Recently, Brigham Young University dismissed the best player from their basketball team over an Honor Code Violation and almost assuredly doomed their hopes for tournament glory. While many (many!) commentators could not grasp the harshness of that culture’s rules, they begrudgingly handed over their admiration of the school’s and players’ integrity in handling the situation.
They knew the rules and they kept the rules. Who knew it could be done?
Even more recently, it is brought to light that a football coach at a major college program actually knew in advance that a number of his players, including his star quarterback, had violated NCAA rules and were almost assuredly ineligible to play. His first instinct was to keep it quiet lest it endanger his team’s chances for glory.
He knew the rules and avoided the consequence. Now, that we can understand.
And so we come again to our annual celebration of Ash Wednesday, the world-wide Christian day of penance, where we smudge our countenance with a sign of grief and sorrow, a public admittance that we are sorry about who we are and what we have done, that we regret a world not as it should be. It is a day about guilt and penalty, about rules and codes and our relationship therein, our integrity, or more more likely, our lack of it.
Which is far from enough.
This inscription on our forehead, this shadow cast over the sign of our baptism, is a mark of truth. It is not enough to feel bad about being bad, it is not enough to fear consequence, it is not enough to merely know the rules, as if that was our invitation to sculpt them, twist them, bypass them. Guilt is not the theme of the day – honesty is. Not a little honesty, not an after-the-fact-well-I-guess-you-caught-me-now responsibility, but blunt, frank, open confession. You know, humility.
We are not good. We are not right. That is our confession on Ash Wednesday. We pray for a better world, a world of righteousness and justice and peace. And we know that it can only come one way. Not from us.
Ash Wednesday is our prayer that God would finally be the Lord of us and of this world because we have done such a poor job of it by ourselves.
Ashes are a symbol of grief, of sorrow, of loss. Ash Wednesday is a day of death, of the death of our will and our power and our seeking after glory so that God may finally become our God. It is only when we forego the future of our own creation that God’s future will become ours.
And so we trace again the cross upon our forehead and condemn ourselves and the world of our making and ask this one prayer, that God would take up the ashes of our lives and our world and renew them one more time. That he would fill the emptiness with new Grace and new Spirit and new Hope.
That he would bring us from this winter to the Easter waiting up ahead.
Look – I see a faint ray of dawn, a green shoot of resurrection!
They knew the rules and they kept the rules. Who knew it could be done?
Even more recently, it is brought to light that a football coach at a major college program actually knew in advance that a number of his players, including his star quarterback, had violated NCAA rules and were almost assuredly ineligible to play. His first instinct was to keep it quiet lest it endanger his team’s chances for glory.
He knew the rules and avoided the consequence. Now, that we can understand.
And so we come again to our annual celebration of Ash Wednesday, the world-wide Christian day of penance, where we smudge our countenance with a sign of grief and sorrow, a public admittance that we are sorry about who we are and what we have done, that we regret a world not as it should be. It is a day about guilt and penalty, about rules and codes and our relationship therein, our integrity, or more more likely, our lack of it.
Which is far from enough.
This inscription on our forehead, this shadow cast over the sign of our baptism, is a mark of truth. It is not enough to feel bad about being bad, it is not enough to fear consequence, it is not enough to merely know the rules, as if that was our invitation to sculpt them, twist them, bypass them. Guilt is not the theme of the day – honesty is. Not a little honesty, not an after-the-fact-well-I-guess-you-caught-me-now responsibility, but blunt, frank, open confession. You know, humility.
We are not good. We are not right. That is our confession on Ash Wednesday. We pray for a better world, a world of righteousness and justice and peace. And we know that it can only come one way. Not from us.
Ash Wednesday is our prayer that God would finally be the Lord of us and of this world because we have done such a poor job of it by ourselves.
Ashes are a symbol of grief, of sorrow, of loss. Ash Wednesday is a day of death, of the death of our will and our power and our seeking after glory so that God may finally become our God. It is only when we forego the future of our own creation that God’s future will become ours.
And so we trace again the cross upon our forehead and condemn ourselves and the world of our making and ask this one prayer, that God would take up the ashes of our lives and our world and renew them one more time. That he would fill the emptiness with new Grace and new Spirit and new Hope.
That he would bring us from this winter to the Easter waiting up ahead.
Look – I see a faint ray of dawn, a green shoot of resurrection!
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