let the bones you have crushed

rejoice

Let’s do something a little different. Let’s skip the gospel, and instead work our way through appointed Psalm for Ash Wednesday, Psalm 51. 

Psalm 51 is the prayer King David wrote after ordering the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah.

It was also one of Martin Luther’s favorite psalms.

So to begin, let’s open our hymnals to Psalm 51. 

Here’s a little trick, all the psalms are in our hymnal. They’re the first 150 hymns. So, to find Psalm 51, just turn to hymn number 51 in your hymnal.

…Got it?

Okay. Let’s recite the beginning of Psalm 51 responsively, verses one through six. 

I’ll recite the odd verses, and you all respond by reciting the even verses.

*READ V.1-6 OF PS.51*

Well, this is no psalm for the faint-hearted. Is it?

“My sin is ever before me. / Against you ONLY have I sinned; and done what is evil in your sight; so that you are justified when YOU speak and right in YOUR judgement.”

It’s a heavy psalm. Isn’t it?

The intensity the psalm, though, just serves to mirrors the intensity of this evening.

Ash Wednesday is a formidable evening all in all.

It’s an evening about the stuff of Psalm 51; Sin, and the righteous judgement that follows in its wake, Death. 

And this service doesn’t simply talk about these two facts of our existence, either; Ash Wednesday forces us to confront them… 

Soon we will participate in a unique and thoroughgoing confession. 

A confession I doubt none of us will have trouble relating to at some point or another, if not the entire time.

Then, we will be invited to come forward and receive the mark of the cross in ash upon our forehead to be reminded we are dust and to dust we shall return. 

It’s a humbling evening. 

Over the course of the years, though, I’ve come to learn it’s not simply being reminded I’m dust and to dust I shall return that makes this evening so heavy, it’s being reminded that we all are, together.

Not only am I dust and to dust shall I return; but so are you, so will you.

Tonight we reckon with the fact that, not only will we die, but so will the rest of us, too. The person sitting next to you. The person you’re carrying a grudge against. The person you care for so deeply. 

We will all die.

Which, despite all out attempts to deny this fact, is obviously true. 

We have had to lay beloved members to rest. Haven’t we? Sometimes it’s come as a blessing, and others it’s come like a thief.

But, every time its been true. Hasn’t it? 

None of us get out of here alive.

It’s a somber fact. 

And it’s not just a fact that bears on our future, either. It’s also one that bears on our present life together, now. 

We are regularly tempted to believe we can count on each other to carry on the mission of this congregation. Aren’t we?

Tonight, though, we are reminded that each and every one of our commitments are contingent. 

Sin and Death make all our best efforts and most sincere promises conditional. 

Should Death, heaven forbid, visit us untimely, all our commitments will go unkept. 

Should Sin, all too likely, get the better of us, our promises will turn out to be worth no more than the paper they’re printed on…

It’s a humbling reckoning. Isn’t it? That not only will we die, but that all of us will, too. And this fact makes our life together uncertain even now.

But, as it turns out, losing hope in ourselves, is the most hopeful thing that can happen to any of us!

And I chose this phrase carefully, too: “happen to us.” Because on our own, we will not give up hope in ourselves.

…Let’s continue with Psalm 51, verses 7 through 12.
This time, let’s have the left side of the congregation recite the odd verses, and the right side of the congregation respond with the even numbered verses.

*READ V.7-12 OF PS.51*

To be honest, this part of the psalm that struck me this year. And one particular line of this part of the psalm. 

Did you notice it? Verse 8. 

“Let the body,” who has crushed?

Yes! God! “Let the body you, God have crushed rejoice.”

This psalm confesses a hard truth; God is in the business of crushing us.

This is the counter-intuitive wisdom of the cross. 

As sinful creatures, our lives are on a trajectory that, left to our own power, is bound for Death.

So God, in love, takes our lives from us.

God does this through death. 

Capital “D” death, yes. But also, lower-case “d” deaths, too. Those times and places our lives are crushed, reduced to rubble and ash. And there, from the shadow of the cross, God does God’s best work! Resurrection! New life!

But, and here’s the rub, you can’t get to this good work of God, without first going through the hard death. So God, in love, will work this work upon us. God will crush us. 

Martin Luther called this God’s alien work. 

In other words, it’s what God does, to prepare our lives for God’s proper work; resurrection!

God is so intent upon giving you new, eternal LIFE that even if you will not let go of your sinful life; and let’s be honest, who among us will? Then God, in love, will take it away. God will reduce our lives as they are, to nothing.

God will do the deed to you and me!

“Let the body you have crushed, O God, rejoice.”

As the old saying goes, sometimes God’s sweetest gift is the bitter pill.

This what you’re marked with tonight; the humble reminder, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Tonight the church prepares us for, marks us with, God best work. 

As sinful creatures, though, this work begins by taking our lives as they are, and reducing them to nothing.

And then, out of that nothing, creating everything!

This is why, ultimately, the reminder that we are dust is not bad news! 

Nothing is what God uses to create! Nothing is everything God needs!

Isn’t that what God used to create the first of our kind? Dirt? 

Isn’t that what God promises to raise you and me from on the last day? 

“Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”

That’s why the ashes you are marked with is a tracing of another mark your received first! The mark of the cross you were sealed with in your baptism!

Nothing is raw material for Easter Sunday!

That’s what you’re being marked with tonight!

…Okay. Let’s finish our Psalm. Verses 13 through 17. 

Let’s have _______ read the odd numbered verses, and ______ respond with the even numbered verses.

*READ V.13-17 OF PS.51*

“The sacrifice acceptable to the Lord is a troubled spirit, a troubled and broken heart, O God, you will not despise.”

The sacrifice God is after isn’t any of our efforts or intentions, it’s the shout of alleluia that bursts tumbles from the lips of every opened mouth of the day of resurrection!

That, ultimately, is what God’s work of crushing our lives and troubling our spirits is for; to make our death into the sacrifice of new life! To make our lives into the shape of our hope, the cross.

As the old church sign put it, “when you’re down to nothing, GOD is up to something.”

God’s work of troubling us, crushing us, takes our hope away from ourselves, and places it where is belongs, where it is no longer contingent, but enteral; upon the one who reigns from the cross!

Jesus by his death, destroyed the power of death! 

Now, when we butt up against our own Sin or Death, they become occasions to lodge our trust into the wounds of the one who will never fail us, Jesus Christ!

And that is the most hopeful thing that can ever happen to any of us!

Tonight is about the promise God made to our first ancestors, that nothingness and dust are prime material for God’s best work!

Tonight is about the promise that when our lives are reduced to nothing, we have everything Jesus needs!

Tonight is about the promise that the weight of our future doesn’t hang on our shoulders; it hangs on the cross!

And this promise gives us hope. It gives us freedom. It takes the burden of our fate off ourselves, and places it upon the one who has promised to deliver it to us all along, come hell or high-water; Jesus Christ!

Now, Let’s sing of this one whose love in humble services bears all our need.

“Lord, Whose Love in Humble Service;” ELW 712