Ash Wednesday - March 5, 2003
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
Psalm 103 or 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
For 40 days and 40 nights Jesus kicked pebbles in the wasteland of Judea, inventing Lent. We are left with his memory and a 40-day season of our own. A season in which to do what he did remember how to use the time we have been given between birth and death.
Lent is like being laid up with a broken leg. You tell your friends it was an accident that happened on the ski slope, but you know it wasn’t an accident at all. It is what happens when you decide to be a skier. At that point your purpose was no longer to get from the top of the mountain to the bottom safely, without accident, perfectly. Your purpose became nothing less than flying.
You had stood there for a moment, poised in the cold wind, shivering, looking down the fast hill, being scared. You pushed off the secure ledge and dove into the fall line, taking the mountain in its steepest part, until you were going so fast you lost your breath in the gale of panic. Instantly you were at the edge of your own capacity to control your speed and direction. You pushed down hard on your left leg, bending both knees into the turn, slicing the snow with the blades on your feet, cutting the mountain as if it could bleed. The turn took you across, slowed you down, rescued you for an instant from gravity.
But the mountain understood what you had decided, did not fondle you or go flat in front of you. The mountain fought back, took you over its hump and threw you toward the trees on the edge of its wide scar. You put everything into your right leg, bending your knees again, pressing all your blood into the turn, cutting away from the woods, safe again.
But immediately back into the fall line where you thought your time had come, you hit a bump you never saw and left the earth for the tops of pines, floating with your belly up. The sky stepped toward you. The clouds unpacked their secrets. You knew again why you kept coming back to the mountain, why you kept going to the top. It was not to be warm and dry. It was not to be asleep. It was to be alive.
There is more to being alive than a warm fire and a cozy roof. That is why, for example, you also believe in God. You left the protected, perfect cavity of your mother’s womb and crashed out into the world where you nearly suffocated in the harsh wind and died of embarrassment at being named in front of all those strangers.
You had never been there before, but you claimed your place in the middle of their hearts. As if it had never been done in all of history, you invented love and gave yourself over into the care of people whose names you did not know. Then you dared to grow up and do it again and again. Believing in God is what you called it – the habit of crashing into new worlds and claiming them one by one as home. But you forget. You keep thinking things are supposed to be more orderly than this. You keep looking for ways to make the landing soft. You buy lots of rugs and pillows. Then you start looking for ways to hold on to what you have. You start wanting to say no to every invitation. You stay in your room. You turn out the light. You hide.
But the world hollers in your window. It wants to play with you. By now you hesitate. You think you are supposed to be perfect, finished, able to anticipate every new fact, every ambiguous choice. You think stumbles are so dangerous they will kill you. You want to stop moving. You want to count your money. You want, in other words, to stop believing in God. But God believes in you. Your money floats. The earth quakes and your cozy roof falls around you. Security goes up like steam to heaven. You are cold, wet and ugly. You are cast up, as if from the whale’s belly, on a strange beach. You are naked and embarrassed. And you remember what it is like to be born. It is not necessary to be dry, neat, well groomed and pretty. It is no fun to be finished. And so, since it was winter, you went skiing. And there you are now suspended as usual between earth and heaven, between two worlds you do not understand. Your feet are firmly planted in the air. But you are coming down. As you crash on the ice you remind yourself: It was not my purpose to get to the bottom without falling. I could have crawled and done that. You remember that it was your purpose to live at the far limit of your capacity to control and to manipulate and to be perfect. It was your purpose to be alive.
When they visit you, you cannot tell them it was a skiing accident. You probably should leave Lent out of it. And they will not understand if you say you broke your leg because you believe in God and remember Jesus.
Let it be our secret.