The Mirror of Erised

Today’s closing hymn caught my eye as I was looking over the order of service for this last Sunday after the Epiphany. "Alleluia! Sing to Jesus." Alleluia! I have to smile. This is the last Sunday for quite a while that we will be permitted to say "Alleluia." So we had better get those Alleluia’s in. This hymn is a wonderful classic of the church, and it is one of my favorite tunes. But best of all, it includes not one, not two, but ten alleluia’s. So we really get one last chance to revel in alleluia’s before Lent begins.

Speaking of revelry, as I look towards the week ahead, two profoundly different events stand out. The revelry of Mardi Gras and the brutal starkness of Ash Wednesday. In New Orleans, of course, Mardi Gras is an expansive season covering weeks and weeks of social events and celebrations. But the words Mardi Gras mean "fat Tuesday." The real one and only Mardi Gras is this Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday. And then the next day is Ash Wednesday. Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, a day of extraordinary celebration. Ash Wednesday, a day of extraordinary humility and penitence. Both are extraordinary days, unusual days, different from our ordinary, daily lives. Mardi Gras is a day when we celebrate much more than usual. Ash Wednesday is a day when we are most certainly more somber and penitential than usual. Both, really, are days of unusual excess.

So what’s going on? Why do we put ourselves through this harried disruption of our normal lives, riding this pendulum of human experience as it swings wildly from the excess celebration of Mardi Gras to the excess penitence of Ash Wednesday?

I can certainly understand the human temptation to live it up before the rigors of Lent. But think what that sort of attitude implies. First of all it presumes that you are going to experience Lent as rigorous. I’m not sure how many people do these days. But thinking of Mardi Gras as a last minute bash also assumes that those rigors of Lent are going to be dreadfully unpleasant, that the self-examination, prayer and repentance of Lent—exercises meant to bring us closer to God—are exercises we would do almost anything to avoid. It assumes that there is nothing to look forward to in Lent. And if there is nothing to look forward to in the future, we’d better blow the whole wad right now. This turns Mardi Gras and Lent into the worst sort of bachelor party before a marriage that is viewed as only imprisonment.

At its worst, Mardi Gras, is of course a mammoth binge of debauchery. But at its best Fat Tuesday is the best sort of celebration. A celebration of community, of the joys of fellowship, of the true pleasure that comes from good food and good wine. A joyful explosion of gratitude for the richness of God’s blessings. A time when life’s burdens are put in perspective and life’s joys are brought to the fore. A unique burst of holy exuberance. Followed by a day of somber penitence so unique we actually smear our faces with ash.

So what is the point of these two days of unique excess? Perhaps they are meant to serve as a wake-up call to all of us. To get our attention. To remind us that both celebration and repentance should be much bigger parts of our usual, ordinary, daily lives. Maybe it takes unusual, extraordinary, unique events like Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday to remind us of what we’re missing in our lives all of the other days of the year. Every day should be Mardi Gras. Every day should be Ash Wednesday. Every ordinary day should be rich in celebration, bursting with grateful joy. Every single, unremarkable day of our lives should be marked by humility and penitence before God.

The transfiguration was a similar sort of wake-up call, I think. The transfiguration is the story we heard in this morning’s gospel. Peter, James and John accompanied Jesus to a high mountaintop, There Jesus’ appearance was transfigured before their very eyes and the voice of God spoke saying, "This is my Son!" It was an event certainly meant, among other things, to shake Peter, James, and John out of their ordinary routine. They were religious men. And as rabbis went, Jesus seemed to them more interesting than most. His teaching was interesting; his preaching was popular. So for a time they traveled with him, arguing amongst themselves what it all meant and who among them was going to win the Most Valuable Disciple award.

And then they went up the mountaintop. An extraordinary experience. A very unusual day in the middle of their usual routine. A unique day when they knew they stood face to face with the Son of God. When Jesus’ robes, robes the disciples had touched and brushed against dozens of time, became dazzling white. When Jesus’ face, hardly a breath away from theirs, shone like the sun.

Jesus had always been the Son of God, but in the extraordinary moment of the transfiguration Peter, James and John knew that Jesus was the Son of God. The same Jesus who had walked beside them on all of those ordinary days along the dusty roads of Galilee. God was no closer to Peter James and John in that momentous moment than in any other moment of their lives. But it took that extreme, extravagant action to remind Peter, James and John that the Son of God walked beside them every single ordinary moment of their lives. The transfiguration challenged them to carry the wonder, awe, joy of that experience with them throughout their daily lives.

It’s all about how we live our lives. Every day. Not just the unusual, extraordinary days like Shrove Tuesday or Ash Wednesday or a transfiguration morning. God’s loving face shines into our lives every single moment. The Son of God walks and talks with us every step of the way. Surely then every single day is an occasion for infinite celebration. And every single day is an occasion for humble contrition.

Like many of you I saw the Harry Potter movie when it came out a few months ago. I enjoyed it. The movie reminded me of a section in the book that I had forgotten. Harry has just received the mysterious gift of the invisibility cloak and with this wondrous new power of invisibility, he is sleuthing around Hogwarts in the night when he happens upon an abandoned and empty classroom with a large mirror in it. When he looks in the mirror Harry, an orphan, is overwhelmed to discover that he sees himself surrounded by his loving parents and family. Captivated, Harry returns night after night to gaze longingly upon the family he has never known.

One night he is startled to realize that the wise Albus Dumbledore is in the room, watching as Harry stares into the mirror. Dumbledore tells Harry about the Mirror of Erised (desire spelled backwards). "The happiest man on earth", Dumbledore says, "would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is… It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."

The happiest person on earth would look into that mirror and see herself, just as she is, on any ordinary day. Such a person would not need Mardi Gras or Ash Wednesday or a soul shattering experience like the transfiguration to remind her that every moment is lived in the marvelous presence of God. Hers would be a life characterized continually by celebration. Hers would be a life characterized by a daily desire to be reconciled to the loving presence of God.

Some religious fanatics condemn the Harry Potter stories as anti-Christian. There is nothing anti-Christian in them. But nor is there anything particularly Christian about them. As a Christian, I believe that the sort of happiness Dumbledore speaks of can only be found through a relationship with Jesus Christ. I believe that we can only shed the ungodly desires and ambitions that stifle our lives by living each moment of our lives in relationship with the only source of true happiness, Jesus Christ.

And if you’re not quite sure how to do that, the days and weeks that are ahead of us provide a crash course in Christian living. So live into these days. Experience them fully. For the next three days say Alleluia absolutely as often as possible. Throw yourself into a holy celebration of Mardi Gras. Come here on Ash Wednesday. Walk through every word of the Litany of Repentance. Smear your treasured face with ashes. If we can carry the gifts of these unique days into our daily lives, we will find them to be the keys to true happiness.

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