Mercy and Ashes

Mercy and Ashes March 1, 2017

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With a little bit of self indulgence out of the way, this morning we get to the good part–facing down the reality of death.

Although, even so, even when you say it out loud and try to imagine it, try to cope with it, it can’t be real. Death is such an impossibility, such a ridiculous proposition. The body is so alive, surely it will always go on. And even more so the soul. Whenever anyone dies I am incapable of fathoming how such a thing could happen. I expect always to run into him or her just around the next corner. It takes always reminding myself that the person has gone away and won’t be coming back. And it is even more impossible to imagine that I myself will leave here and have my body plunked into the ground.

I always think the women standing at the foot of the cross, weeping of course, must have also been so surprised. Jesus must have been so much more alive than any one of us are. And it takes a great tearing, a ripping away of life to get us out of here one by one. It must have been such an unfathomable shock.

Like holding an infant just born and letting an ashy cross be smeared on the smooth, perfect skin. That always made me come all of pieces.

Death is a bitter consequence for turning away from God. It is a terrible judgement. That the bonds of love, affection, familiarity, comfort should be rent asunder one by one as each person goes down the grave is so terrible, so awful. And yet we go on bearing it over and over.

What a great mercy, then, that God, even though he didn’t have to, would come and endure our death in the death of his Son. What a great love with which he loves us that we don’t, when we grab on to him, face that death alone, nor face the loss of those so precious, so necessary for our own happiness without hope.

And that we don’t have to do anything, which we can’t anyway, to go to him in eternal life. I can’t make my own life go on even one moment, I cannot sustain my own breath, I cannot make my heart keep beating. I certainly cannot be alive forever even in my soul. Death is inevitable for me. But for God, who holds the vastness of the cosmos together by his Word, it is not too much. I need only trust him. I need only repent and hang on to his cross.

A blessed Ash Wednesday to you all.


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