“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favor, the day of vengeance of our God, and to comfort all who mourn.”  Isaiah  61:1-2

Ash Wednesday.  I presided over plenty of them when I was a pastor. But one especially sticks out.  It was, as I recall, the year of my divorce.  I was hurting.  Hurting people hurt other people.  And I did.  I hurled my self-righteous anger, which was really a thin covering to protect me from my own guilt and shame, at the congregation assembled for the service.  In psychology it’s called projection.  In Lutheran Theology it’s called the Law.  All that I falsely believed was wrong with me I foisted upon them.  I held nothing back. It was a classic “hell, fire and brimstone” sermon.  It would’ve made the most traditional Baptist pastor proud.  I believe I started with the inherent sinfulness of human beings, probably parroting Paul’s words that nothing good lives in us, and proceeded to flesh out the many ways this sin is manifested.  I felt justified in doing so, as it was Ash Wednesday, a day of sin and repentance.

After that sermon a couple from the congregation made an appointment to see me.  They spoke with me about their displeasure.  In essence they said, “That sermon was all Law and no Gospel.”  In my insecure and fragile self I defended myself.  But they were right.

There is a worse sin than the sins common to mankind and committed by those who congregate in churches.  It is the sin of assaulting the faith of the Faithful by condemning, criticizing and castigating them/us for the imaginary crime of being human.  It is the sin far too many churches and clergy folks commit, as the focus is on how one is fallen short of God’s impossible demands, or how one needs to try harder to live up to the commands. It is the sin of searching for the splinter in the eyes of others while ignoring the log in our own.  The sin being committed in the pulpit is far worse than any that those in the pews are being accused of.

“In the Western tradition, the idea of sinfulness and selfishness of the self has trapped many lovely people all their lives in a false, inner civil war.  Fearful of valuing themselves in any way, they have shunned their own light and mystery.  Their inner world remained permanently off limits.  aThey let this toxic idea into their minds and it gradually poisoned their whole way of seeing themselves.  Sin was around every corner, and in any case probably damnation waited at the end of the road.  People were unwittingly drafted into blaspheming against their own nature.  You could not let yourself go.  Any longing to claim your nature or pursue your wildness would lead to ruin.  This corrupted the innocence of people’s sensual life and broke the fluency of their souls.  Rather than walking the path with the encouraging companionship of your protecting angel beside you and the passionate creativity of the Holy Spirit at your deepest core, you were made to feel like a convict trapped between guilt and fear. It is one of the awful sins committed against people.So many good people were internally colonized with a poisonous ideology that had nothing to do with the kind gentleness and tender sympathy of God.” [1]

The purpose of Ash Wednesday, or for that matter the Christian Life, is not to live imprisoned in the fear and guilt and shame of sin, constantly attempting to follow the rules in the hopes of one day being paroled, or better yet having the sentence shortened for good behavior.  It is to proclaim and to live fully and freely in the never-ending year of the Lord’s Favor.  To live embracing the truth that we are not objects of God’s wrath, but of God’s Love.  And that we are always much better than the worst thing we ever did, thought, or said, no matter how horrible we imagine it was. The lock has been loosened, the chains have been dropped, the gates have been opened.  We are free!

By the way, that couple?  They eventually left the church, not because I was too legalistic, but rather because I wasn’t conservative and confessional enough.  Go figure.  I guess sometimes we prefer the security and safety of the cell to the wild wilderness of the resurrected life, where Christ welcomes us to live in the liberty of His love.

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[1] “Eternal Echoes”, John O’Donahue. Cliff Street Books, p. 104-105.