A Time to Weep, A Time to Mourn

Lent begins ashless in the classic prayerbooks. The trend for well over a century has been to bring back the ashes, which I do not personally object to. However, I wish we moved towards placing ashes upon the crown of our heads instead of marking a cross on our foreheads, as was common in the Medieval Church. Yet this reflection is not about the ashes, because Ash Wednesday, even in the contemporary church, is not, or should not, be about drive-through ashes or merely attending a service solely to receive the ashes. Instead, the first service marking Lent’s return is a warning to sinners and a call for us to take repentance seriously.

Repentance is a dirty word in our culture. We don’t like to think that we need to repent from anything. We certainly do not want to face the reality that our sin separates us from God and deserves and merits His wrath. We would rather ignore the wrath found in Scripture’s plain language. In other words, we prefer ignoring God and not taking Him at His Word. But His Word is eternal.

The prayerbook life shakes us from our complacency and forces us to face not only our Lord as our Judge, but also to face our own sinfulness. This is a season meant for us to at least once annually stare down at the coming judgment for our sins. We read and pray the black and white text of the Commination service on Ash Wednesday in hopes that we may wake up from our slumber, confess our sins, and receive the grace of the Gospel that God forgives sinners. Not just small sins, but great sins. Sins that curses are cast upon as we hear in the beginning of the Commination service. This is what makes the long-forgotten Commination, or Denouncing of God’s Anger and Judgements against Sinners, a crucial stop on the annual pilgrimage of the prayerbook life.

The Commination is more than a yearly service as the rubric allows its use not only upon Ash Wednesday but “at other times, as the Ordinary shall appoint.” Further, it is to be used after both morning prayer and the Litany, therefore anticipating a long service of prayerbook worship that culminates with Holy Communion or antecommunion. Therefore, the start of Lent for Anglicans was a marathon of prayer, confession, and crowning with the Gospel heard and received in Christ’s body and blood.

The Commination begins with an exhortation from the priest reminding the congregation of the ancient practice of public confession of “notorious sin,” “open penance,” and a hopeful prayer that “the said discipline may be restored again, (which is much to be wished).” This desire to restore the ancient practice may surprise most contemporary Anglicans, but the prayerbook replaces the primitive practice with “the general sentences of God’s cursing against impenitent sinners, gathered out of the seven and twentieth Chapter of Deuteronomy, and other places of Scripture.” The prayerbook graciously dispenses with the humiliation that would necessarily occur with public confession and penance, but instead roots itself in the reading and responsive reply of Holy Scriptures.

Alas, the simple reading and response to God’s holy Word was too much for the American belly, and this entire service was omitted until the 1892 American BCP, and then neutered by cutting out the first half of the service completely. Unfortunately, the liturgies we inherited in the United States always tampered with the Ash Wednesday service and therefore tempered God’s judgment against sin. Even the much lauded American 1928 prayerbook neuters the plain language of the 1662 BCP’s Commination service, and does not begin its equivalent to the Commination service until midway through, by diving straight into Psalm 51. The 2019 ACNA BCP also abbreviates and is a more gentle service; however, to its credit, it does restore the opening exhortation to confession.

Frankly, we have inherited in North America a shaky foundation weakened by the American Episcopalian experience. To the credit of ACNA, the draft Book of Occasional Services offers a remedy by restoring much of what was lost in the aptly named A Penitential Office, which I commend 2019 parishes to use in conjunction with the Ash Wednesday liturgy for a fuller and closer 1662 Commination service experience.

The 1662 prayerbook prescribes that we hear the curses our sins merit. We need this reminder that our sins cut us off from God. We are reminded that because we bear the Curse of our sins, we need Christ on the Cross as our Cure. Therefore, we journey with Christ to the Cross during Lent.

Minister. Cursed is he that curseth his father or mother.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that maketh the blind to go out of his way.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that perverteth the judgement of the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that lieth with his neighbour’s wife.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the innocent.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, and taketh man for his defence, and in his heart goeth from the Lord.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed are the unmerciful, fornicators, and adulterers, covetous persons, idolaters, slanderers, drunkards, and extortioners.
Answer. Amen.

So we hear the curse of God upon our sin. These curses start and emphasize our sins against our neighbors. It is notable as it reminds us how our sins impact our communities. Then the curses conclude with our sin against the Lord by trusting in man more than the Almighty and by indulging in our sins of the flesh.

These curses start by reminding us that our failure to honor our parents is a failure to honor our Father in heaven. Our cheating hearts and deceptive acts to move our neighbor’s landmarks in order to take, take, take, and demand more, more, more reveal our gluttonous hearts. Our neglect to care for those in great need, the blind in sight and the spiritually blind, is to our shame. Our perversion and manipulation of the least of these, the stranger, the orphaned, and the widow cries out against us. Our secret deceptions against our neighbor are not hidden from our Lord. Our adulterous hearts in mind, in deed, and online curse us. We kill our brethren and think we deserve a reward. Our sins consume us, and when confronted, we justify ourselves by trusting in man and chariots, instead of fearing the Lord who judges and saves. Yet we consume sin and are consumed by our sins until we are no longer image-bearers but sin-bearers who are more identified with the idolatry of our pet sins than with our Lord God. Therefore, we bear the name of our sins, namely, “the unmerciful, fornicators, and adulterers, covetous persons, idolaters, slanderers, drunkards, and extortioners.”

The service seems harsh, but we need to face the harsh reality of our sin. Yet, this is not where the service concludes. No, like the Holy Communion service Cranmer edited, this Commination service has the pattern of sin, grace, and faith, as the late great Rev. Dr. J.I. Packer once noted. The minister turns from reminding the congregation of sins’ curses immediately into a pre-written homily, one that is not to be deviated from. It is akin to the Eastern Orthodox tradition of preaching St. John Chrysostom’s Paschal sermon every Easter, except this Anglican homily starts off Lent while Chrysostom concludes it. I commend you to read the Commination homily and Chrysostom’s Paschal sermon back-to-back for a perfect understanding of the season we enter into and where our journey ends. Together, they are perfect bookends of Lent’s beginning and ending on Easter morn.

The Commination homily is a beautiful and haunting interweaving of Scripture, recalling that our Lord cometh to judge the earth, therefore, “Who shall be able to endure when he appeareth?” Yet amidst the frightening and sobering imagery of the Judge who has no mercy on rebellious man, we hear the unmerited grace of God who loves us while we were sinners:

Let us therefore return unto him, who is the merciful receiver of all true penitent sinners; assuring ourselves that he is ready to receive us, and most willing to pardon us, if we come unto him with faithful repentance; if we submit ourselves unto him, and from henceforth walk in his ways; if we will take his easy yoke, and light burden upon us, to follow him in lowliness, patience, and charity, and be ordered by the governance of his Holy Spirit; seeking always his glory, and serving him duly in our vocation with thanksgiving:

The service climaxes with the “Psalm of Psalms” for repentance: Psalm 51. This psalm is the famous song King David wrote in repentance for his adultery, lying, and murder of Bathsheba’s husband. Together the congregation sing or recite Psalm 51 as our own. Psalm 51 reminds us that if King David’s sins upon sins could be forgiven, so can ours. Furthermore, the poetic beauty of the Commination service is that King David’s sins during his adultery with Bathsheba and subsequent murder of her husband and cover-up are all “notorious sins” that would have to be publicly confessed in the primitive church, as the minister explained in the opening of the service. Further, David’s sins, which spurred Psalm 51, trigger several of the curses the priest and people recited at the beginning of the service, namely:

Minister. Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that lieth with his neighbour’s wife.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the innocent.
Answer. Amen.

Yet as David was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write:

For thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee: but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.

Praise God for His enduring mercy. This is the mountaintop of the service, the grace of God upon sinners. If David, as king, could sin greatly and still repent and receive God’s mercy and grace, then thanks be to God, so may we through the blood of the Lamb upon the Cross.

The service concludes by stressing our faith. We boldly go to the throne of grace, and in faith we pray the Kyrie, the Lord’s Prayer, and Suffrages that cry out for the merciful Lord to save us in faith. The minister closes out the Commination with two powerful collects that intercede for himself and the flock by reminding us not of God the Judge, but of “God, and merciful Father, who hat compasion upon all men, and hatest nothing that thou has made” and “who wouldest no the death of a sinner, but that he should rather turn from his sin, and be saved.” This collect reminds us that Lent is not a season of beating us down, but dying with Christ so that He may live within us. Lent reminds us that though our sins be severe and damnable, our God is merciful and saves those who turn towards Him and covers up our darkness with His eternal Light.

The prayerbook calls us at the end of the service to join with the minister and to plead with the One who keeps His promises: “Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned.” Prior to departing, we are reminded that this is a season to weep for our sins, fast to mortify our flesh, pray to the One who always hears and ever listens, and rejoice in the Father’s deep and abiding love for us, so that we do not remain sinners, but are molded into Christ’s likeness. Therefore, let us enter Lent with hope and endurance to run the race set before us.

Then the Minister alone shall say,

The Lord bless us, and keep us; the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us, and give us peace, now and for evermore. Amen.