St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
February 14, 2024
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:L1-2, 12-17
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Abounding In Steadfast Love
So the calendar has been playing some tricks on us lately.
You may remember that just a month and a half ago the Fourth Sunday of Advent was also Christmas Eve, a liturgical mash-up that required some flexibility and a quick turnaround here in church.
And now today, Ash Wednesday, the start of the holy season of Lent… is also Valentine’s Day.
Of course, this calendar collision hasn’t required us to change our plans here in church but it has unleashed some online church humor.
Maybe you’ve seen some of the memes that have been floating around the Internet:
My favorite is the one that shows one of those little candy hearts that usually have sweet messages like “Be Mine” or “I luv U,” but this one says “Remember U R Dust.”
And then at the bottom of the meme there’s this little reminder: “You can’t spell Valentine without Lent.”
Which, you know, is actually true.
I’m usually not a fan of church humor but these have been fun, and, who knows, maybe they’ve helped to remind some people about Ash Wednesday.
And, you know, today’s calendar mash-up does remind us of a great truth.
None of what we are doing here today makes any sense without love.
I’m guessing that you don’t need me to tell you that we are going to die some day.
But we do need to remember and celebrate God’s love for us.
In today’s opening prayer, I said that God hates nothing that God has made.
That’s accurate, as far as it goes, but the truth is way better than that.
As the Prophet Joel wrote long ago, God is “abounding in steadfast love.”
God is abounding in steadfast love – that’s why God came among us in and through Jesus.
Unfortunately, we often reject God’s love.
We turn away from God’s love when we’re not loving - when we judge other people – when we refuse to share what we think is ours – when we are less than faithful in prayer and worship – when we treat people as things to use for our benefit or pleasure - when we think there is such a thing as “us” and “them” when with God it’s always just “us.”
It’s hard to face our sins.
It’s frightening to look at our mortality.
But God is abounding in steadfast love, so we are never rejected and abandoned, no matter what we do or don’t do.
God is abounding in steadfast love, always inviting us, urging us, to turn around, to come back, to live and love as we were always meant to live and love.
May we all have a holy and love-filled Lent, trusting in, and returning to, the God who abounds in steadfast love.
Amen.
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