“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near— a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy. Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’” – Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
If I am being honest, on this Ash Wednesday I’m not really interested in having ash on my head and someone telling me to remember I am dust and to dust I will return. I’m not interested in yet another reminder of death. I’m so tired of looking at death, all the time, most especially as I look out into the world at the genocide in Gaza, where we hear about terrible things like the little girl trapped under a car filled with her dead family, pleading for her life, only to be have bombs intentionally rained down on her from above. There is a war and a famine in Sudan. There are forests which are ashen with fire from a very strong El Niño year, borne out of our collective abject desecration of the gift of Creation. Underneath the waters, there are dead zones in the oceans. There are the ashes of personal losses this past year that I’m still mourning, and I bet you could count some up too in your life.
I could go on and on. So could you.
I am mostly grief stricken, as I was sharing with Kate, our Stated Clerk, on Monday, about Gaza. I feel very helpless and find myself crying a lot about it. I have a hard time imagining it all, even though it’s right in front of me. A friend and her partner are trying to help a co-worker in Gaza who is afraid he’ll be bombed next. He has lost so much – his home, his workplace, his house of worship – and has been displaced to Rafah, which was supposed to be a “safe” zone. The price for smuggling people out these days is 10k/person, and he has 8 family members who lost their passports in the rubble who he rightly refuses to be separated from, among them elders and children. So, they are trying to figure out what to do in the middle of a horrific situation. A friend of mine lost 17 family members in one day and I don’t know how to wrap my brain around that. There are so many stories.
Of the four lectionary passages for today, Ash Wednesday, the one from the Prophet Joel calls most deeply to my Spirit. The people Joel was writing to were in the midst of their own ashes, a plague of locusts which was leaving them starving and hopeless. Imagine, living in an early farming world, 2500 years ago, with that level of “technology” and “geography” and “travel” and “education” and all the rest and having nothing but miles upon miles of nothing in the fields thanks to the locusts? I can’t wrap my mind around that destruction either.
What would happen next? Would God intervene? Is there any help to be found? What do we do? Joel was speaking to people isolated and afraid, at the end of their rope, crying out from the depths of their souls.
I am reminded when I read these ancient words that where I am at these days is not something new. It also doesn’t mean that suffering is OK or acceptable. But it does mean that God’s people have been trusting God for a very long time where there is nothing else to hope in or trust for.
Joel also reminds us of the other age-old antidote to suffering: community. “Get together!” says Joel. “Do not suffer alone! And get together as your whole, real selves! Bring your wailing and your tears to the community. Bring your heart here. We will pray, and fast, and trust together, do not be alone in your worry, and weeping and wailing.”
Gathering together for personal and communal repentance on Ash Wednesday is an act of hope. The very act of coming together and publicly renouncing our sin testifies to our confidence in God’s mercy. One does not have to look far in this world to see great calamity. It often does seem that “the great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast” (Zephaniah 1:14). We live in a state of communal, systemic sinfulness that wreaks powerful consequences. We also know that God has the power to avert those disasters and to help us to change our ways, and so we come together to pray and to hope: Who knows?”
I wonder. I am still trying to believe in hope and healing and to trust that God is working their mysterious way out amongst us, somehow. I am grateful for community as we begin Lent in all the many ways it shows up in our lives and in the life of this world.
I’ll go get ashes anyway this Wednesday and I hope and pray you will too. We are dust, but dust formed the Universe as we are told in Genesis. And Jesus walked down dusty roads as we hear in the Gospels.
May this Lenten Season, which starts today, be a blessing. May your gatherings in communities to get ashes be full of fragile, bold, brave hope.
Deep peace,
Rev. Shannan R. Vance-Ocampo
General Presbyter