Ash Wednesday 17th February 2010

What do I want to happen in Lent or through the keeping of Lent here at St. Giles in 2010?

More of God's wonderful possibilities to be seen in our lives and the life of the Church in Horsted Keynes!

Put it another way.

Lent is the annual renewal of our relationship with God made possible through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we commemorate in 40 days time.

Each baptised person is in a relationship with God. For many that relationship is distant, as distant as that of two people standing together in a queue for the bus.

God desires a greater intimacy than that. He desires to make himself known, to come right into our lives in fact. The receiving of Holy Communion by a baptised person is no less than a sharing in God’s personal and abundant life. We touch the life that is life indeed. He touches us – one to one - and as he touches us he releases his wonderful possibilities into our lives.

Lent’s a call to a deeper friendship with God, a deeper life of prayer, a greater release of his possibilities in our lives.

I want to ask you at the beginning of Lent a very intimate question:

Are there areas in your life, in your relationships, in your work, in your church allegiance, in your marriage...are there, or is there an area where you are stuck?

It may be a partner who has no spiritual vision. It may be a deep seated pessimism, "nothing can get me out of this situation". It may be a yearning to blossom spiritually that seems thwarted by all the pressures upon you.

As Lent begins maybe the Lord wants you to hear this from him: Yes, by your reckoning there’s no way forward. You’re in a fix. Now’s the time to forget your own reckoning and allow me to reckon for you. I want you to see a way forward as you pray to me and see as a result my limitless possibilities released. Be expectant upon me.

Lent starts with the word of St. Paul: this is the day of salvation.
A message of expectancy, of looking by faith beyond what seems naturally possible to the supernatural possibilities of Our Lord.

When did you last have an answer to prayer? When did you last see something provided in your life or in your family that had no natural explanation but linked to a heartfelt plea to God?

God is almighty God, as Lent reminds us in its daily collect. There’s no limitation on him or on the powers released through believers when they pray. Is anything too hard for the Lord? was the promise to Abraham in Genesis 18v14. It was repeated to Our Lady at the Annunciation: with God nothing will be impossible. Luke 1v37. Then Our Lord made a special point in Luke 18v27, what is impossible with men is possible with God.

And my God it is! A religion founded upon the resurrection of the dead is a religion that has no closed doors, no "impossibles". A God who can bring all of creation out of nothing and the living Christ from the tomb is in the business of the impossible!

I shall never forget the Zambian priest I once knew at college. His simple, expectant faith was such that he described to me how he had prayed for a man in his church who’d died and the man was raised up from his death bed. No boundaries for Fr. Manuel on the possibilities of God - and he was an Anglican!
Dare to believe! Be sold on being bold in faith! Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!

In a moment I shall invite you to come and receive the ashes of penitence upon your forehead. "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel" are the words we’ll be using.

Let the ashes mark death to the sinful nature with its low expectations of life. Death to the dead ends, the sticking points in your life or in your relationships with God or neighbour. Speaking to us all as a Church, let the ashes speak death to a natural pessimism about our growing younger as a church.

Turn away from sin - and be faithful to the gospel.

Let the ashes speak death to the negatives in our sinful human reasoning and turn us to the great positive of the gospel. Let gospel thinking, gospel reasoning, gospel expectations flood us.

What is impossible to human thinking is possible with God.Is anything too hard for the Lord?

If we not only believe that but go on to pray persistently in that spirit we shall see mountains moved - in our lives and in our Church as God couples the powers of heaven to our helpless ness making the impossible things possible through our turning afresh to Him in these great 40 days of Lent.