Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55483 [retrieved February 21, 2024]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Dismal_Swamp-Fugitive_Slaves.jpg.

The First Day of Lent, or Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2 and 12-17, Psalm 103:8-14, II Corinthians 5:20b–6:10, Saint Matthew 6:1-6 and 16-21

Go down, Moses,
Way down to Egypt land.
Tell ole Pharaoh,
“Let my people go.”

The people who wrote and sang that song were slaves in this country. They identified with the children of Israel who were slaves in Egypt. They knew that the Lord heard the cries of the children of Israel. They knew that the Lord sent a redeemer to save the children of Israel. They prayed, as they sang, that the Lord would do likewise for them. And the Lord did do for them as they asked him to do.

Just as Moses went down to Egypt and brought the children of Israel out of slavery, Abraham Lincoln brought the slaves here out of slavery and changed the course of this country from the wrong to the right. The error this country had made was redeemable. It was by no means indelible. It was by no means fatal.

For, in God’s hands redemption belongs to all who call upon him. The witness of the children of Israel and the slaves here is that God heard them and redeemed them. As the prophet Joel proclaimed, “Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations.’”[1]

We have a redemption to demand of God, too. For we are slaves to sin. And we need a redeemer from that slavery. God will not withhold a redeemer or that redemption from us.

Today is the day of days when we implore God to redeem us from our slavery to sin. We are about to put the whole matter in his hands. When we put ashes on our heads and kneel to confess our sins we are singing to the Lord to save and redeem us, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

And we have no doubt that the Lord will continue his loving kindness to us who confess our sins, we who agree that we are slaves to sin and that we need his redemption and forgiveness.

For, our Father who sees in secret will reward us.

[1] Joel 2:17.