Jonah 3:1-10
The reading from the Book of Jonah that we heard a few minutes ago tells us that, after Jonah called the ruler and people of Nineveh to repentance for their sins, they did indeed repent. And their repentance was accompanied by certain outward actions that symbolized and underscored their humility before God, and testified to their acknowledgment that their behavior had displeased him and invited his punishment. We read:
“So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. Then word came to the king of Nineveh; and he arose from his throne and laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes.”
So, the king of Nineveh sat in ashes. At other times and in other places in the Old Testament – but in similar circumstances – people put ashes on their heads as a token of their penitence and shame, and of their deep humility before the Lord.
Why ashes? Well, let’s think for a minute not only about what ashes may represent, but about what ashes actually are, and where they come from.
If something is torn, it can probably be fixed with tape. If something is broken, it can probably be fixed with a couple of nails. If something is cracked, it can probably be fixed with glue.
But, if something has been consumed by fire, and burned to ashes, it cannot be fixed. It cannot be restored or revived. It is totally destroyed. It is gone forever.
St. Peter, in his First Epistle, admonishes all of us with these words:
“All of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’”
Pride does indeed lay at the root of many if not most of our sinful attitudes and actions. The Book of Proverbs says several things about pride – none of them complimentary:
“When pride comes, then comes shame.”
“By pride comes nothing but strife.”
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
It is indeed very often because of pride, in one form or another, that each of us has fallen into something wrong or improper that we then later regret when God’s law puts us under the conviction that what we did or said – in our pride – was wrong and hurtful.
So, it is often the case that God’s word of judgment tears into our pride; that God’s wrathful anger breaks open our pride; and that God’s threat of punishment cracks through our pride.
And we then feel bad because of our sins – for a while. We suppress our pride and its harmful influence – for a while. But we don’t totally let go of our wounded – but still living – pride.
And then, when the immediate intensity of the feeling of guilt subsides, and we slip back into our old routines, we put some tape on our torn pride. We put a couple of nails into our broken pride. We put some glue onto our cracked pride.
Our pride once again raises its ugly head and sharpens its claws, and the whole vicious cycle begins yet again. Our repentance was incomplete. Our remorse was half-hearted. We didn’t forsake our sinful pride, but we hung onto it. We patched it up and fixed it. We then invited it to dominate and control our lives once again.
In true repentance, however, sinful human pride is not merely torn, broken, or cracked. It is not merely injured, but it is killed.
With a sincere sorrow over sin, our greedy pride is not merely put into a state of temporary disrepair, but it is incinerated by a deep and thorough remorse over the wrong we have done, and over the good, we have failed to do. Our lascivious pride is burned up by a deep and sincere regret over the pain we have inflicted onto others, and over the harm, we have done to our own soul.
Our arrogant pride is razed to the ground, destroyed and obliterated, by a fearful admission that we have offended God, and have placed ourselves on a pathway to damnation by our many transgressions.
That’s what ashes mean. That’s what ashes are. That’s what genuine repentance means. That’s what genuine repentance is.
And that’s what we are all called to, in this penitential season of Lent: this season, not of a torn pride, not of a broken pride, and not of a cracked pride; but this season of a pride that has been turned to ashes.
Physical, external ashes may serve as a symbol of humility and sorrow, to remind us of the need to repent and to humble ourselves before the Lord.
But the real ashes – the spiritual and internal ashes – are the reality of that true humility and of that sincere sorrow, deep down in our minds and hearts.
Yet in the midst of this repentance – this real, ashen repentance -, we remember what St. Peter said:
“God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”
And immediately after that line, he goes on to write this:
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”
Humility and ashes before God are not an end in themselves. Rather, they prepare the way for what God really wants to do for us – during the season of Lent, and in all times and seasons. Psalm 113 speaks to this desire on the part of God, and to how he accomplished his desire to redeem and save his people:
“Who is like the Lord our God, who dwells on high, who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth? He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes – with the princes of His people.”
God, who is almighty, holy, and righteous, always loved his creatures even when they – when we – defied him and ran away from him. And when the right time came, he humbled himself in the person of his Son to be born of a virgin, so as to pursue us with his Word and Spirit; and to die and rise again for us, to redeem, restore, and exalt us.
In his Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul explains this in more detail:
“God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Christ died for you, and in Christ, you have died to sin. Christ was raised up for you, and in Christ, you have been raised up to heaven itself, where your citizenship now is, and where your destiny will be.
The righteousness of our Savior has been credited to us who believe in the One “who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” – as Paul reminds us in his Epistle to the Romans.
Jesus came among us – and in his Word and sacraments he comes among us still – preaching repentance, and also announcing forgiveness to those who are penitent; preaching the need for a humility before God that is like ashes, and also proclaiming and applying to us an exaltation and a washing away of all that is dirty and unclear in us, filling us with heavenly joy and supernal peace.
Through the Prophet Isaiah, God’s Son himself prophetically speaks to us:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
If you do not first know and experience the ashes of a heavy heart before the Lord, and the ashes of sadness and mourning over your sins, then you will never know and experience the true joy of being able to praise Christ for the cleanness and beauty of his wondrous mercy: as he clothes you in his righteousness, and makes you to be righteous and acceptable to his Father – who by adoption is now also your Father.
But when in repentance, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, you are emptied of all pride, then Jesus fills you with his healing grace. When in repentance you acknowledge your poverty in spirit, then the message of life and liberation that is good news to the poor, becomes good news to you. You are set free from the power of sin and death.
Your hope is now in God, and not in yourself. Your aspirations are now shaped by his loving will and direction, and not by your own selfish pride. Jesus does this for you. Jesus does this in you.
We close with these words from the song-writer Steven Green:
Out of ashes prayers are lifted from the weary mourners’ call,
Broken hearts are being mended, Jesus’ stripes can heal them all.
Out of ashes into freedom, out of dying into life,
See the joy that’s set before us in the blinding cross of Christ.
Out of ashes He is risen, seated with the heavenly hosts.
Clouds of witnesses are praising Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.