Weak and Otherwise in Great Need

Are you a relatively secure person? I mean you might be confident enough in yourself that you can humbly and fairly assess your shortcomings. Some people resist any kind of self-evaluation because their sense of self is fragile. I understand that too. Still, ironically, the better we grasp God’s power to cleanse, the more openly we admit our own needs.

Anglican Spirituality is well balanced: we see humans as created in the image of God, and we have a sure awareness of our fallen state. Christians from our tradition tend to have what is called a “high anthropology,” emphasizing God’s love, and the goodness of God conveyed to us in creation. Indeed, we think of people as sinful or fallen, and yet intrinsically good, and loved by God. This high anthropology leaves us freer to face honestly our own need for redemption. Apart from God, we are lost, but we are open candidates for God’s sanctifying grace.

Through the prophet Ezekiel (18:31-32) we hear God urging the house of Israel to cast away from themselves all transgressions and get themselves a new heart and a new spirit. To this, God adds, “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone…turn, then, and live.” We have taken that language from Ezekiel into our Ash Wednesday Liturgy. In the forgiveness declaration after the Litany of Penitence, the celebrant says, “Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live…pardons and absolves all those who truly repent, and with sincere hearts believe his holy Gospel.” (BCP p. 269)

I am asserting that we can confidently embrace a humble stance, assured of God’s desire to forgive and restore us. This bare humility will show up again in our worship this Sunday. We might naturally resist associating ourselves with ignorance, weakness, unworthiness, or blindness, but look how we claim all of these labels in the following Collect.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP p. 231)

So it is, God is the fountain of all wisdom that trains us to wise up, to admit our frailty and need, to know our necessities, and to lean on Jesus who heals us beautifully.