Sermon for Ash Wednesday Year C 2016 Remember That You Are Dust

Transcription

1 Sermon for Ash Wednesday Year C 2016 Remember That You Are Dust During the morning commute today, a few of my colleagues distributed ashes to those who were rushing off to their workdays. Many people lining up to receive ashes who probably wouldn t even consider coming to a worship service either on Ash Wednesday or on any given Sunday maybe Easter. During my years at Redeemer, I would always distribute ashes to the children and their parents. Parents would come who also would not and did not attend worship either regularly or at all. But they always came to receive the cross of ashes on their brows. I also have felt the pull of Ash Wednesday. Growing up in a Norwegian-Lutheran mission church we did not observe the distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday. Actually, I began to observe this ritual while I was at NYU. I would occasionally attend prayer services at their interfaith chapel. Every Ash Wednesday they had a Roman Catholic priest distributing ashes. So at the tender age of 18, I began to observe Ash Wednesday in this ancient way a cross of ashes on my brow. There s something compelling about Ash Wednesday, something that draws us in both numbers and intensity quite unusual for a weekday let alone a Sunday. It s more than just habit or duty somehow more than just the beginning of Lent. What we say and what we do on this particular Wednesday has power. A large part of that power probably lies in the fact that today the church speaks words of truth, words that cannot be ignored, or disputed, or evaded, or denied even by the most devout atheist or agnostic. Today we say and confirm with a touch Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And there it is. Much else that we confess as Christians we may believe or doubt, hope is true or perhaps even fear is true. But this we know: We are mortal. We were born. We will die. 1

2 From dust, to dust. As if hearing the words were not enough, they are literally rubbed into our faces. Ashes mark us and our fate is strangely visible. Then Jesus goes one step further. He reminds us that dust is the destination, not just of our bodies, but of most of what we consider to be worth living for, as well. Moth and rust and thieves can and will reduce to dust virtually every goal, every dream, every value, every treasure we hold dear. And we know that to be true, too. These words of simple, absolute truth give us a perspective the world tries both to hide and to deny and that most of us usually do our best to ignore. Dust and ashes. These are what we see if we look ahead far enough and honestly enough. These are the final return on virtually every investment we make. Today we say this, and we know its truth and its power. And that looks like bad news unmitigated bad news even though we have known it all along. These grim, honest words can be devastating. We all know the personal crisis that comes with that first mature realization of the absolute certainty of our own death. We know how jarring it is, and on this day we are reminded of this, and brought closer to this. From dust, to dust. To find the Good News here, we need to begin with the past, and with a conviction we Christians hold as firmly as we know the certainty of our own death. This Good News is the conviction that we are created by God that we did not just happen, that we did not emerge by some cosmic fluke. The dust of our beginnings that dust from which we came is not just a matter of chance; it is not without meaning. 2

3 Our lives are gifts from God. Nothing less. Our dust was molded by the very hands of God, and his Spirit breathed life into it. So, part of the Good News is that we have been made from dust. The grace and power of God are present at the beginning of our existence. Our dust is holy, our ashes are blessed by the power of God. What appears a threat you are dust becomes, if we pay attention, a promise. The grace and love present at our creation will see us through our physical disintegration and beyond. God is with us from our very beginning, and before. Our dust is holy; it is cherished by God. Now, notice something else. These ashes on our forehead are not just tossed there, or scattered at random. They are placed in the form of a cross so today we mortals are connected with both Good Friday and Easter morning. Today we remember the promise that, as we have risen from dust to this mortal life, so, with Christ, we will rise from the dust of death to eternal life. Yes, to dust we shall return, but with Christ. Dust and ashes are Good News: They point us toward the power and love of God both at the beginning and at the end. And they remind us that, because of this Good News, we are called as we live between dust and dust to repent and to return. To return to our risen Lord. That s what repent means: to turn, to change the direction in which we are looking and moving, and to look and to move in a new direction. For example, if you re in Chicago and you re driving to New York, going west, then you just won t ever get there no matter how many times you pull over to the side of the road, stop the car, get out and apologize. To repent is to turn around. 3

4 Today s call to us to repent doesn t center on fear on what will happen to us if we don t; and it doesn t center on guilt or duty on what we think we ought to do. Instead, this call centers on divine love on the divine love that is the heart of our creation on the divine love that is seen most fully on the cross. It centers on the divine love that transforms ashes into a symbol of hope. At the same time, such turning such repentance is not something we can think ourselves into; it is not something to which we can pay lip service or forehead service and have happen. It requires concrete action. We don t think ourselves into a new state of being. We live and we act ourselves into it. Both scripture and the accumulated spiritual insight of Christians through the ages tell us that the traditional and ancient disciplines of prayer, fasting and giving are powerful helps as we hear and move toward obeying God s call to return. They are universally recognized ways of keeping our journey of faith moving in the right direction. Jesus commands these three, and he goes the extra step of insisting not only that we practice them, but also that we do so privately indeed, secretly. By the way, Jesus is being quite straightforward here, quite literal. Those that practice religious ritual for merely the show of it have missed the point and, sadly, will miss out on the greater and deeper benefit of embodying the ritual. Because when you embody the truth of ashes on your forehead and all that it means, it changes the way you are you don t care who is looking, and prayer becomes second nature, your fast becomes giving bread to the hungry, you seek ways to be a peacemaker and restorer of what is broken in your own and others lives, giving and sharing blessings becomes your way of life. 4

5 We don t wear a cross of ash on our foreheads throughout the forty days of Lent or every day for the rest of our lives. Christ says wash your faces, remembering your brow has been marked with the sign of the cross, and go live in quiet, humble obedience to God. In that way our reward our blessing of growth into Christ and his growth in us will be something quite safe from rust, and moths, and thieves and the corrosive corruption of the admiration of others. So, remember that you are dust and rejoice. For God is with us in the beginning, at the end, and all the dustings and dust-ups in between. Repent, return to the Lord in joyful obedience. For he who created us is calling us to him. In the words of the Apostle Paul Now is the acceptable time; see, now, is the day of salvation! 5