. Uriah is recalled from the war in hopes that he will go home and lie with his wife and this indiscretion will be covered over in the days before genetic paternity tests! But Uriah is a noble and honourable man. He won’t do it while his countrymen are dying in battle. David throws a feast and party for Uriah in hopes that in a drunken stupor he might go home but instead he crashes on the royal couch.
From the sin of sexual immorality came manipulation and then debauchery and finally murder as Uriah was sent back to the front, right to the place where the fighting was fiercest. He was killed, along with the other men who gave their lives fighting for the iniquity of a King, covered in the ashes of sin and death. David brings Bathsheba into his house as his wife and she bears him a son, but “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2Sam11:27).
This is the back story to what happens next when the prophet Nathan is sent by God to confront David on his sin. It was always a bit dangerous for a prophet to confront the big cheese of the Kingdom. The King had the authority to say “off with his head” and it would be so! So Nathan does this with a parable, a story that makes the King think and reflect. Stern preaching will always assault the fortress walls of the mind but a story slips through the backdoor of the heart! The story of the poor man and his little lamb being taken by the unmerciful rich man is enough to drive David to anger! ‘For this terrible and sinful thing, such a man deserves to die!’ he exclaims. But the trap is set and David walked right in. “You are the man! … Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites!” (2Sam12:7,9).
The igjay is upsay! David is bluntly confronted on his sins. And the consequences of sin will bring about judgment upon him and his house. The Word of God’s Law functioning as a mirror to show David his sins worked. And to David’s credit, he is repentant. He confesses to Nathan “I have sinned against the Lord” (2Sam12:13). The time of political cover up and scandal and iniquity are over. What was done in darkness is brought into the fullness of the daylight. “And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”
God’s forgiveness only comes to us through the narrow door of repentance. Humility is key for us, just as it was for David, just as it was for the tax collector who stood far off, not even raising his eyes up to heaven but pounded his chest saying “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (LK 18:13). This is the heart and soul of Ash Wednesday. In the ashes of repentance, we confess our sins. We turn away from them and the path of destruction that they lead us down. Instead we turn to the light of God’s Kingdom. The “bright sadness” of Lent illuminates us to the way of the cross of Christ our Lord. For there, the blood of an innocent lamb was shed for us that we might have life and have it abundantly. In the ashes of mortality and the in forgiveness, life and salvation of Christ our Lord, let us journey to cross again. Amen!
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