A Broken and Contrite Heart


Is there a more exquisitely intertwined set of readings assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary than those for Ash Wednesday? In the faithfully liturgical congregation with whom I am privileged to worship, Bethel Lutheran Church, we initially encountered Psalm 51 with its ardent expressions of penitence:

"Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity...hide your face from my sins...create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me...sustain in me a willing spirit...," and, movingly, "the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."

We then turned our ears to the prophet Joel, who in Chapter 2 calls us publicly to this attitude: "Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love," and affectingly instructs us in the nature of our penitence: "Rend your hearts, and not your garments." We are not to make a public display of our confession of sin and desire God's mercy, Joel says, but are to concentrate on inward repentance, breaking the spirit of pride and arrogance that keeps our heart captive to sin. 

From Paul in 2 Corinthians 6 we then had the good word about the fruits of repentance and the nature of the Christian life once we have opened our broken hearts fully to God and are able to receive God's love and freely serve. A life of outward hardships, it is also one that proclaims God's kingdom at every turn: "We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and behold -- we are alive; as punished, yet not put to death; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything." And finally, Jesus in Matthew 6 urges us not to make a public display of our piety so that we may be seen by others, "like the hypocrites" do.

How often do we witness true repentance practiced in public life? The answer is: Almost never. The annals of history are brimming with sad stories of wrongdoing whose consequences became far more severe because of the perpetrator's unwillingness to confess, when caught, that "I did it." This is being played out yet again locally with the OSU football program. (Remember the heartwarming movie "Dave" from many years ago, in which Kevin Kline's character --impersonating the President -- freely confesses his full role in a scandal and appears to immediately incur the good will of the entire nation?)

The Ash Wednesday readings offer us an immeasurably great gift in their exhortation to make true, inward repentance part of not only our Lenten discipline but our daily discipline. Such is the means by which we are to "store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal" (Matthew 6:20).

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