Ash Wednesday – Year C
February 17, 2010
The Reverend Robert W. Cowperthwaite

          “ …then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” [Is. 58:10 – 11]

Scripture is full of wonderful promises like this one from today’s Isaiah passage. Originally intended to offer a ray of hope to a people beaten down politically and spiritually, they continue to raise the hopes of us who need some good news in our lives, especially with the many concerns we have about current economic conditions.

          As we enter this holy season of Lent, these words give us something to look forward to – at the other end. But that is a long way off. There is an old spiritual, I think, that goes something like, “if you don’t bear the cross, you can’t wear the crown.” As much as we love to hear those wonderful promises, we are less enthusiastic about what we may be asked to do to in order to receive them.

          The quote I started with picked up in the middle of a sentence. The first word was, “then.” We can’t start at the end, we need to start from the beginning. Prior to the promise in Isaiah is the call to fasting. It is easy enough to put on sackcloth and to wear ashes, but Isaiah calls God’s people to a different fast. As we enter the Lenten season, listen again to Isaiah’s challenge:

 “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? [Is. 58:2-7]

          The promises are wonderful, but we have to do our part if we are going to realize and appreciate them.