A Lot of “Splaining to Do”

I suspect that like our family, yours also tuned in religiously to the “I Love Lucy” show with Lucile Ball and her husband, Ricky Ricardo.  Time after time, when Ricky would come home from band practice – he led a Cuban dance band in the show – he would find out about some untimely misadventure that centered around his wife Lucy.  Or discover some disaster Lucy and her friend Ethyl had tried to keep secret from their husbands.

Often the first words out of Ricky’s mouth in his Cuban accent when entering through the front door after work were, upon learning of Lucy’s daily disaster, “Lucy, you’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do.”  As Ethyl would scurry away.

As we contritely approach Lent this Ash Wednesday, the same could be said of us.  “We’ve all got a lot of ‘splaining to do!”

Indeed, we have failed to do that which we ought to have done and done what we shouldn’t have.  We’ve put our self-importance over the welfare of the planet.

Philip Roth wrote a novel set in the 1990s, The Human Stain, the last of a trilogy on American life.  It looks at the messiness of human existence, and how, in finality, there are no complete remakes, no ultimate do-overs.  The American myth of self-reinvention is just that – a myth.  In many ways, we’re stuck with who we are. 

I’m reminded of a high school friend telling me the story of his first and last motorcycle ride.  Several of us were standing around at my good friend Jerry Weisner’s house talking big bikes when he told us why he didn’t ride one anymore.

He had come to a friend’s house to admire his new Harley Davison and the friend asked if he wanted to try it out.  Of course, he knew how to ride it.  What kind of sissy did his friend think he was, anyway?  Of course, he knew!  Though he did have some considerable trouble in getting it fired up.

As he listened to the rumble of its deep bass of the muffler, revving the engine, he popped the clutch accidentally.  If a flash the bike shot across the street at very high speed.  Jumped the curb and roared across a neighbor’s front lawn on the opposite corner.  When he came to, he was lying sprawled out on the remnants of a coffee table in the front room.  Cut to ribbons.  Shards of broken glass of a plate glass window and lamps and other wreckage about.  Did I mention blood?  Lots of it.

When a hysterical woman ran in to her destroyed living room screaming, my friend said that all he could mumble was, “Lady, I’ve really screwed myself up.”   Although “screwed” was not the word he used. 

That disaster’s too often, too accurately, a picture of us and our world. 

Got some big ‘splaining to do.  We all do.  Ashes to ashes we end.

We’re cooking the planet.  We in America are awash in a sea of guns.  Poverty stalks the streets of our cities and rural countryside.  You know the litany.  Got a lot of ‘splaining to do.

What’s left?

What’s left is “in the meantime.”  Only to come before our Maker in the words of that old gospel song: “It’s me, It’s me, It’s me, O lord.  Standing in the need of prayer.” 

Answered with another hymn: “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy like the wideness of the sea.” 

In and through faith we find restoration.  We are lifted beyond the muck and clamoring voices that we might hear that Still, Small Voice.   This is what a Holy Lent is all about.

We are raised up to serve, as shown in the exemplar, Peter’s mother-in-law.  As we pray every Sunday, “It’s in giving that we receive, and in dying that we’re born to eternal life.”  In the Christ let loose in creation, we also rise.  Amen.

February 14, 2024
Ash Wednesday

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

“A Lot of ‘Splaining to Do”