Responding to God

I went to an Ash Wednesday service this week. It’s the third year in a row that I’ve gone to one at a Catholic church. I always feel a bit out of place since I’m not actually a Catholic. I fumble around in the prayer book to find the outline of the mass so I can participate and then sit quietly while everyone else goes up for communion. In the days leading up to the service I agonize over whether or not I will leave the ashes on when I go to work. If I were an official Catholic it wouldn’t be an issue for me; I’d leave them on. But since I’m somewhere in between Anabaptism and Catholicism (a theological no-man’s land) I can never decide what to do. I don’t want to appear pretentious or insult real Catholics by posing as a Catholic when I’m not. I also don’t want to be a coward and wash the ashes off simply because it will make me stand out. The persecuted church would be ashamed of you, I tell myself.

So why do I wake up at 5:15 on a Wednesday to put myself through this torture? Perhaps it’s because I feel I’m working my way up to becoming a Catholic. I’ll get the ashes this year and maybe in a few more years I'll be taking communion. Perhaps it’s because I really am pretentious and I like feeling more devout than my non-liturgical friends who slept in till 6:00. Or perhaps I go because I think I will receive something important there and I need to show up in order to receive it. All three of those are probably true. So I follow the queue up to the front of the church and pray for God to give me a proper attitude and reverence. As the priest presses his thumb into the dish of ashes and makes the sign of the cross on my forehead, he says these words to me: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.” The words stick in my mind.

I’ve been thinking about those words this week and meditating on them in my prayer. I’ve also been thinking about the significance of the ashes. They are the burnt remains of the palm branches from the previous Palm Sunday, a reminder of human fickleness. We praise God one day and are ready to kill him the next. I've been thinking of the verse in Ecclesiastes that says “All come from dust, and to dust all return.” I will die one day, and all that will remain of me on this earth is a pile of dirt. What does that mean for how I should live?

I've also been thinking about the book of Hebrews; it has a lot to say about turning away from sin and being faithful to the gospel. The author repeatedly urges his audience not to get lazy and to hold on to their faith. The author doesn’t address any big issues in the church the way Paul does in his letters to the Corinthians (e.g And now let’s talk about incest). But the Hebrews are struggling with sin nonetheless. They are starting to get lazy and drift away from their faith. They are already familiar with the gospel message but the author is concerned that they aren't really paying attention to it or taking it seriously. So he writes to them to encourage them to get back on track. Over the course of the book, he presents case studies of two different types of responses to God and the consequences of each response.

One of the case studies focuses on the Israelites just before they were supposed to enter into the promised land. In Hebrews 3 and 4 the author reminds his audience that not all of the Israelites were able to enter the promised land. Although God had promised the land to them, they did not believe that God could follow through with his promise. They scouted out the land and began to doubt God's promise when they saw the size of the people living there. They whined and complained that they would have been better off if they had stayed in Egypt and they blamed God and Moses for what they saw to be their impending death in the desert. They didn't believe God's promise and as a result they didn't obey his instructions to take over the land. As the author of Hebrews puts it “the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.” Consequently, God kept the Israelites from entering the promised land until that whole generation of people had died.

Both in Judaism and Christianity the narrative of the Israelites is archetypal. Not only can it tell us interesting things about people from the past, it gives us a framework for interpreting our own lives. We see the story of the Israelites mirrored in our own story. When the author of Hebrews calls attention to the story of the Israelites, he is also calling his audience to look for themselves in the story. “Look at this,” he says, “Do you see what the Israelites did here? Do you see what happened as a result of their unbelief? This is going to be your story too if you aren’t careful.”

But it doesn't have to be our story. There is another archetype that we can follow. This archetype is given in the stories of Abraham, Moses, and all those who believed the promises God made to them and responded in obedience. Abraham believed God even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his own son, the son that God said would bring him many descendants. He had that much faith that God could do what God had promised, even overcoming death. And because of his faith, he did inherit what was promised to him.

Stories like this serve as an alternative narrative to the disobedience of the Israelites, and they reinforce the idea that faithful obedience is requisite for inheriting what God has promised. As the author of Hebrews says, “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised” (H 10:36). God is certainly faithful to his promises, but the author is warning us that our unfaithfulness can disqualify us. If Abraham had not responded to God in faith and obedience, he would have ended up disinherited just like the Israelites who died in the desert. Instead, because of his faith and obedience, he was able to receive what God had promised to him.

The story of our own lives is still unfolding. The author of Hebrews pleads with us to learn from those who have gone before us. “For we also have had the gospel preach to us, just as they did” (H 4:2). Now the question remains: how will we respond to it? The words spoken by the priest seem apt: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.”

-David