The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit... (Psalm 51:17)

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the forty day season of Lent, the season in which we prepare for Easter. During Advent, while we prepare for Christmas, the time is marked by hope, love, peace, and joy. But in Lent, we are called on to make preparations of a different nature. We know that the end of our Lenten journey is the celebration of Easter, a time of great joy in the community of faith. But we also know that before Easter comes, the denial of Christ comes, the betrayal, and trial, the mocking, the beating, the crucifixion of Christ. So in Lent, as we set out on this journey of forty days, we set out with an awareness that the path we take is difficult, full of emotions, subdued and somber.

But today, wherever else this Lenten journey will take us, we begin here, on Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is an old tradition, started centuries ago as a way to mark the beginning of this season. The ashes that you receive on this day have two meanings. First, ashes were symbols of mourning and repentance. In the Old Testament, we read of the people putting on 'sackcloth and ashes', sitting in the dust, symbols of repentance, particularly after hearing and heeding the words of prophets who reminded them of how they had strayed from God's path and called them to return faithfully to God's path.

Second, ashes are a symbol of our mortality. We are finite beings. We live and we die. As we say at funeral services, we are "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," even as Adam was created from the dust of the ground, and we, too, return to the dust of the ground. The ashes remind us that despite how we live and behave sometimes, our life on earth is finite – we have a beginning and an ending, both of which are in God's hands. We are not God. We are not invincible. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Traditionally, ashes for this day come from the burned palms from last year's Palm Sunday. The Palms that symbolized the joy with which Jesus was ushered into Jerusalem. But we know that the people quickly turned on Jesus, even though they had celebrated him when it was convenient. The people who praised them were also those who condemned him. And so the Palms that ushered Jesus into Jerusalem in joy also usher us into Lent with that great awareness we have of our own inconsistency. We, too, ask Christ to be a guiding teacher in our lives only to change our minds, or at least act as though we've changed our minds, as soon as things seem difficult. Palms to ashes. This is the nature of humanity, the cycle in which we seem caught.

So what is our task on this Ash Wednesday? Like in the days of the prophets, we are called to heed the voices that are telling us it is time to repent, to return to God, to make amends. We are called to recognize our own human limitations – to stop pretending that we are God, that we have all the answers, that we are in control of everything.

But of course, life keeps reminding us that there are limits to our control. The spiritual self-evaluation we are called to make beginning on Ash Wednesday are intended to make us get our priorities straight, to clean up the messier aspects of our lives. Now, the next six weeks- is the time to clean up the messes that we've made of our lives. Certainly, forty days is not long enough to get out of some of the problems in our lives. But forty days is long enough to take our problems to God, to acknowledge that we need a spiritual heart transplant – a new heart. "Create in me a new heart, and renew a right spirit within me… Wash me thoroughly . . . cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me."

Ash Wednesday is a time to be honest with ourselves and with God about who we are, what we've done that we shouldn't have, what we've left undone that we should have done, and what we plan, by God's help, to do about it.

For this new start, we sometimes think God requires a sacrifice as an acknowledgement of our sin. In Lent, we have been taught to think of sacrificing things like chocolate or TV. But God requires a different sacrifice, not one of things, but of our stiff-necked will. "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart . . . [God] will not despise." Give yourself up this season of Lent. It is the best sacrifice you can make, and the rewards are complete: God will create in you a clean heart, grant you a right spirit, restore your joy, and give you a willing spirit to complete this journey.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit...