Ash Wednesday
February 26, 2020
Our reflection will be guided by excerpts from Oscar Romero – the former Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador.
Oscar Romero lived in his native El Salvador. When he was young, he told his family that he wanted to become a priest instead of entering the family trade. He was trained and ordained. He was a moderate – preaching good sermons that upset no one. He was considered a good candidate when the time came to choose a new archbishop – because it was expected that he would continue to ‘not rock the boat.’
Romero was shaken out of his safe outlook with the death of his friend Fr. Rutilio Grande. Romero could no longer keep silent. He engaged the local community and realized the level of injustice and oppression that they faced. Fr. Grande had been agitating against these issues. Romero used his weekly radio broadcast to tell the stories of the local people who were being murdered and to advocate for justice.
In 1980 while celebrating a mass in honour of the mother of a friend, Romero was shot and killed as he stood behind the altar. Days before his murder, he said:
“All conversion, all change began with the heart: with God drawing people to him to shape them into a community of love. And this community could and must include those who had formerly been enemies.” (Pg 10, The Scandal of Redemption)
The Lenten season has become marked by particular observances. Give alms, pray, fast, and we seek out encounters with God rather than material goods
We attend Bible Studies, and we make Lenten Resolutions about what we will give up and, in some cases, take on.
It is our hope that at the end of these 40 days, we would have through our rituals be transformed and prepared to receive Christ anew at Easter.
Our minds are already prepared to face the temptation of the goods that we have sworn to give up. Sometimes we become so obsessed with the abstentions that they become ends rather than the signs to draw us into deeper prayer.
We have come to receive our mark of ash.
We do not come for today’s encounter in a vacuum. We have come from our varying lives, peculiar situations, our own stories of life.
We live in a real-world where there are a variety of events and crises that mark each day.
In today’s lesson from the book of Joel, we enter the lives of the Jewish people as they faced a time of crisis.
According to Birch et al., the book of Joel tells of either a locust plague described as a war or a war described as a locust plague. In either case, the land was being devastated.
There was a crisis in Jerusalem. The crisis occurred because the conditions were right for it. A swarm of locusts or soldiers was devouring the food that people needed to survive. It was dire
The story of locusts –
Locusts are related to your garden grasshopper.
For the Desert Locust, favourable conditions for breeding are (1) moist sandy or sand/clay soil to depths of 10-15 cm below the surface, (2) some bare areas for egg-laying, and (3) green vegetation for hopper development. Up to 1,000 egg pods have been found in one square metre. There can be at least 40 million and sometimes as many as 80 million locust adults in each square kilometre of a swarm. (FAO)
What are the conditions
As Desert Locusts increase in number and become more crowded, they change their behavior from that of acting as an individual (solitarious) insect to that as acting as part of a group (gregarious).
How bad are they?
A very small part of an average swarm (or about one tonne of locusts) eats the same amount of food in one day as about 10 elephants or 25 camels or 2,500 people. Currently, there is a swarm of locusts affecting Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, and as of yesterday, Congo.
If the conditions are right!
The creation of a gangster:
A young boy with little guidance and support at home goes down the road and finds acceptance. If the conditions are right – a new gang member is formed
The creation of a homeless person:
A family determined to live as God desires, to work hard, and to look after their children may find that the local area leader wishes to enter their family through either their son or their daughter. They resist that move, and their home is torched. They find few persons are willing to assist them. If the conditions are right, another family becomes homeless is Jamaica.
The creation of an uneducated boy in a rural community
A young man in a rural community goes to the local primary school. He continues to grade 3 or 4 but is expected to leave school and work the land. This back-breaking work is too much for his sister, so she is encouraged and supported in her education. She will leave the community, board, with families, and go on to have a career, while her brother will continue as a semi-literate man working the land, barely making a living. If the conditions are right.
The creation of the mayhem on the roads – focus on Taxi-men
An individual would have been encouraged to buy a car and to hire someone to drive it for them as a taxi. They tell the driver how much they must receive at the end of each week. The driver must fufill that requirement and work the extra for themselves, so they drive crazily on the road in search of the next fare. If the conditions are right, we see the mayhem on our roadways.
The conditions were right – and it happened.
Our nation and our world seem to move from one crisis to the next. We have created the conditions for the formation of crises by our behavior.
Crime, inappropriate behavior in the nation (corruption, children and teachers being disrespected & disrespectful)
All the life-destroying events, structures, systems. They take away our hope. They leave behind destruction and death.
It is called sin.
An analogy – Crime affects everything around. It destroys lives, families; it takes away our sense of humanity. It strips away all that is living and leaves everything desolate.
We, looking on at the devastation, wonder how this thing came from out of nowhere – and destroyed so quickly.
But like locusts – the right conditions were gathering. We stopped caring for our brothers and sisters. We watched as the weak among us were trampled by the strong. We told ourselves that this was the way of the world – only the strong survive.
Oscar Romero: “Personal sin is at the base of the great social sin. We must keep this in mind because today it is very easy for us to be like those who witnessed the woman caught in adultery; we point it out and demand justice, but we look very little into our consciences. How easy we find it to condemn structural injustice, institutional violence, and social sin! All that is quite real, but where are the sources of that social sin? They are in the hearts of every person. Modern-day society is an anonymous society in which nobody accepts blame, but everybody is responsible. All of us are responsible for what happens, but the sin remains anonymous. We are all sinners, and we have all contributed our grain of sand to this mountain of crime and violence in our country.” (53-54 The Scandal of Redemption)
Yet Joel says – there is still hope – gather together!
Joel’s call is urgent – sound the alarm! – call all the people! – leave everything and come!
God sent Joel as a prophet to call God’s people back to God.
To face the crisis, the people were being called to observe a season of penitence, fasting, and self-examination.
Everyone, not just the religious leaders, were to gather.
Joel admonished them in proper behavior regarding ritual and religious matters.
As they looked at the hopelessness of the local situation – Joel called them all back to the hope that is in God. That through prayer and fasting, God would respond to their plight.
But prayer is viewed as our last resort – the act of the truly desperate. When we cannot think of any other solution, we hand our crises over to God! As thinking people, we craft our own solutions – until we run out of them – then we pray for a miracle.
Romero: Those who do not pray because they kneel down before the God of materialism- be it money or politics or anything else – have not understood the true greatness of being a human person. To pray is to understand that this mystery of my existence as a man or a woman has limits, but precisely at those limits begins the infinite essence of the One with whom I am able to dialogue. This is prayer, the ability of human beings to understand that they have been made by someone powerful, but that they have been elevated to be interlocutors with their Creator. (page113, The Scandal of Redemption)
We fast when we want something really badly.
But Isaiah would correct us. We are called not to fast for our own gain but to fast from oppressing others, and from ignoring the poor and dispossessed.
We are being called to fast as God desires:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free
and to break every yoke?
To share our bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into our house;
when we see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide ourselves from our own kin?
Oscar Romero: “There can be no freedom as long as there is sin in the heart. What’s the use of changing structures? What’s the use of violence and armed force if the motivation is hatred, and the purpose is to buttress those in power or else to overthrow them and then create new tyrannies? What we seek in Christ is true freedom, the freedom that transforms the heart, the freedom that the risen Christ announces to us today – Seek what is above.” (Page 70, The Scandal of Redemption)
We are called to be genuine. To serve to give glory to God and not seek human commendation.
The treasure that Jesus calls us to seek concerns primarily the righteousness (relationships made right) that is the focus of so much of Jesus’ sermon. Righteousness (or justice) is not a matter of spiritual or religious practice alone, but something that permeates the whole of life every day, including our relationships with other people, with the things of this world and with God.
The goods we treasure, whether material goods, financial security, worldly power, or mercy and relationships made right – reveal where our heart is, the core of our identity.
God is ready to transform the crises in our lives – but we must be prepared to humble ourselves and to approach God in prayer. To use the Lenten season to reconcile ourselves with God, our family, our neighbours, and ourselves as we seek God’s goodness for everyone’s life.
We pray that God will continue to raise up prophets who will direct our eyes above the storm and crises and on to God – not in escapism but in genuine faith.
Romero:
If we have imbued our work with a sense of great faith, love of God, and hope for humanity, then all our endeavours will lead to the splendid crown that is the sure reward for the work of sowing truth, justice, love, and goodness on earth. Our work does not remain here; it is gathered and purified by the Spirit of God and returned to us as a reward. Amen.
danielgodsurelywilldeliver 
