Ash Wednesday prayer
Ash Wednesday moment of prayer. (Photo illustration by Kathleen Barry, United Methodist Communications.)
Ash Wednesday March 2, 2022
Joel 2:1-2.12-17, Psalm 51:1-17, 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Even though it usually doesn’t feel quite like spring on Ash Wednesday, our name for this six-week season before Easter is Lent from the old English lencten, which means spring. So whether you do any routine outward spring cleaning or not, Lent is an ideal time for some inner cleaning of our spiritual lives – maybe getting rid of unhealthy habits or festering resentments, or picking up some new habits of prayer, self-reflection or service. And Ash Wednesday, a day set apart for repentance and reflection begins it all.
In that regard I commend Psalm 51:1-17 for your Ash Wednesday worship or personal devotion. Sometimes called the greatest of all the penitential prayers, Psalm 51 gets right to point – each of us needs to be washed clean with the forgiving grace only God can provide. Its very sub-title, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba”, signals to us that the need for forgiveness is deep and the cry for mercy comes straight from the heart. It was that way for King David. Perhaps it is that way for us. For those hesitant about jumping into the dirt and grime within, note that focus of this psalm is primarily on grace, not sin. The psalmist declares we can come openly and vulnerably to God knowing that we are in the hands of One who loves us, forgives us and wants to help us grow and change.
Verses 1-6 remind us that the grime of sin lurks within all of us. To make that absolutely clear, the psalmist uses all three Hebrew words for sin: chatah, which literally means “to miss the mark”, avah, meaning “to act wrongly”, and pasha, “to rebel.” That third word appears several times – in the NRSV it’s translated “transgressions.” The use of all three terms suggests that this is a full-blown confession – no holding back here! In short order, the psalmist speaks of both sins (our individual acts or failures to act which fall short of God’s glory) and Sin (the distorted human condition which generates these particular acts).
Verses 7-17 are a plea to God for a deep soul cleaning. In his contemporary translation of this psalm in The Message, Eugene Peterson puts it this way, “Soak me in the laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life…Bring me back from gray exile, put fresh wind in my sails!” Peterson’s image of repentance and forgiveness as doing the laundry suggests that we need this kind of soul cleansing on a regular basis, not just once a year. Nonetheless, Ash Wednesday and Lent are powerful times to submit ourselves anew for a deep inner scrubbing, as we begin our annual journey with Jesus to the cross and empty tomb – the ultimate symbols of God’s great love for us.
Verse 10 is the centerpiece of this powerful psalm: “Create in me a new heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” Ponder those words prayerfully for a moment. “Create” is the same word used in Genesis 1. God who created all there is can render a new creation in our lives! And what about that word “heart”? In today’s jargon, we think figuratively of the heart as the seat of emotions. Not so for the Hebrew people who considered the heart as the center of the whole human being, where the will, thoughts, purposes and imagination reside. Asking for a clean heart suggests requesting a totally new beginning.
What Psalm 51 proclaims is much more than a joy-sparking tidying up effort of ours, worthy as that may be. Actually, it’s not something we do at all, but rather something we invite God to do within us. And because of the merciful nature of God, this cleansing can have a profound transformative effect – one we then want to share with others. That’s what the psalmist proclaims in the closing verses: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” (vs. 15). The spring cleaning of Lent is a journey from repentance through forgiveness to transformation and witness. Ash Wednesday is a great day to begin that process once again!
Prayer: Change our hearts, O God, make them ever new. Change our hearts, O God. May we be like you.[1]
[1] Adapted from “Change My Heart, O God”, The Faith We Sing, p. 2152.
The Rev. Martha Dalton Ward is the author of Holy Moments: When Life and Faith Intersect. Before retirement, she and her husband Bob served as Co-Pastors in United Methodist Churches in Iowa for over 30 years.