Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy Ash Wednesday. I received a message this morning which said that the two falling on the same day present a win/win for the greeting card industry. They gave some examples: Roses are red, violets are blue, Lent is beginning, No chocolate for you! Another one: Won’t you be My Valentine, you Miserable Offender? Remember that you are Dust, but awfully lovable Dust!
John Constable was famous for his paintings of the English countryside. Constable’s oldest son, in his diaries, talks about his father with great affection. He describes his two great passions in life, painting and his children. He loved nothing better than to spend whole days sketching in the Suffolk countryside, with his children playing by his side. Then in the evening at home, he painted the final canvas in his studio, again with his children nearby.
The diaries describe one notable day when there was to be an exhibition of new works. Critics traveled to Suffolk, full of anticipation to see Constable’s latest paintings, and in particular one which was to be unveiled before them that day. The moment came, Constable walked up to his canvas, preparing to draw back the curtain to reveal it. As he did so, there was utter silence, and then some embarrassment, because right across the canvas, from top to bottom, there was a great tear.
Eventually everyone left, leaving Constable and his family alone, and wondering about the torn canvas. One of his children, however, was missing. It was his oldest son. Eventually he came home and his father asked him, “Did you do this?” His son answered, “Yes.” I wonder what your father would have said to you in these circumstances? I have little doubt what my father would have said, and done! But the diaries record that Constable spoke these words to his son, which he remembered all of his life, “How shall we mend it, my dear?”
We might see the whole creation as God’s canvas—not only the majestic, awesome beauty of nature, but also every aspect of life, including our relationships with others and our relationship with him. And there is a great tear in the canvas, created by us. Every part of the creation is touched by human sin. We use the earth’s resources with little thought for those who come after us. Our self-centered nature affects how we do business, how we treat our friends, our children, our spouses. God has made us in such a way that God must be in the center of our lives if we are to fulfill our purpose in life, but we have thrust him out of the center and replaced him with ourselves.
There’s a tear in the canvas, a tear that moves straight across, affecting every relationship we have, and a tear that moves from top to bottom as well, affecting our relationship with God. I want you to picture that tear that has both a horizontal and vertical dimension. And now I want you to picture the mending of that tear, for it has been mended by God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The mend looks like a cross, doesn’t it, because it is the cross.
When we were baptized we entered into the reality of the cross, as we died with Christ, were buried with him, and raised to new life. The mend has already taken place. Lent is a time for remembering who we are, for making the adjustments that are necessary to bring us back to our true center, and for doing what we can to make our relationship with God even stronger, and of course that includes every relationship that we have. May Lent bring us, by God’s grace, ever closer to him.
The Rev. Fredrick Robinson, Ash Wednesday, 14 February, 2018
The Constable story was borrowed from The Anglican Digest.