Ash Wednesday isn't About Gloom, but Hope

Ash Wednesday is meant to be a journey of repentance, taking us through the things that we struggle with and reminding us who our God is. That might not sound like the most uplifting thing at first, but it’s actually It’s something that I think is crucial for us to understand what God does for us and how He cares about us and how He’s with us.

Many years ago, King David wrote in Psalm 51:

“Purge me with hyssop. And I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (ESV)

David writes this psalm as he faces the really ugly series of sins in the scandal around Bathsheba and his murder of Bathsheba’s husband. Here is a man who, as an Ancient Near Eastern king, murder wasn’t really even something that often would be a blip on the radar. They could kill as many people as they wanted.

Such leaders could kill whomever whenever they wanted to. There was no reason that David needed to feel bad about this from a worldly standpoint. But, as David was confronted with the truth of God’s Word, He even realizes that there’s something more, something lasting, something better than his kingdom, something better than the land and the palaces, hope of building a temple someday, and the armies, and even the writings he could write down and pass on, something better than all of that.

And that’s really the place that we each should find ourselves, because whatever we value, whatever we place in our hearts as being of value — those are the things that drive us to sin, if they aren’t centered on God. David was chasing after power and pleasure and whatever else he thought would make him happy. But it wouldn’t, not in a lasting way.

Whatever we chase after? It’s not going to last either. I remember growing up, every once in a while we’d We would go to Chesterfield Mall. There were lots of malls in the area at the time. It was the era of the indoor mall, and there were all kinds of them and they usually were packed. But if we were going to go make it more of an excursion, we would go to Chesterfield Mall a little further away.

I remember as a little kid being fascinated by it because it was a bit more quirky than Mid Rivers Mall that was nearby. It wasn’t a set of halls in big straight lines. It had angles and moved around. It had all these really interesting sculptures and fountains and recessed areas with plants.

It felt, well, mighty. It was huge. It had tons of stores. Stores that had been around long before my time. And stores that everyone would presume would still be around long even after my time.

That’s not how things worked out. Chesterfield Mall is being demolished right now, even as I write this. Here was this mighty mall with all this space and marble on the floors and huge planters and sculptures and everything else, and Now it’s a pile of rubble.

Maybe that we’ve passed the era of malls, but everything we look at, everything we build up, everything that we hope is going to somehow give us purpose, it too is headed towards the rubble pile in the end.

Ash Wednesday is a day to face that reality and ask “what are we going to do?” Are we going to look at the strength that we have in ourselves and the strength that we think we can earn and the positions that we think we can place ourselves in? Or will we look to something more lasting?

In Ecclesiastes, we see a journey of the Teacher, King Solomon, going through and reflecting on everything that we could chase after in the world. He could get pretty much anything he wanted. But here’s where he ends, and this is so important, I think, and it’s so fitting for tonight, “The end of the matter, all has been heard” (Ecclesiastes 12:13a ESV).

He’s saying, “I’ve listed out everything you might think of that you think you’re going to make yourself happy in life with. They’re all meaningless in the end.”

We can’t come up with a rejoinder to what Solomon said and somehow make our earthly efforts permanent and full of meaning. He says, I tried it all. Power, fame, pleasure and even wisdom. And, it all passes away.

But early on in Ecclesiastes, we get a hint of something that doesn’t pass away. “I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken away from it. God has done it so that people fear before him.” (Ecc. 3:14)

I’m going to outlast many of the things that I count on and so will you. We’ll outlast our best, most secure solutions to the problems of life. “If only I were this successful, if only I were this wise, if only I were this capable… Well, then I’d have something that would last.”

No, that’s not going to last.

But what does? Fear of the Lord. And when we think about a night like tonight, that’s exactly where we’re being called to. Not fearing God and trembling in uncertainty, wondering what he’s going to do to us, but rather saying, God, I realize all the things I chase after, all the reasons I sin, all the reasons I don’t trust in you, they fall short.

They’re just like me. They come from dust and they’ll return to dust, but you endure and I want you instead. The greatest leaders of the world, the greatest figures in our lives, they’re all limited like you and me. What really matters, the only thing that matters is “Am I trusting in the eternal King, Jesus, or not?”

Someday, the biggest mall, the biggest company, the best book, the best of everything will all be forgotten. They’ll all be meaningless. Where do we want to put our hope? When we think about repentance, repentance isn’t saying, “Oh well, I’m dust and I’ll return to dust, it doesn’t really matter. I guess life is just a waste.”

That’s how we could try to approach Ecclesiastes if we ignore the end of it, but the end is crucial.

The end of it tells us something different. Yes, all the things that we put our trust in, that we wrongly put our trust in, they will fall short. God won’t.

God’s wisdom will remain. And that’s where Solomon lands if we read the full conclusion: “The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecc. 12:13-14)

Solomon says this is the whole of the matter. Depending on how your Bible translates it, it might say this is “the whole duty of man” or “everything man needs to do.” Or it might just say “the whole of man,” and I like that translation because it’s not adding an additional word in there to kind of fill in what the whole is.

Solomon’s point here is that when he talks about fearing God and keeping his commandments, keeping our eyes on Jesus, that’s not just our whole duty, no, that’s our whole hope, our whole life, our whole.

When we take time to repent, as on Ash Wednesday, what where we’re saying is, “God, I know I’m holding on to these other things, and I’m trying to be whole with them. What I really need to do is be whole in you. No other way. It’s not something we can escape. It’s not something we can rewrite. It’s not something we can change.”

I love the symbol of the ash cross. On the one hand we have ash, something of destruction, something of deterioration, a picture of how we do go from dust and return to dust. On the other, it is a cross, the symbol of true life: out of the worst destruction ever, out of the destruction where the very Son of God incarnate in the flesh took on death.

When we put that ash cross on our head, on the one hand it says, yes, I’m a sinner. Yes, I need forgiveness. Yes, I mess up all the time. But, the good news is that, like Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 7:1, we repent in hope.

Repentance doesn’t point to death, not to deterioration, not to weakness, not to inadequacy. Repentance points to the only One who’s adequate, the only One who doesn’t fail, the only One who doesn’t die as He’s triumphed over death.

We keep grabbing onto things that don’t endure. But here’s a reminder again that there is something that endures, and that’s what we’re supposed to hold on to. Solomon, after listing all the experiences he had in life that couldn’t last, said, “Here’s what I’ve realized is wisdom: Encounter the one who lasts.”

That’s our invitation tonight. May we experience meaning that doesn’t fade, meaning only found at the Cross.