What I’ve Learned about Sin from Some Uber-Liberals I know
By Debbonnaire Kovacs, Feb. 18, 2015 
As I write this, it’s Ash Wednesday. I used to have a vague idea about Lent (you gave something up for 40 days) but I really never knew anything about Ash Wednesday. When I began attending a local multi-denominational church in my town I was, as I’ve mentioned before, going through an especially traumatic time in my life. So, as Lent neared, I decided I’d try participating fully in this season of sorrow and reflection, and see what blessings I might find.
Years before, I had learned to love the writings of Lutheran pastor Walter Wangerin, and I remembered being struck by something he wrote: words to the effect that those who don’t go through the sorrow of the season before Easter may not fully understand and participate in the joy of that resurrection. “If you don’t weep with the women, you can’t sing with the angels.” Something like that.
My first Ash Wednesday was an eye-opener. Or more correctly, a heart-opener. For one thing, did you know that the ashes of Ash Wednesday are created from the palms of the previous year’s Palm Sunday? They are saved, and in a ceremony before Lent begins, they are burned to ash. That represents the fact that our highest praises and finest acts are, as the Old Testament prophet puts it, like filthy rags; that is, our best intentions soon turn to ashes.
Those palm ashes are then mixed with olive oil, which throughout the history of God’s people has represented the Holy Spirit and grace. This represents forgiveness and the chance to start again. The “imposition” of the ashes is received in a cross form on the forehead or hand. I find this incredibly meaningful, especially given the significance of forehead and hand as thought and action that I have always been taught in the context of Revelation and the end times.
Before the Ash Wednesday service, the pastor had laid out a simple square labyrinth on the floor of the fellowship hall with blue painter’s tape. That night at the service, he took a bowl of oil-bathed ashes, and quietly walked to the center of the labyrinth, pausing to pray at each turn. Once he reached the center, he stayed where he was, and each person present was invited to walk to the center, receive the ashes or a blessing, (their choice), and quietly walk out of the labyrinth. After we were all finished, the pastor walked the rest of the way out.
There was music and prayer and fellowship. There were laughter and tears. But the beauty I remember most was in that ash ceremony.
The weeks of Lent followed, and I struggled, with my hand in Christ’s, through some very dark days, but the light of hope shone around me. Then came Maundy Thursday.
That same pastor preached with an intensity I either have not heard before, or have not responded to so strongly, possibly in part because of those weeks of preparation. It was only a 5-10 minute homily, so it’s more deeply imprinted on my mind than any wearisome 30-60-minute sermon could be. “There he is, on that cross, there by choice!” The pastor rocked up on his toes and clutched the sides of the pulpit, leaning forward earnestly and catching the eyes of his listeners in the dim candlelight. “There by my choice! There by your choice! There because we choose to create and participate in systems that refuse freedom or dignity to God’s created and beloved children! There because we prefer lists of rules to love or grace!”
I cried.
Everyone cried.
It wasn’t until later that I realized how odd it was. I was always taught that “those liberals” don’t have a sense of sin—that they are all about conditional morality and situational ethics. That they don’t know God. That they are lost. Probably. “We can’t judge, of course,” those who teach this stuff would say righteously.
Tonight (if I can get to my church through a foot and a half of snow) I’ll receive the ashes on my forehead. My beloved pastor will look into my eyes and acknowledge that I am a sinner. He will look into my eyes and remind me that God’s grace is bigger.
Way bigger.
Amen.
You strike a chord, Deb. In our Pharasaic arguments and tittering about truth…brand…and all the rest of it…in our arrogance toward our fellow followers of Christ…we miss these intense and very real blessings from the sheep in other folds. I find it so incongruous with the very instructions from Christ to go unto all the world that we fear to mix and share our spiritual experiences with others so-inclined…no matter their brand. Good for you.
The sallies against Catholics were so turgid and thick in my early childhood experience in a small US Adventist church (from birth to 8 years of age)that my two younger sister and I invented a childhood game we titled “Those Catholics,” in which we tried to “top” one another’s stories about that woeful scourge dressed in dark robes out to destroy our little denomination, and particularly capture its children for the pleasure of the Pope….
But like typical children we were unable to leave good enough alone, and we “flipped” the game to a (supposed) Catholic point of view and recited stories we imagined Catholics told about the “terribleness” of Adventists. Mother almost hit the ceiling: “I don’t want you kids playing that game; I want you to stop. I don’t want to hear you talking bad about our church.” We obeyed, but wouldn’t you know, within a year or so the family had accepted a call to South America as medical missionaries, where more than 90 percent of our neighbors were—you guessed it—Roman Catholic. We saw that organizationally the RC was a religious anaconda, holding power and financial clout in a pincer squeeze of church-and-state dominion, but we found that the average Catholic parishioner had many of the same spiritual concerns we did as Adventists, and without capitulating to their doctrines, we enjoyed, in amiable friendship, many long discussions and brought them into our local Youth Program, which they immensely enjoyed. In later years a number of them became nominal and in some cases dedicated Adventist members.
We never again played “Those Catholics” as a way to express our fear and loathing of another organization, fearful and loathsome though it may have been in some historical contexts. Catholicism was now humanized as we learned that Catholics yearn, and pray, and cry, just as we did. The incidence of sociopathy among Catholics appeared similar to, and perhaps lower, than among our Adventist friends. These were not hollow people, suffering Papal post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some of the children, perhaps, who had become too close to the local clergy. But by and large the people were fully intact in their ability to contend emotionally and spiritually with divine teachings. At one time our local youth group had more than 200 Bible students in a town of 2,000, as we learned even more about the spirituality of the Catholic people and the shortcomings they often faced in their communion.
In my early life in Adventism the words “Ash Wednesday” were never uttered in our home, and I myself have never celebrated this memorial of Christ as a Christian. I applaud Sister Kovacs for drawing our attention to this milestone of Christ’s passion, as I continue to ask Christ to build His personality more completely into my experience, replacing the old fear and angst that once so inhibited my ability to befriend those whom I once pathologically feared….