Ash Wednesday - February 22, 2023
Readings: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalms 103: 8-18; 2 Colossians 5: 20b – 6: 10; Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
Fifty years ago, a girlfriend and I took ship on the P&O liner, Arcadia, from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia. I landed with a mere $65.00 and knowing no-one Down Under, it was imperative to find work and find it soon. Fortunately, we obtained work at a resort in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, where we remained for the next three months.
What an adventure, what beauty, what delight! The beauty and strangeness of the Outback was beyond anything that I could have imagined. I had brought my Gideon’s New Testament that was given to all students at school in grade 5. Being young and romantic, dazzled and a little afraid, I was moved to memorize Psalm 103 which opens “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name!” How well those words expressed my thoughts and feelings!
Thank you for indulging my trip down Memory Lane. I am often moved to repeat the opening line of Psalm 103. The part of the Psalm included in today’s readings, however, is further along, in verses 8-18. These verses contain what for me is among the most tender and most consoling of all Scripture. There is no smiting of the evil doers here! God, is like a father who knows intimately the faults of his children and loves them “warts and all”.
“He will not always chide … nor requite us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” God “is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
We live in a broken world which is in such desperate need of Good News; of the truth of the deep love that God has for every atom of creation. Our recent parish conference on mission considered how we can communicate to our hurting world the tender love of God, as manifest in Psalm 103 and in the person of Jesus. It is too big a subject to investigate here. But, I would recommend a reading of Psalm 103 and a rousing chorus of “Jesus loves me” as good places to start.
- Allison Adams
“Identity” from Sunrise Mass by Ola Gjeilo
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