Ash Wednesday

The Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg Ash Wednesday 2024 (7 and 11:30am) February 14, 2024 It’s always a little weird when Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. It’s like the secular world and the church world collide in a way that seems starkly incongruous. But this year, I decided to lean into the connection to see where it would take me. And where it took me was, unsurprisingly, to consideration of the heart. Every year on Ash Wednesday, we recite or sing Psalm 51 either during the imposition of ashes or just after, and in that Psalm we ask God to “Create in me, a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” It has been an interesting exercise this year for me to think about this day, Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent in light of this request I am making of God. What does it mean for my heart to be created clean? What does it look like for God to renew a right spirit within me? There’s a camp song that our daughter learned when she was little that is set to this verse from Psalm 51. She went through a phase where she wanted my husband to sing it to her every night before bedtime. It goes Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. So fill me. Heal me. And bring me back to you. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. What are the ways that you need God to create a clean heart in you during this Lenten season? What does it look like for God to renew a right spirit within you? (Or even to renew you?) Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. What are you longing to change? What is the deepest desire of your heart that needs tending to? Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. Lent is a season in which we fast from practices that break our hearts or break the hearts of others, fasting from practices that distract us and draw us away from the heart of God. So fill me. Heal me. And bring me back to you. And when we create space in our fasting then we can embrace practices that are more life-giving, practices that can restore our hearts with God’s help and gracious presence. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. This requires truth telling and radical self-honesty, which is part of the work that we begin this day. And this work can be supported by Lenten practices or disciplines. I’ve started reading a new book as a part of my Lenten practice that looks at fasting and embracing in a new light. The book is titled A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hunger by Christine Valters Paintner. And in this book, the author invites us to get in touch with our true hunger that we so often try to feed or placate with heart-breaking practices, practices that draw us away from the heart of God and from our own truest hearts. She has written a Lenten retreat to encourage us to consider fasting from these practices and in the space opened by that fast, embracing more life-giving practices over the different weeks of Lent. Listen to her invitation: 1. “Fast from multi-tasking and the destructive energy of inattentiveness… Embrace the practice of beholding each thing, person, moment, as you respond to that hunger for presence.” 2. “Fast from anxiety and endless torrent of thoughts that rise up in your mind, thoughts that paralyze you with fear of the future. [Embrace] the radical trust at the heart of things and listen to the hunger for contentment in the moment.” 3. Fast from “speed and rushing through your life.” Embrace “the grace shimmering right here in… holy pause[s].” 4. “Fast from being strong and always trying to hold it together, and instead embrace the profound grace that comes through your vulnerability and tenderness…exploring [your] hunger for the ability to reveal [y]our wounded places and have them seen and loved by another.” 5. “Fast from endless list-making and too many deadlines and enter into the quiet as you listen for what is ripening and unfolding, what is ready to be born.” 6. “Fast from certainty and attempting to control the outcome of things so that you might grow in trust in the great mystery of life.” Embrace the beauty of the unknown and be nourished by new possibilities we would have never dreamed. i It's certainly a different kind of fast than we usually take up, isn’t it? But just maybe, on this Ash Wednesday that is also Valentine’s Day, we need to give some attention in the coming season to all the ways that we break our own hearts, and how God is longing to restore and renew them for us. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. So fill me. Heal me. And bring me back to you. Create in me, a clean heart O, God, that I might be renewed. i. Paintner, Christine Valters. A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hungers in Lent. Broadleaf: Minneapolis, 2024, pp 29-31 in kindle edition.