Ash Wednesday

 

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Author: Beth Keith Beth Keith is a priest living in Sheffield, UK. She works part-time as a theologian at St Mark’s, Broomhill, as a tutor at St Hild College, training students for ministry, and also teaches at CMS. She does safeguarding work with Church of England, sharing her own experience, and supporting victims and survivors of church related abuse.

Today is Ash Wednesday, we remember we are dust, marking our heads in ash and in the faith and hope that God is bigger than the mess and loss we find ourselves in.

Today the church picks out two bible passages (Psalm 51.1-18 and John 8.1-11), both of which focus on sexual violence against women. Having been to many Ash Wednesday services, it is surprising how often these texts are used, but the contexts of those very words shied away from, shifting focus onto more palatable sins. Perhaps even on Ash Wednesday some things remain unspeakable.

I wondered whether in the presence of all that is happening I too should shift my focus. But sexual violence has been the unspoken war crime, and the very real fear and experience of women and children seeking asylum. It is present in our readings, in our lives, and in our world, and it is in this particular context, unspeakable as it may be, that the scriptures give us two core texts on the nature of sin and forgiveness.

Now we could say that the gospel is this; we have sinned, this divides us from God, we feel sinful and ashamed. That Jesus died for us, and if we confess our sins, God forgives us, and we are reconciled with God again. It’s neat and tidy and has the advantage of being easy to real off in a couple of sentences. But there is nothing neat or tidy about sin, about evil, or even about forgiveness. In these two bible passages, we are given a more complex picture of sin, and a deeper image of God’s work of reconciliation with us, and with the world, and that is what I want to wrestle with today.

I’m going to take these two passages and hold them alongside each other, and to ask, what is happening here? What is happening when David comes to God in repentance, and what is happening when the scribes and pharisees ask Jesus to judge and condemn a woman to death? What can these passages teach us about sin and forgiveness, and about shame and reconciliation?

So, let’s turn first to Psalm 51. It’s unclear who precisely wrote this Psalm, but it has generally been accepted as one of David’s, and more specifically his prayer of repentance after raping Bathsheba and affectively murdering her husband by sending him to the frontline. The temptation to minimise or wash over this context is strong, and a practice the church has engaged in repeatedly. The temptation is to hear these words as a moving and beautiful arrangement of God’s love for us. Our challenge is to listen, properly and slowly, not just to those who get to speak, but also to hold in our hearts those whose voices are not heard, those who have been sinned against.

David begins by appealing to God’s character using three key Hebrew terms that communicate God’s grace; the first is mercy, the second appeals to God’s steadfast love, and the third to God’s motherly compassion.
These three key terms for God’s merciful love, appear alongside three Hebrew terms translated as iniquity, transgression, and sin. The Psalm begins with God which sets the scene as God being the one who does the work of forgiveness. I wonder where Bathsheba is. Will she simply be written out, an inconsequential afterthought? But then, I am also relieved that after all she has experienced, she is not required to give some forced or public statement of forgiveness.

The Psalm gives us several images of cleansing.
These images remind me of the scenes from crime fiction; the ritual washing of blood off hands, scrubbing and disinfecting the blood off walls. Washing away the evidence, yes, but something more primal is also happening. The instinctive compulsion to remove the stain, to scrub the shame away. Shame, this gut-wrenching, soul-destroying ache. Wanting to hide, to cover up, not just the mess, or the sin, but who we are. As Adam and Eve knew their shame and covered themselves, we do too.  

Social psychologists talk about the value shame has for us as an emotion. Feelings of shame can act as a warning system; that we are crossing a boundary which should not be crossed, or, taking something which is not ours to take. In this way, we learn from our shame and monitor and modify our social behaviour.  We feel bad about what we did, we have this icky, uncomfortable feeling. We are sorry, we don’t want to feel that again, we don’t want to do that again. So, we learn that this is a boundary we do not want to cross in future.

This pattern of wrongdoing and shame fits well within our understanding of sin, confession, and absolution. We cross a boundary, we disobey part of God’s law, we commit a sin. We feel shame about that, we repent, our shame is lifted as we meet God’s forgiveness, and we move on, attempting not to do that sin again. This is what we see happening in Psalm 51. David’s prayer of repentance, as he comes to terms with the horror of what he has done, and the shame he feels. He throws himself on the mercy of God.

But let’s turn John 8.1-11, as something quite different is happening here. It is a powerful and vivid story, isn’t it, perhaps one of the more famous narratives from the gospels. Who can judge, who will cast the first stone?

This narrative has been understood as a moral check on self-righteous judgement. Are you without sin, will you cast the first stone? It’s also read under the title ‘the woman caught in adultery’. A title which is not actually part of the text but somehow the church has taken this addition to set the agenda and meaning of the narrative. What if we read this story, not through these misleading headlines, but by attending to the text and the people present?

The scribes and pharisees bring a woman to Jesus, apparently caught in adultery. The first thing to note here is that she is alone. She has been caught and forced by these religious leaders to be publicly judged and condemned. Whilst quoting the law they fail to mention what the law requires, that the man be stoned also. Neither following the law properly, nor providing the necessary witnesses for any proper judgement to happen, they kidnap this woman and try to make a case for the death penalty.  There is no real case to answer, as experts in the law they would have known this. But still they bring this woman to Jesus as an object to be manipulated for their own ends. Some scholarly readings of the text suggest she is likely to have been a victim of sexual assault, making this public shaming of her all the more horrifying.  If this story is to have a title, it would be more accurate to call it The Woman Wrongfully Accused, or The Woman Slut Shamed.

Jesus, instead of engaging with these men, draws on the ground. He refuses to be drawn into their games or come under their control. What was it he wrote? I’ve heard various preachers and commentators make their guesses on this. Why isn’t it recorded? Does it matter? Was he just playing for time?   We don’t know, sometimes we just don’t know.

But as I picture the scene, I see a woman, clothes torn, she’s been kidnapped, she is facing death at the hands of the men who are surrounding her. And someone else appears, he looks like them. There’s shouting and jeering, and she is being pushed around again. As the sand and dirt get kicked up, he’s beside her writing her a message that only she can see. It says trust me, I’m going to save you. 

The last few years has seen something of a shift in how our society views sexual violence. The #metoo movement, and the more recent protests and vigils after the killing of Sarah Everard, of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, have shone a light onto the prevalence of violence in our society and the inability of our policing and justice systems to address this. The protests, vigils, and social media movements gave voice to the shame and anger many women felt. A means of voicing their experience without having to explain, defend or prove. A means to acknowledge they had been wronged. It was a small act of defiance, small enough to be doable. A mark that they still had choice and power over their own bodies. This change, which has given victims the courage to speak up, is powerful because it confronts the insidious nature of shame, and demands that these unspeakable things, these untold things, must be brought into the light and dealt with properly.

Shame is a very real feeling. It can warn us when we are crossing a boundary or taking something we should not. But these feelings of shame also occur when physical and psychological boundaries are violated by someone else. Here the individual may have the same feelings of shame, we feel bad, we are sorry that happened, we don’t want it to happen again. But here confession makes little sense, as there is little or no choice in the sin committed. Leaving feelings of shame unresolved and potentially unresolvable.
If we simplify sin as an action we commit, and the feelings of shame, as connected to that sin. We can make the mistake of asking victims to confess, in order to feel forgiven, and in order to be released from shame. Perhaps if we see sin as the mess that comes between us and God, sin as all that stops us from knowing healing and wholeness. Sometimes we cause that sin, sometimes other do.

And Jesus straightened up and said to her,

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?

She said, “No one sir?”

And Jesus said “Neither do I condemn you. Go your away, and from now on do not sin again.

For both the woman and the Pharisees Jesus offers a way forward. A way that does not assign people as either righteous or sinners. Some of us will have led lives where through circumstances not of our doing we have been able to make good choices, to have power over what happens to our bodies. Some of us again through circumstances not of our doing will have experienced powerlessness, where decisions were made on our behalf without our consent.

Some of us will know the ways in which we have sinned, and have been forgiven, and what we still feel shame about. Some of us know the ways we have been sinned against and the ways we carry shame from that. And whilst some people may find themselves mostly at one extreme or the other, either victim or perpetrator, most of us can see where we have caused sin and where we have been the victim of sin perpetrated against us.

Jesus offers all humanity a way through this. Jesus invited us to be freed from the sin we repent of, and from the shame that has been inflicted on us. Allowing repentance and forgiveness to shape our lives can break the cycle of revenge. But it is not simple or easy. Today you can forgive and tomorrow feel the pain all over again. Today you can confess with all good intentions, and then tomorrow commit the same sin again. Here repentance and forgiveness reside, somewhere between the anger and chaos of our loss and the desire for goodness that gives meaning to our lives.  Repentance and forgiveness is hard. Neither can be demanded or coerced, but they can be found and received, sometimes chosen, sometimes accepted.  

Repentance and forgiveness signal the presence of God amongst us. Jesus talks about repentance and forgiveness so much in the gospels. But perhaps as much as his words, in his own life, and in his own body, we find meaning and understanding about what this can be, and how this can change us.

In the tension of Jesus divine and human, in life, and death, and resurrection, Jesus brings together as one, reconciles together humanity and God. Rather than explaining this reconciliation between God and us, in Jesus we see this connection embedded in his body and most profoundly in his scars. Not in explanation or reason but in person. In the living and dying and rising Jesus, who walked this path before us.

In the gospels we see how Jesus responds differently to people. To those who have been shamed he offers restoration. To those who have power and choice he offers repentance. Both are a calling to walk away from sin, both are a call to live anew, recreated through the work of God. Here we see salvation both as forgiveness from sin, and freedom from shame.

Christ calls us to walk away from sin and embrace the forgiveness and restoration God offers. Whatever brought us to this place, whatever it is that we carry, we too can pray this Psalm.

Create in me a new heart, put a new and right spirit within me. Lord, do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.

We cannot do this ourselves. We cannot rid ourselves of the sin we have committed, or the shame inflicted on us by others. But we can join Jesus at his table. We can trust that as we come together, sinners, victims, and every combination in between, Christ has made a place for us. Christ does not condemn us but welcomes us home.

Holy God
Our lives are laid open before you:
rescue us from the chaos of sin
and through the death of your Son
bring us healing and make us whole
in Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen.
 

Author/copyright permissions Reproduced with permission. Photo Credit: Brett Jordan

 

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