Holy Brit

From the earliest parts of the Bible the way which God wants to relate to people has been clear and that way has been in a personal relationship. But time and time again people have started off quite well and have then wandered off to do their own thing - often  not God's thing.
This wandering off, this sidling away from God has the technical name of sin. Sin is not a very popular word in a world where we tend to make excuses for all sorts of things which we don't do as well as we could. There are real psychological and social reasons why we as human beings do all sorts of terrible and annoying things to ourselves and to each other - and whilst this might explain our behaviour we will leave a great big gap in our well being if we never apologise for anything to anyone.
Repentance is simply acknowledging that we could do better, that we have wandered (or sometimes defiantly marched) away from those things which God has given us and those things ti which God is calling us.
In the Ash Wednesday service we are offered the chance to have a smudge of ash placed on our foreheads - You are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ - says the priest.
The go and sin no more repeat the words which Jesus says in John 8 to the woman who was caught in adultery, brought forth for stoning and then saved when Jesus suggested that her accusers should only condemn her if they found themselves to be without sin. Stones were dropped and Jesus dismisses the woman to sin no more.
It is impossible for us ever to be perfect. We can resolve with all our hearts to be faithful to Christ but the simple fact of the matter is that it will only be a few minutes after we leave Church that we say or think something which can make us feel a bit hopeless about ever making the grade as a Christian.
But Lent is not an exam, Lent is about moving forward in our journey with Christ. The smudge of Ash is just a symbol of that journey - we are created and our bodies will eventually return to the earth - our hope is beyond that point, our hope comes through the cross of Christ and in these forty days we will both look to that cross and the empty tomb beyond and look around at who we are and where we are and make a little more sense of how the pieces of our own story fit together in that great love which is God's calling to us.
That we will all fall to sin again might be depressing but it can also be liberating. It is frustrating when we examine our consciences and find the same old sins sitting there time after time but by confessing them, by saying sorry to God we are truly given a fresh start. We can resolve not to sin again because really, if we are honest, sin is not a comfortable place to sit, because sin is a separation from God.
The liberation is in knowing that no matter where we go or where we wander to we can always come back - our sin never changes God's love for us.
Sin is not about media headlines, it is not about anything we do which is particularly bad, or particularly distasteful - we might fall into some sort of disaster - but most of the time sin is about being human. It is about that whole swathe of covenant being made by God, of entering into relationship with God and the hills and valleys or our humanity. Sin, above all, is normal. You cannot invent a new sin, and any clergy who have listened to many confessions will tell you that. I am not inviting you to try.
We may not like the word sin but we all wander from God and we are all invited back. Ash Wednesday is a door through which we can choose to step, the invitation is there , to a renewed and holy covenant life in Christ, to a clearing of the cobwebs of sin and a rediscovery of who we really are. The long words do not matter so much as the simple act of saying sorry, of understanding and sometimes feeling that God has forgiven and the will to get up off our knees and walk forward in the light of Christ.
Whatever we have chosen to do to mark Lent, this underlying action of asking forgiveness, being forgiven and keeping going are universal to us all.