Ashes to a cross........it must be time

It must be time.

Once a year we stop and contemplate dying: our dying, the world’s dying, the death of all we hold dear.  Once a year we go so far as to take on our foreheads, for the entire world to see, an ashen mark of a cross.  They are the ashes of our good intentions and false praise.  They are the ashes of our feeble attempts to order the universe.  The cross of ashes is messy.  It marks us.  It defines us for the world.

We come, Savior, to your cross to offer our sacrifice of confession.  We beg the mercy of your lovingkindness.  Accept our prayer.  Forgive us, for we have sinned.

This is a cross that can only be rooted in confession, a long, comprehensive confession.  A confession not of guilt so much as it is a confession that we have tried our very best to be God these last 12 months, and in order to pretend we are God, we had to turn our gaze away from the one who is God.  

We turned our gaze away from the powerful ones who chose violence over forgiveness.  We turned our gaze away when violence was our expedient choice.  We turned our gaze away because we know we are them.  We cannot help turning away, pretending, trying to secure our own safety.  We are not God, and so it will always work out this way.

We come, Savior, to your cross to offer our sacrifice of confession.  We beg the mercy of your lovingkindness.  Accept our prayer.  Forgive us, for we have sinned.

Ashes began our Lenten journey through the valley of the shadow of death. Now we must confront the cross even though most of us are suspicious that God could have found another way.  Even now we reject God’s plan for God’s creation.

We have tiptoed through this time of purple, devoting little time to pray and read, to give alms and confess.  Now this death must happen; we will prove we are the powerful ones.  Jesus will die at our hands; parts of us must die alongside him. 

We are a resurrection people.  But first, we are people of the cross.

We come, Savior, to your cross to offer our sacrifice of confession.  We beg the mercy of your lovingkindness.  Accept our prayer.  Forgive us, for we have sinned.