Dear friends in Christ at Peace and Grue,
“For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)
I read that in early 2022, a new simulation of the universe’s origins using massive computing power allowed scientists to explore what might have happened in the earliest days of the universe’s creation. In the early days, the first 150 million years or so, they found light could not travel very far at all. Physicist Aaron Smith explains, “It’s a bit like water in ice cube trays; when you put it in the freezer, it does take time, but after a while, it starts to freeze on the edges and then slowly creeps in. This was the same situation in the early universe — it was a dark cosmos that became bright as light began to emerge from the first galaxies.”
Understanding God is a bit like that light at the cosmic dawn. Comprehension is not instantaneous. Even when the revelation of God descends, it takes humans time to understand and respond, as can be seen in the story of the Transfiguration. While there are small differences that reflect Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s particular interests and literary styles, the main thrust of the story is that: Jesus takes Peter, John, and James up a high mountain and is transfigured before them. Moses and Elijah show up, and a voice from above instructs the disciples that Jesus is God’s son and commands the hearers to listen to him.
Even when standing face-to-face with the glory of the Divine, they simply do not comprehend what is happening around them. There is a lack of recognition of what one ought to do. Not much has change. That one is confused as a 21st-century hearer, highlights the human confusion that comes before understanding, which is why Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday of Epiphany, is followed by Ash Wednesday.
By wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday, we are proclaiming that, in the grand scheme of things, our lives are inconceivably short - nothing but an infinitesimally small blip on the giant screen of history - that all of our anxieties and fears, all of our great accomplishments and impressive attainments are literately just a handful of dust - for we ourselves are nothing but dust, and to dust shall we return.
At the same time the ashes are not thrown indiscriminately onto our foreheads but are in the form of the cross. The shape of God’s answer to our lack of recognition of what one ought to do. The shape of Jesus’ self-sacrifice in which he gave himself, not to be our accuser, not to save us from his wrath, but to save us from ourselves. Through Jesus, through his life and teaching, and most of all through his suffering and death, God who is eternally older than all of history, who is infinitely beyond the immensity of the universe, is in the world, searching for each of us like lost sheep, actively seeking us out, taking us into his arms and bringing us home. That is how much you matter. That is how important you are. As slow as we might be to comprehend the divine light, we can trust that even in the depths of sin and the confusion that comes before understanding we are completely known and loved by our Heavenly Father.
Hope you will join us this Lenten season,
Pastor Dan