There was an advert recently for Persil automatic. It was on TV and on billboards all round Huntingdon, so most of you will probably have seen it. It features a film of children happily painting a wall in splashes of multicoloured paint. Inevitably, more of the paint gets on their clothes, their hands and faces, and on each other, than on the wall. The captions read ‘It’s not mess, it’s creativity, it’s not mess it’s learning’ and so on.
Today’s service is a messy one: in a moment you will be invited forward to receive on your forehead the sign of the cross in a very messy mixture of ash and oil. This service is messy because we are: sin is a messy business, and the ash reminds us of all the mess that we make of our own lives, of other people’s lives and of this world. The situation in today’s gospel of the woman caught in adultery, and the man she was with, is just an obvious example of the destructive sin that infects our relationships, that eats away at our souls, and that undermines our own and others’ flourishing. That the crowd of scribes and Pharisees are willing to use her misfortune to try and score a cheap point is just as shameful.
We sign ourselves with this messy mix of ash and oil because all of us are in a mess.
But the Persil advert puts an altogether more positive slant on mess, which is worth exploring.
One of the captions reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s creativity’. When we receive the ash cross on our forehead, we hear the words, ‘remember that you are dust’. And so with the ash perhaps we can recall that wonderful picture of God’s creativity in Genesis 2, lovingly molding the lifeless earth into human beings, and breathing life into what was dry and lifeless. And so as we receive the ash on our foreheads we can give thanks that God can still breathe new life into us even in the dirt and dust and deathliness of our sin.
Another of the captions reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s pride’. Pride is perhaps not quite the right word. But the sign of the cross that we carry is certainly not something that we are ashamed of. At our baptism, Christ claimed us as his own, and so we are glad to be marked with his sign of the cross. Because Jesus took the shame of death on a cross and transformed it into hope and victory, he can also transform the shame of our sinfulness into the triumph over it.
The TV advert ends with one of the children accidentally on purpose painting another’s nose – at first she looks cross, but then starts to smile. The caption reads, ‘it’s not mess, it’s forgiveness’. When we have the sign of the cross on our foreheads, we are a walking testimony to the fact that everyone can be forgiven.
We are messy people. The messes we make in our lives are real messes. They are dark and dirty, and if left unchecked they will be the death of us. And God does not condone our mess. It is not that God does not mind about sin – on the contrary, it grieves him that we hurt and abuse ourselves and others, that we deface and corrupt the very air, water and land of this world he has given us. Just as Christ said to the woman in the gospel, ‘go and sin no more’, so he says the same to us: ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’.
But we have a God who for our sake is willing to get his hands dirty. We have a saviour who entered into the mess we made of the world in order that we might be made clean; a saviour who embraced the shame of the cross that our shame could be transformed by his forgiveness; a saviour who sees us for who we really are, mess and all, but rather than condemning us, gives us the chance of a new start.
When Jesus looks up from his drawing in the dust, his glance pierces the soul of the sinful woman, and the souls of the hypocritical crowd. Will we slink away like the scribes and Pharisees, who see so clearly the sins in others but dare not expose their own souls to the all-seeing, yet forgiving face of Christ? Or, like the woman, will we stand here before him, dirty as we are, and let Christ examine our sin, so that we might be forgiven?
Amen.