Ash Wednesday 2019

Isaiah 58:1-12 and John 8:1-11

Jesus is in Jerusalem for the festival of Booths, or Sukkot. Sukkot was one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, when the whole people went to the temple. These were Pesach/Passover, celebrating the exodus from slavery in Egypt; Shavuot/Pentecost, celebrating the giving of the Law at Sinai 49 days later; and Sukkot/Tabernacles, or Booths. This week-long festival recalls the forty years the Israelites lived in tents in the wilderness, between the exodus from slavery in Egypt and entering the land they were to settle; and celebrates the ingathering of the harvest in that settled land, as for the duration pilgrims slept in the kind of temporary shelters farmers lived in while gathering-in the harvest.

As part of the celebrations, and unique to Sukkot, water was carried from the Pool of Siloam—fed by the Gihon spring—up to the Temple, and poured out as a libation on the altar. (It was the Gihon spring that made it possible to inhabit Jerusalem, and establish a settlement there.) At Passover and Pentecost, wine was poured out; but at the festival of Booths, both wine and water were poured out.

And so, we might say that it is a festival that celebrates the soil, and our dependence on God, in whose mercy life springs forth from the dry ground. In the words of Isaiah, the conditional promise that if the people will ‘loose the bonds of injustice’ and ‘let the oppressed go free,’ then ‘the Lord…will satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.’

On the last day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37-39) The crowd is divided in their opinion of him (John 7:40-44), as are the authorities and the Pharisees (albeit that Nicodemus appears to be in a minority of one, John 7:45-52).

(Interestingly, it is John who records Jesus attending Sukkot, and it is John who tells us the detail that, when the crucified Jesus’ side is pierced, blood and water came out, John 19:34-35.)

It is against this backdrop that the scribes and Pharisees drag before Jesus a woman caught in the very act of adultery. It is against this backdrop that Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. They come, in the words of Isaiah, asking of the Lord a righteous judgement; and are given one, albeit not what they expect. And they come fasting only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist; whereas Jesus stoops to loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke: ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ … ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ … ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

Our stories are not set in stone, but written in dust. In dust, animated by the wind or breath of the Spirit; dust, watered by the Spirit, the River of Life, with the purpose that our lives might be fruitful. We are co-authors of our stories with Jesus, in whom every dead-end, arrived at through negligence, through weakness or through our own deliberate fault, may be redeemed, to God’s glory.

Jesus comes to lead us (corporately, not only personally) out from slavery to sin into the wilderness—the place of encounter with God—and there to train us for hope and a future; for belonging and rootedness, in place and community; for fruitful living.

We cannot do this on our own. We are the dust, he is the source of living water.

But dust, soil, earth, matters deeply to God. Deeply enough to have its own celebration, its own pilgrim festival.

So, come. Come to your senses. Return to your true self. Return to your God.

Come and receive the sign of the cross, written by a finger in ash on your forehead. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died, was buried, and rose again for us. To him be glory for ever. Amen.