Episode 187: A Bright Sadness | Will McLaughlin+ | Ash Wednesday

Good evening. Welcome to Ash Wednesday. I always forget what to say on Ash Wednesday. Happy Ash Wednesday? Probably not. I don't say that usually, but anyway, we're so glad you guys are here to observe this kind of strange holiday with us.

Before we get started, let me pray. God, give us open ears for you to speak to us tonight. God, create in us new and contrite hearts. I pray that you will teach us to confess our sins, so that upon confessing we can find your grace even more full, more abundant than we could have imagined. Thank you so much for your grace through your son Jesus Christ. Amen.

I have a quick question for you guys. I'm trying to settle a debate: sunsets or sunrises? Who thinks sunsets are better? Anybody? Okay. How about sunrises? That's really close. So it's a hard one, right?

Sunsets of course have their own kind of special feeling, but I've lately become a really big fan of sunrises. Especially since moving to Roanoke, years ago—have you guys noticed that sunrises in the mountains are especially beautiful? If you live somewhere else, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Some might say I've gotten kind of deep into the sunrise game. Here's why: I have little kids in the house, and little kids wake up early and ready to roll. They wake up so early—"Dad, dad, dad, let's go do something." So I got into the habit of, if the weather's nice, just throwing them in the stroller, giving them some Cheerios, and we go for a run. That's kind of my morning routine when the weather's nice. In the winter, it's a cold, sad time. But at sunrise, it's kind of like a silver lining because I'm up at six o'clock, but at least the sunrise is beautiful, right?

I took this picture at the very top of Sugarloaf Mountain where I live. I love this stage of the sunrise because it's this contrast of the cold, dark mountains with this dawning light that's to come. It's like hope for something great that's about to come, but it's not quite there yet. You can see it's starting to come.

Ash Wednesday and the following season of Lent are a little bit like a sunrise. Lent is the church season that comes after Ash Wednesday and before Easter. It's roughly forty days, though there are debates about these things. As we eagerly wait for Easter, we remember why Jesus had to go to the cross.

A Bright Sadness

One of the theologians I read calls it a "bright sadness." Because this is a time when we know something good is coming, but we're not going to celebrate preemptively. We're going to wait and sit in the place we are now and remember what put Jesus on the cross.

Here's the question though: Why would we go through the trouble of looking at our own sin? Why not just skip right to Easter? Is it so we can feel bad about ourselves? Be afraid? Or maybe it's so we can strategize about how to become a better new me. Maybe if I think about it enough, I can come up with a good enough answer to make myself a better person.

But the point of this season of confession really isn't just behavior modification. We confess—we agree with God about our sin—so that he can forgive our sin. This is only by acknowledging our sin that we can be saved. It's like a person in a recovery group: the first step is admitting you have a problem. Or it's like a drowning person calling for help. Or it's like a sick person saying, "You know what? I gotta go to the doctor. It's time."

Lent is a time to ask God to search us and to show us our areas of sin so we can confess those sins to him and then we can experience his forgiveness. It's a time to humble ourselves and to open our hands to receive his gift.

That's why I love the prayer we just prayed. Create in us new and contrite hearts, that we may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Here's it in common speech: God, help me to see my sin so I can confess it to you and experience true forgiveness and life change through Jesus Christ.

The Opportunity of Lent

You're not required to do anything special for Lent. This might be the only thing you wanted to do, but it's a wonderful opportunity to ask God to search you and to give you a new heart so you can confess and experience true forgiveness and the new life that Jesus offers.

So here's my goal for this evening.

I don't want to just have a fifteen minute long sermon and send you on your way. What I want us to do is give you a pattern or a mindset to keep throughout Lent, so that it can become a more meaningful season for you.

Because if we are sick and we need a doctor, we don't just need a shot of pain medicine. What we need is to be in touch with the one who can actually heal us, and then also to follow his directions to live a healthy lifestyle. So in real terms, we don't need just a fifteen minute sermon. What we need is Jesus' saving grace and his power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to live new lives and to encounter him daily through prayer.

That's what I want to cultivate this morning. I want to cultivate a lifestyle of turning to Jesus. So before I get to some application for Lent, I want to walk through a couple of the strange things we do in the service tonight. Because we do a couple of weird things, and I love these symbols. I love digging into them because the more I learn about them, the more meaningful they are for me.

We're going to do this strange thing where we put ashes in the shape of a cross on our forehead. How do you all feel about that? Any thoughts?

Elijah brought up an excellent point. He asked: if we mark ourselves with a cross, aren't we just like the verse we have read, where we already receive our reward? That's a good point. The thing is, we're doing this at nighttime, so all you have to do is go home. You can't show it off to anybody. Some churches do it in the morning, so I'm not entirely sure about that practice. But I love that questioning heart.

The Meaning of Ashes

So the ashes—it's kind of like a sad thing, right? I was explaining to my son this morning. I said, "Today's Ash Wednesday," and he said, "Okay." I asked him, "How do ashes make you feel?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "Is it kind of like it's cold and sad?" And he said, "Yeah, it's like cold and sad."

Here's the thing: ashes are actually rooted in a rich biblical tradition. You see it a lot in the Old Testament, especially because it speaks of God's people repenting in dust and ashes. What they used to do—and maybe we should go back to this—is sprinkle it on their heads as a sign of mourning and of grief. The symbolism makes sense. Ashes are the sign of destruction and sadness and coldness, so the ashes are a sign of mourning and grief. They're also a sign of our mortality.

We'll mark ourselves with the ashes and say these words:

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

So these ashes are a sign of repentance. We have grief, mortality, and repentance all together. Does anybody know where the ashes traditionally come from? Palm Sunday. Yes. Traditionally they come from the previous year's palm branches.

You remember Palm Sunday—the Sunday before Easter when we all get palm branches. It's all the kids' favorite. It's my favorite too. We yell out, "Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Remember that when Jesus walked into Jerusalem, that's what they did for him. And it sounds really nice, but it's actually a kind of heartbreaking service because you know what's coming. The same voices that called out, "Hosanna, Hosanna, we love you"—the same exact people are saying "Crucify him, crucify him" a week later.

What it does is remind us that we also have inconsistent, fickle hearts. And the only way we can expect to be anything but dust is by a gift of the Holy Spirit. The ashes are a sign of repentance to say, "God, I know that I'm dust and I need you. Please work in me." Like David says:

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

And the good news is that he promises to do so. The symbol of the ashes isn't supposed to make you feel afraid, like "I hope we didn't do good stuff this year." It's supposed to remind us of something important.

What shape are the ashes in, by the way? They're not just a mark. What shape are they in? They're in the sign of the cross. Look at this: the ashes are the sign of destruction, and they take the form of this thing that was supposed to destroy as well. They take the form of the cross. We know that Jesus wasn't destroyed on the cross. What was? Our sin and death itself was destroyed on the cross.

So the ashes are this reminder of our guilt paid for and they're a reminder that death itself is destroyed in the cross and that should encourage us. Right? It's this two-sided thing of we repent. Yes. But we're also hopeful. It's like a sunrise. Right? It's like a sunrise. Like, ah, this stinks right now, but I'm waiting for it to get better. I'm waiting for the end.

So like waiting for a sunrise during Lent, we take an inventory and we realize our need for a savior. And this trains us to look for the joy and the victory of Easter. Not just the actual day—the day is great—but what the day stands for: Jesus and his resurrection. And then also this habit of taking a yearly time to repent actually trains us to be more repentant people throughout the rest of the year as well.

Ideas for Lent

Here are a couple of ideas for you this year. One is to take this as a unique opportunity to repent. Of course, we repent every day or I do, you should. We repent every day of our sins often, but this is a unique time to take a kind of deep inventory. And maybe you use a Psalm from the Bible as a starting point. And then we're gonna read Psalm 51 together. Maybe you use that as your starting point. This is David's prayer after he takes Bathsheba and murders her husband. This is David's prayer where he's pleading like, God, my transgressions are always before me. Create me a new heart. I need your recreation, God.

My transgressions are always before me. Create me a new heart. I need your recreation, God. — Psalm 51

So maybe this is a template for you for prayer this year. Sometimes though, personally, I need even more guidance than that. And so what I've done in the past is, if you look at your book, one of the things that's coming up is called the Litany of Penitence. Okay. It sounds so sad and it kind of is. And it's just like this list of things that we need to repent of. And what if you took this home and you used this for your quiet times? And on day one, you use just one word a day. God forgive me for my unfaithfulness. Show me where I haven't trusted you. Day two, God forgive me for my disobedience. Where have I strayed from your ways? Day three, forgive me for my pride. This hurts. It hurts. But it's kind of like pulling a splinter out because you're way worse off if you leave it in, if you ignore it. Right? This is the time where we remember our sin not just to sit there and be sad but to remember that Jesus does offer forgiveness to those who repent. He promises so.

Another thing you might do is choose some kind of fast during Lent. I know people really get their hackles all raised about this because they see it as legalistic or something. If that's you, that's fine. You don't have to do it. Like no one's gotta do it. But you might choose something to fast from during Lent. Because fasting in its simplest form is just removing something from your life and letting God fill that space. Fasting is about removing something that we rely on and then allowing and then telling God like, I rely on these things too much. I need you to fill that place of comfort for me.

I got a quote for you from Marjorie Holmes. She says, "In a more tangible visceral way than any other spiritual discipline, fasting reveals our excessive attachments and the assumptions that lie behind them. Fasting brings us face to face with how we put the material world ahead of its spiritual source."

So a few quick ideas for things you might fast from. And again, this isn't to punish yourself, and it's not to earn some kind of favor with God. This is just between you and God to create some space for him.

You might fast from some kind of entertainment, maybe something that takes up a lot of your time and you fill that time with something else—prayer, reading, listening, walking, I don't know.

You might fast from something that you enjoy. Maybe something that you're tempted to take into excess like sugar, alcohol, caffeine, some kind of food. These things aren't bad. We all know we can take these things too far and so fasting is a chance to cut back and say, God I rely on you and not these things for comfort.

Another idea is you can fast from something that reminds you of others' needs. I knew of someone one year who decided—this is kind of funny—she decided she was gonna wear just one pair of shoes all through Lent and not change her shoes every day. And it sounds silly but actually it was uncomfortable for her. Right? And every day when she should put on the same boring pair of shoes, she remembered how many more shoes than most people have. You know? More shoes than other people have. And it reminded her to give with this generous posture.

You might give up going out to lunch or coffee and donate that money to our cause.

Okay, lastly you might choose to do something. You might choose to fast from food. What?

You might choose to do that. And again, this isn't some kind of punishment or something. This is just creating space in your life. It's a time to be weak and say, God, I'm weak. I need you because you're the only one that's actually strong. So none of these are rules. And if you mess up, God's not mad at you. And if you only do it for a little bit of time, it's fine. But it's just this chance to listen to God.

So you might say, I don't need a season to do that. I can just repent and fast as I feel led. And you should repent and fast throughout the Christian year. But this is kinda like the oil change light, or the oil change sticker in your car. Right? It's like a reminder for you—take a season to do this.

So this yearly pattern of humbling ourselves actually makes us more and more the type of people who humble ourselves and seek the Lord throughout the year.

A Story from Lent 2020

I have one more story for you guys. I'll never forget the Lent where I longed for Easter in a really special way. Lent of 2020. You guys remember this? It was like the Lent that never ended. It was a tough season. We were stuck at home. We were uncertain how things would work out. And I remember I got this habit of snapping at my kids a lot. My frustration would bubble over and get redirected at the little people in my house. So not right. So messed up.

And I remember during Lent, like this is the season of Lent where I'm confessing like, God, I need you to change my heart. And I remember on Easter morning, for some reason no one was awake. I woke up really early before sunrise. And it was like Mary and Martha going to the tomb to see Jesus. And I just got my shoes and took off. And I went to the top of the mountain, and I got there panting and wheezing. And it was this experience of like, God, I'm so weak, I need you. And I remember praying like, God, I need you to remake me. I need that sunrise. I need that dawning hope in my life.

And so this is the sunrise that I found. And this was also real to me in this moment—that Jesus sees our brokenness. He wasn't content to sit by and let us remain as dust. Instead, he entered into a mess and he bore all the evil that we can unleash against each other. And then he sat in the cold dark grave for three days, like the mountains in the picture that I showed you. But he was too powerful. He was too good for death to hold him.

And after three long days, the huge stone was rolled away and the man Jesus stepped out of the grave, proving that he was more powerful than death itself. That his love was more powerful than the worst weapon the enemy could throw at him. And he came out and told his disciples to go make disciples of all nations and tell them about his love that conquered death. And tell them about his new life that can begin for them right now, but eventually comes in full fruition for eternity.

Closing

So this Lent, what will you do to create space in your life to listen to the Lord? What can you do to make yourselves hungry or miss something so you can learn what you're actually hungry for, what you're actually missing?

Let's pray. God, thank you so much for your forgiveness you offer through Jesus. We need you, God. We need you to remake our hearts. Give us hearts that turn to you often, maybe especially during this season. I pray that in this room right here that you'll bring to light some kind of hidden sin that someone might have or a blind spot. That during this season, be a special time where they say, that was the first time I noticed this about myself. That they wouldn't just sit in sadness, but they'd remember that you forgive sins and that you offer new life to all who trust in you. We're so amazed by your love for us. Amen.