February 17, 2021
Ash Wednesday
William G. Carter
Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Generally speaking, I am not a fan of lifting Bible passages out of context. But these two sentences shimmer in a way that we can understand the whole.
Paul is writing to people who were strangers. They were strange to him, Gentiles who had no connection with the faith of Israel. They did not experience God as the One who led them out of slavery. They were ignorant of the Ten Commandments. They had never heard one of God's prophets calling them back to faithful living, because they had no interest in whatever faithful living is all about. So Paul can assume that those Gentiles were not only strangers to him; they were strangers to God.
But something had changed. Through the love of Christ, a love that pushes people beyond their tidy boundaries, Paul came to understand how God loves all who were strangers. That God wishes to include all who had stood outside of Israel and its "commonwealth." What was offered to Israel is now available to all God's people.
The key event to announce this inclusion was the crucifixion of Christ Jesus. From a distance, it looked like the political murder of an innocent man. People who believed in God (the Jews) convinced people who didn't believe in God (the Gentiles) to crucify a good man, a teacher and healer. They conspired to kill Jesus, but God brought him back from the dead.
Even more astonishing, neither the insiders nor the outsiders were punished by heaven for doing their worst. Rather, God used that capital execution to announce forgiveness and to invite all people - insiders as well as outsiders - to come home, to form a new humanity where all are welcome and none are strangers. This is the heart of the Gospel preached to the Ephesians.
It is a Gospel for us to unpack week after week, season after season. God has shown great mercy by not obliterating those who crucified the Christ. Heaven's invitation to earth persists: God calls us to put away all hostility and welcome Christ as our peace. We are invited to welcome the graciousness of God and to show this graciousness to all people. "Remember you were without Christ," he says, "and now you have been brought near."
To signify what has changed, Paul says, "Once you were strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." That is an evocative phrase: "strangers of the covenants of promise." We did not know about the promises that God had made. We were not aware of the various forms of hope that connect us to God's activity in the world. But thanks to the grace of God in the work of Jesus Christ, the covenants of promise are extended to all of us.
We will spend the Sundays in the season of Lent to explore these covenants. There are many of them: promises of God set in a rainbow of the clouds, in the cutting of flesh, in the carving of words on stone and the sealing of words on the human heart. The new covenant in Jesus is extended to us through his self-sacrifice on the cross and offered through a gift of bread and wine. One covenant after another, after another, as God binds himself to us and invites us to respond in kind.
Tonight we begin the journey of Lent through
the simple affirmation of who we are. We are creatures. We have limitations -
limited power, limited energy, and a short span of time. Ash Wednesday reminds
us how God formed the human family from the dust of the ground and blew living
Breath into our nostrils. We regularly forget or ignore our total dependence on
grace. So Lent begins with a re-calibration, the scriptural reminder that
"you are dust and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). It is a
reminder to not reach too high, nor to shrug off the mercy that first created
us and ultimately welcomes us.
And from beginning to end, we are invited into God's covenants. These are holy promises that give us hope, that name us as God's children, that offer direction for living and connect us to God's purposes for the world. We will revisit the promises in our Lenten worship together. We will encourage one another to welcome God's grace.
I look forward to taking this journey with you, and pray that God will grant you an open heart, a settled mind, and a sanctified will, that together we might to see God more clearly, to love Christ more dearly, and to follow in the power of the Spirit more nearly. May you have a blessed Lent!
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