Ash Wednesday February 21, 2007
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Welcome to Lent. What, you say, “welcome” to Lent? Yes, that is what I said, but if welcoming you to Lent seems odd or uncomfortable to you, then you are not alone. I find Ash Wednesday to be the most uncomfortable day of the church year. That has always been true for me, from the time I was a child in elementary school. That was when I began to notice the dirt on the forehead of many of my classmates on that particular Wednesday. I didn’t have any way to know what that dirt was about, and I was too polite and maybe even a little fearful to ask anybody why they had dirt on their forehead. You see, I lived in a Roman Catholic neighborhood and my sister and I were two of the few kids in our school who attended worship in a Protestant church. We learned quickly that the best thing we could do was to hide that fact so that we could fit in. So I was not about to ask why, on that Wednesday, so many of my Catholic friends came to school with dirt on their forehead.
It made me uncomfortable, not knowing, but it made me even more uncomfortable the year I learned what it was all about. It was not about dirt; it was about ashes. I learned this when the pastor of my own church went on a rant during a sermon he preached about “practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.” As you might imagine, his attitude about public displays of ashes on Ash Wednesday was not complimentary. It seemed to me he saw this practice not only as religiously incorrect; he saw it as one more way Roman Catholics were in your face if you were not one of them in this city which was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Because I was an impressionable child, and not a little intimidated by the pastor of our church, I immediately adopted his disdain for the practice, and over the next few years, on every Ash Wednesday, I remember looking at my Catholic friends with something close to religious contempt.
By the time I was in high school, I learned just to ignore the sign of ashes on the foreheads of my friends, but I was also inclined to ignore them for that day, as well. After high school, it didn’t help that over the next few decades I found myself living in communities which were almost exclusively Protestant. Except for a pastor’s occasional reference to Ash Wednesday as the day which begins Lent, nobody paid attention to Ash Wednesday, and there were virtually no smudged foreheads to call our attention to it.
And then, quite dramatically, on a Sunday in January about 16 years ago, everything changed. After three decades of not thinking much about Ash Wednesday, I found myself figuratively, and quite literally, worshiping in an Episcopal Church. At my very first experience of worship I was completely taken by the beauty of the liturgy and the splendor of the music; the sincere piety of the people and their openness to a God who was larger than any God I had come to know. And my first Eucharist was a gift of true thanksgiving for me. For the next several Sundays I became deeply engaged in worship. The Sundays after Epiphany began to approach Lent, and then came the announcement. The announcement about the Ash Wednesday service, actually three services that day, to accommodate all who would come to receive the sign of the cross in ashes on their forehead. And didn’t that just stir up all of the deeply buried negative thoughts and feelings I ever had about Ash Wednesday. For the next two Sundays I had a mini crisis over the strong probability that I would find myself at that altar having ashes imposed on my forehead. I say strong probability because I could not imagine not having ashes placed on my forehead. Suddenly it seemed so right and natural and necessary to me, even though I wasn’t altogether certain why. I just knew I had to trust God and trust that God was taking me to this new place for good purpose.
And here I am, in this new place of priestly vocation and in this new place of St. George’s Church. And I believe with all my mind and heart that God’s good purpose for me is being served on this holy night as I take on the awesome and humbling work of imposition of ashes. Truth be told, however, Ash Wednesday still makes me uncomfortable. But it makes me uncomfortable in a totally new way. Because now I know. Now I understand why we come together on this night to be marked with the ashes of the palms of last Palm Sunday. And it makes me uncomfortable because that is what it is supposed to do. Because on Ash Wednesday the ashes we receive are meant to make us acknowledge things about ourselves that are not easy to admit. Truths too difficult for us to accept. Realities too hard for us to know. We have spent the better part of a year avoiding them or denying them. And now we must face them. We must literally offer our foreheads to be smeared by them. So that we can remember how human we really are. So that we remember the reason why we need a savior. So that we are prepared to walk with Jesus on his journey through Lent to the other side of the cross.
Ash Wednesday is where we begin again to enter into the Paschal mystery of Jesus’ suffering and death and resurrection. Where we begin to understand, once again, and perhaps more fully, why that mystery makes a difference in our life. While some might look at Ash Wednesday as the beginning of the end for Jesus, we understand Ash Wednesday much as we understand our Baptism. Having water poured over our head in baptism and having ashes imposed on our forehead on Ash Wednesday are signs which indicate that our life begins and ends in God. Signs that we honor the life God has given us and we seek to become the person God created us to be. Ash Wednesday reminds us that Lent is the time to begin growing more fully into that life. Our Lenten disciplines are the means by which that happens. The forty days of Lent provide intentional opportunities for us to pray and to fast, to study and to go apart for times of quiet. They encourage rigorous self-examination. Lent is the time to put aside all the stuff we have heaped onto and into our life over the past year; it is the time to rid ourselves of the things which have taken control of our life, and surrender the control we think we have over our life. Lent is the time to strip away all that gets in the way of God.
Do words like “strip” and “surrender” make you uncomfortable? They should. No one wants to become exposed in such ways, not to anyone, no less God. No one relishes the discomfort of that kind of vulnerability. But as people of God, this is the way we grow; this is the way we reach into the Paschal mystery to find ourselves in resurrection. This is how we let go of self-sufficiency to recognize our need of God and of each other. This is where we face insecurities we never knew we had in the fearlessness which comes from feeling powerful and in control. All the places of our success step aside to show us our failure. And the goodness and righteousness we claim unveil themselves to reveal serious need of repentance. I don’t know about you, but that makes me uncomfortable. And it should. But that is not a bad thing. Because allowing ourselves to move into the uncomfortable places of Lent is the way we grow to God and into the fullness of our life.
When churches do the real work of Lent, you can understand why people avoid going to them. You can understand why people only show up for Christmas and Easter. Christmas and Easter are gifts everyone can receive, without any of the work of Lent. But like most gifts we receive, they don’t require much of us and we often put them aside after we have enjoyed them for a while. But Lent requires something of us. The disciplines of Lent are our work to do as a child of God and as a community of faith. Disciplines of Lent are what make us disciples of the One we will follow to the cross. Best of all, Lenten disciplines promise lasting joy in Christmas incarnation and Easter resurrection, and all the seasons of the church year which fall between them.
Everything that Lent is about is illustrated in our scripture lessons. The prophet, Joel, recognizes the need for God’s chosen people of Israel to repent of a life which has taken them far away from God. Joel makes a case for public liturgies which make penitence real and make people accountable to God and to each other. Joel’s words resonate with Christians who observe Ash Wednesday. There is no more public liturgy than the imposition of ashes, and no more public way for us to indicate our need of repentance. There is no better way to acknowledge our human failure and frailty and our need of God. There is no better way to acknowledge the sin in us which separates us from God and from each other. And there is no better way to acknowledge our need to be reconciled to God, to each other and to ourself.
I am certain Joel’s message of repentance made the Jews as uncomfortable as the message which comes to us in the ashes of Ash Wednesday, but in the end they are meant to be a blessing, because liturgies of repentance provide the means by which we return to God. The liturgies of Baptism and of Ash Wednesday remind us how human we are, but they also remind us that we are also divine. They remind us that we are wonderfully made to serve God’s purposes for us in this world. They remind us that when we fail, God wants nothing more than for us to come back to him. Baptism is our way forward to God. Ash Wednesday is our way back to God as we journey in our baptism through a sin-sick world.
Paul’s message to the Corinthians is also a message of reconciliation. There is no one more suited for delivering that message. Paul turned from persecuting followers of Christ, to making people into followers of Christ. “Be reconciled to God,” Paul says, so that you might become the “righteousness of God.” Paul believes that we were made for righteousness. He believes that righteousness was exemplified in commendable behavior. For Paul, our thoughts and words and deeds are meant to represent God to others, and when they do not, we must repent of them. We must acknowledge our fault and ask forgiveness so that we can return to the “righteousness” of God. At every Eucharist our public confession of sin with moments for silent confession provide us the opportunity to repent and return to being the righteousness of God. The season of Lent provides the opportunity for us to go deeper into the nature of sin and righteousness. Receiving the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday is a personal and public sign that we will.
In our Gospel lesson, Jesus’ message to the Pharisees is an attempt to make them go deeper. “Beware of practicing your piety before others to be seen by them,” says Jesus. And his words seem to fly in the face of public liturgies recommended by Joel and practiced by Christians on Ash Wednesday. But what we need to remember is that Jesus takes issue with people who participate in public liturgies for the sake of being seen and heard in them. These many years later, I am sure this is the message the Pastor of my church was getting at when he ranted against the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. And he had a point. The point is this: if you come for the imposition of ashes in this public place, and leave only to be seen by others for having done so, then you are indeed a hypocrite. If you do not engage the disciplines of Lent meant for rigorous self-examination for the sake of repentance and reconciliation, then your ashes are just for show. Jesus would have us know that we can pray quite publicly and even loudly, but if we never go into a room and shut the door to pray in earnest to our God, we will never receive the reward which comes from prayer. The same is true of Ash Wednesday. We can participate in a public imposition of ashes, but if we do not enter into public liturgies and private disciplines for the sake of encountering God in our sinfulness, then we will never receive the reward which comes from repentance and reconciliation with God—the reward Paul calls the “righteousness of God.” A righteousness which keeps us ever mindful of the ways we to be in relationship with God and with each other, and the ways we are meant to represent God in and to our world.
I have chosen to refer to the Psalm as our final source of wisdom for our liturgy of Ash Wednesday. It is also meant to be a blessing. The Psalmist tells us: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is in me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities. As a father cares for his children, so does the LORD care for those who fear him. For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust…”