That is not love. . .

A while ago on Facebook I posted what I thought was an obvious observation about a family with four very small children, a pregnant wife, and faithful husband who somehow found how to get them all washed up, fed, dressed, and in Church for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the Sunday after Christmas.  I acknowledged it must not have been easy.  Then I showed myself to be an unloving brute by asking what was the excuse of the rest of those who were not in the Lord's House (not for all three or even one of those services!).  I was roundly attacked by some who found my tone unpleasant and my words unloving.

Today our Lord does the most unloving thing of all.  Even more unloving than my post.  He calls us to repentance.  This is Ash Wednesday.  On this most solemn day we acknowledge that we are not the people we should be, that we think we are even, but sinners to the core.  We are not unsaved or unloved but sinners who have been saved by grace bestowed upon us unworthy though we are and loved enough not to be left to the lies and shadows of sin and its death.  Thanks be to God!  God loved us enough to call us to repentance and this He does so in spades on Ash Wednesday.

We wear the ashes as the sign of the death in us because of sin but we wear them in the shape of a cross to show forth God's grace to sinners.  We wear them as outward marks of inward repentance and faith.  We put them on with solemnity and ceremony to show that this repentance is no casual thing but profound and the fruit of the Spirit's working in us.  We own our sin, to be sure, but we also own the consequences of sin (the wages so clearly elucidated by St. Paul).  We also own our helpless condition -- were it not for God's superabundant grace and mercy we would be left without hope.

This day is filled with love -- the love that would dare to call our thoughts, words, and deeds sin!  The love that would dare to speak of sin as an unnatural natural condition that we would suffer even if, by some miracle, we might not add anything of our own to the mountain of sin that separates us from God and from each other.  The love that meets us where we are -- in our world of sin and death in the flesh and blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  The love that washes us clean in His own sacrificial blood out poured.  Clothes us in His righteousness -- which we have no claim to except by grace.  The love that fills our empty hearts with His Spirit so that we see, acknowledge, and rejoice in what love has done to us and for us.  The love that brings us again and again to repentance, to confession, and to rejoice in holy absolution -- a people convicted, rescued, and restored.  And the love that urges us to go and sin no more.

The world might find it hard to call this love.  In Christ we learn that it is the truest love there is.  God loves us enough to speak of that which we find unspeakable and to call us to stand bare naked before His Law and then to be covered in a righteousness borrowed from Christ until His righteousness is fully formed in us through sanctification.  

Go to Church.  Go to confession.  Go Ash Wednesday and every Lenten service and Sunday Divine Service.  You will find there the greatest love of all and it will not leave you the same but will transform you.  That is how Lent begins.  Love speaks where fear and shame and self-righteousness will not.  Pray the Holy Spirit to listen and hear His voice well.  Thanks be to God!