Joel 2:12–19

Ash Wednesday

¹²"Yet even now," declares the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; ¹³and rend your hearts and not your garments." Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. ¹⁴Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God? ¹⁵Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; ¹⁶gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. ¹⁷Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep and say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'" ¹⁸Then the LORD became jealous for his land and had pity on his people. ¹⁹The LORD answered and said to his people, "Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.

We heard it at the start of tonight's liturgy: dust you are, and to dust you shall return. The ashes for which this day is named do not show that you are fasting—for who knows if you are?—but they do show everyone that we are dying. And we can be sure of that. Dust we are, and to dust we return. Death is the wages of sin.

But tonight we stare in amazement at One for whom those

words sound so wrong. To talk of the Son of God dying just doesn't seem right. But there we see Him, the very Son of God hanging on a cross and we cry out: "O sacred Head, now

wounded, With grief and shame weighed down, Now scornfully surrounded With thorns, Thine only crown!" (LSB 450:1). If ever there were a head that did not deserve the ashes of today, it was His sacred head!

It doesn't seem right. Why thorns? He should have a golden crown, not thorns. When we look at Jesus we see in our flesh the One who formed us from the dust. Here is the One who in infinite love for our fallen human race became dust for us. And now He will even lay down His head into the dust?

But there is no sin in Him! In Him, there could be no death. How and why will He die? We will spend all this Lent pondering such questions.

When Joel declares a sacred fast, when he urges the trumpet to sound and the people to gather, it was an occasion of return. In the verse just preceding our text Joel cries out, "Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."

Lent is always about a return to. We so often think of it in terms of turning away from—what we are giving up, what we will fast from. Make no mistake about it: it is a good thing to fast. Did not our Lord assume that His disciples would do so when He said in tonight's Gospel: "when you fast"? When, not if! But, by itself fasting, merely going hungry, is nothing more than an empty religious exercise. The Lenten fast goes deeper than just denying yourself some tasty treat. Rather, it invites, it

summons, it urges us back to someone, back to the Lord. "Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love." (Joel 2:13). A Lent that is anything less than a return in faith to the Lord is only a religious game and worth less than nothing. Rather than play games with God, let us hear in this season of Lent His summons to come back to Him, to return to Him now. He does not want some piece of you, some outward display, torn garments and such, or merely a few minutes tossed His way one day a week. No. He wants you, your heart. He says rend your hearts! "A broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise" (Psalm 51:17). A heart that is rent, torn open, is a heart that is wounded, damaged, broken. A torn heart received by God as a pleasing sacrifice. When, from the depths of your being, you plead, "O God, have mercy on me, a sinner! I have made such a mess of it all. I have hurt so many people and failed so often to show Your love, and You know how terrible

my thoughts and how soiled my desires are with sin. Have mercy on me, O Lord! Have mercy!"

Lent is not for pretend sinners. Lent is for real, honest-to-God sinners who have failed in their love of God, who have failed in their love of neighbor, who see this reality, and who by God's grace despise their sin and ache for His forgiveness and for strength to do better. To these the invitation is sheer refreshment: "Even you, even now: Return!" Return, and see the sacred head of Your Savior now wounded. This is the

One we are being called to return to. He is the One who knows that we, on our own, could not come to Him, return to Him, of find Him; so He came to us, returned to us, and found us.

And this Lent we marvel at just how far He went to find us. For it is marvelous indeed that the God of Israel, Yahweh, should take on flesh and blood—as He did in the incarnation. That alone is enough to leave us astounded. But He went even further. Not only did He take on our flesh and blood, not only did He become dust for us, but He also went so far as to lift off from us the burden of our sin, to bear it in His own body to death. He went so far as to own all our sins and failures. Indeed, in the words of St. Paul: "He, who knew no sin," became sin for us "so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). He not only died, but He also died as the greatest sinner of all time, with the sin of the world upon Him—all of it. Yours. Mine. Everyone's. Thus

the Lord revealed that He is indeed merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Look to the cross and see! He bore your sin to death that neither death nor sin might be the end of you. Such is the measure of His love. During Lent, when the Church calls us to return, she is calling us to return to Christ, to draw near to this Savior who was wounded for our transgressions, who was bruised for our iniquity, upon whom was laid the punishment that brought us peace, and in whose stripes we find healing.

She reminds us that the only real life in this whole world is fellowship with Him, communion with Him, and that every time we have settled for anything less, we have allowed ourselves to be deceived and cheated of the great gift of which Baptism made us heirs.

As often as she sets the Table, the Church calls for all her children to return, to come to this wounded Savior who bore our wounds in His own flesh, spilling His blood for us, so that His flesh might be our living bread from heaven and His blood the blotting out of our every sin.

Dust we are, and to dust we shall return. But the shape of the cross recalls that we have a Savior who became dust for us, whose sacred head was laid in the dust of death that the dust of our corrupted being might be rendered incorruptible in Him. Is it any wonder that, pondering such love, the Church raises her voice to that sacred Head and rejoices to call it her very own, her greatest treasure?

Amen.