At our Ash Wednesday Service, Robert used the idea of 'returns' to help us reflect on the opportunities that Lent offers us.

The Queue to Return Something

One of the realities of living in a consumer-driven culture such as ours is that inevitably at some point, we end up purchasing something and then realizing, for whatever reason, that we need to return it. From unwanted or duplicate gifts to things that don’t fit, to products that are defective, life leads us to the customer service desk. And, as long as you’re not in too much of a hurry, it’s a pretty good system.

One of the keys to a successful trip is to know something about the store’s return policy. Here, receipts can be a saving grace, but if you’ve lost that little strip of paper, stores can now look up your purchase if you used a credit card. 

Reading the fine print, a store’s return policy often gets quickly complicated. And if you’ve made your purchase online, you add another layer of complexity. Sometimes the hassle can make you wonder if it’s even worth it to make the return,or if you should just cut your losses and keep what you have.

Lent as a Season for Returns

 Our experience with returns might help us as we begin the season of Lent. This is a time when we’re called to closely examine our lives and seek to be more faithful followers of Christ.  In doing so, we are likely to find aspects of our lives that need to be changed or eliminated entirely – exchanged or return, if you will.

Consider it standing in the queue for God’s customer service. A 40 day queue (not including Sundays) where you think more about what it is that you are carrying, and prepare to lighten the load at the counter.

God's Return Policy

To make this analogy work, we have to understand God’s return policy. To do so, we turn to Scripture.  The prophets have a lot to say about returns. In fact, it’s one of their most popular words of instruction to the Israelites. In Hebrew, it means ‘to arrive again at the initial point of departure. Here it suggests that one had been originally with God, had moved away from God, and was not returning to God.

Return is an about face, a change in direction, and a reorientation to the world.

It is a word of hope and a word of covenant, trusting that returning to God will bring about restoration for God’s people. Joel follows this understanding of return, calling God’s people to it in the text we read tonight. Throughout this short book, he suggests that Jerusalem has forgotten who God is, and calls upon God’s people to rediscover the identity of the one true God. Verse 13 reminds God’s people of the true divine nature. This description is ancient – going all the way back to promise of God to Moses in Exodus 34 after the people had created a golden calf.

It is the perfect, concise example of God’s return policy: that God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.

All of our questions about returning to God rest on this truth.

 Joel speaks of return in the context of imminent disaster, perhaps a natural one with a plague of locusts. The beginning of our reading tonight indicates something looming on the horizon, which Joel attributes to calamity brought about by “the day of the Lord.”

Something big is going to happen. It’s like an alarm bell in the middle of the night. Joel’s language would immediately register with the Israelites in Judah; it is a call to attention and to action.

The Work of Return

Given this policy, we are called to get our items, and ourselves, in order quickly. Don’t just leave your returns on the kitchen table or in some cupboard. Pay attention to them and get it done. This is the work of return. 

This is the work of Lent.

Lent is about letting go of those things that get in the way of our relationship with God and with others. It is about sorting through all the “stuff” that we have in our lives and make decisions about what should stay and what should go.

This is why some people “give up” things for the lent, and others take on new practices or focus on things in a new way. But more than just “giving something up” for a lent,

I think our passage tonight asks what do you have to return to God? Those things in your life that you would like to change, but need help to make it happen. Those things that just aren’t working. Those things you wish you hadn’t bought into and would like to give up. Those things that you simply have too much of and don’t really need.

So take a personal inventory over these next 40 days, and don’t be afraid to bring them to God for return. There’s no limit on what God will take back. In fact, God invites us to bring it all even the things we are too embarrassed to talk about.

God is always ready and waiting, open 24 hours a day to hear us.

Naming why we return an item

Sometimes, the return process includes naming why we are returning or exchanging a particular item. Some of the options include: didn’t fit (too big or too small), wasn’t what was expected, changed my mind, the product was defective, and so on.

This naming is important for us to do in Lent.

It helps us do more than just identify what we need to bring to God. It calls us to understand where they came from in order to make the changes needed to hopefully avoid repeating them in the future. It enables God to work with us and make us into new creations.

It’s God’s exchange process at work, a process that isn’t dependent on anything we have done or can do, but reminds us that we are solely reliant on God’s love and grace. In the midst of what is very difficult and sobering work, this is good news.

God not only takes back our returns, no matter what – God works in us to make us right with him once again.

Returning to God, as Joel outlines in verse 13, is more than just a transactional return; this is a process of transformation.

One More Guarantee in the Fine Print

Lent calls us to read the fine print of God’s return policy. It allows us to test it out, carefully and thoughtfully. We do so confident in who God is. And if the words of prophets like Joel aren’t strong enough to convince us, there is one more guarantee in place.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s grace was revealed to the whole world. In Christ, the promises of God from the very beginning were sealed forever. 

In life and in death, we belong to God. This is what we gather to remind ourselves of tonight, receiving crosses on our foreheads to indicate whose we are, symbolized in ashes to remind us of our own mortality and our  dependence on God for all things.

We use lent not only to confess our sins and humble ourselves, but also to return ourselves to the one who created us from nothing, and loves us through anything.

The returns begin here, tonight.

Bring what we have, who we are this evening, and know that we can continue to return what we need to over these 40 days and beyond.

There is no return too big or too small. There is no return that God will not accept. For God already knows everything we could possibly bring, and has chosen to love us anyway.

Trust that God is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and always ready for your return. Amen.