Ash Wednesday
February 25, 2009
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
As you are well aware, today is Ash Wednesday, and Ash Wednesday is our Gateway to Lent. Tonight when we receive the imposition of ashes on our forehead we receive a wakeup call. We are made to face our mortality in death and our brokenness as a sinful people. And I am happy to report that this is one religious observance which will never likely fall into the clutches of retailers. You won’t find Hallmark cards with Ash Wednesday messages. There are no ads in the media for things you can buy; no displays in store windows which will draw our attention to Lent. Because sackcloth and ashes don’t sell. Because, generally speaking, people don’t want to be reminded of their human faults and sinfulness, nor do they want to be reminded that one day they will die. If anything, we live our lives making every attempt to hide our sins and deny our slow journey to death.
But tonight Christians throughout the world will make a very public display of the ashes that will be imposed on our foreheads. And those ashes will make an important statement to our world. They acknowledge our human brokenness by our sin and our human frailty by our death. They are a sign that we are a people who are centered in a religious tradition which periodically reminds us of the bottom line: this body we occupy is destined to sin and destined to the grave. But that is not the end of our message.
For the next forty days we will walk with Jesus through his own human trials—his own suffering and death—until that blessed morning when the message becomes, “Alleluia, alleluia! Christ is risen.” We have a Savior who has redeemed us from sin and death. That means we can live into the promise of redemption right here, right now, in this life. And how liberating it is to live our life knowing that this body is not all there is to life, and our sins cannot keep us enslaved in death. That we can become more than the self-interested, self-serving wants and needs of our body. And there is more to death than the finality of the grave. But these are not easy things to remember if we are never given the opportunity to come away from a world which would keep us living in the secrecy of our sin and the denial of our death.
This is why Lent has become a long-established tradition in the church. Ash Wednesday gives us the opportunity to acknowledge that we are sinners whose our bodies are dust and to dust they shall return. And our forty day period of Lent provides us with the opportunity to repent of those things which keep us from living into the promises of our redemption. It is the time we are given to remove ourselves from the distractions of this world and the superficial living of our life so that we can go deep. To pray and study and fast; to think and feel and know more clearly who we are, who God is, and how that makes a difference in our life and in our world for good.
The themes of all our scripture lessons today remind us of our need of redemption from sin and death. In our reading from Joel, God pleads with his people to repent. “Return to me with all your heart,” says God. If you were here on Sunday for worship you heard me say in my sermon that only a change of heart can change our life and change our world. Fixing things or merely changing the way we do things is not enough. It takes a repentant heart, a heart that will allow God to transform us so that we can become the change we want to make in our world, and be the difference which makes a difference for God and for good. When God changes a heart it is a radical procedure which brings life-changing consequences.
As I was trying to think of a good analogy for repentance, it occurred to me that repentance is a lot like what happens on the extreme makeover programs we watch on TV. The dilapidated, or inadequate home of a very deserving family is torn down and the debris taken away so that a new home can be built in the same place to house the people who do so much good for the community they live in. When people return to a new home, it completely changes the way they way they live in it. It seems to me that repentance is a kind of extreme makeover of the heart, or at least a major renovation. Repentance changes the heart, and a change of heart changes the way we live in our body, the way we think with our mind, and the way we connect with God in our soul.
This is why it is so important for Christians to observe this important period of Lent with the kind of intentionality and discipline it takes to repent of the messes we make and wreck we become as we try to manage our life in the messy and reckless world we live in. Our reading from his letter to his congregation at Corinth, Paul speaks of the chaos such a world can make of our heart. And he indicates the kind of repentance he hopes will take place in the people of his congregation. The church at Corinth is a house divided. People argue with each other and when they disagree they are also disagreeable. They simply cannot get along. The way they live in their faith community looks no different from the way people live with each other in the world around them. In his letter, Paul calls them to repent. Paul reminds this well-established faith community that as followers of Christ they are called to live differently in the world; they are called to live in peace and harmony with each other. Paul tells his people what repentance will look for them and for their church. Repentance will enable them to surrender their will to God so that they can surrender their willfulness against each other. Most important, repentance will bring them to reconciliation with God and with each other. Reconciliation is a test of repentance many of us have some experience with, I think. A test which shows us just how difficult repenting can be.
Jesus shows us the need for repentance in other kinds of behaviors which need changing if we are to be true to ourselves and true to God. He reinforces repentance as a change of heart by the examples of people whose hearts contradict their actions. Jesus warns against false piety—worship, and prayer, sacrificial offerings and other religious observances which are done primarily for the sake of show or out of religious obligation. And the message is this: doing the right thing for the wrong reason does not serve God’s purpose for them in us or in his world.
We might look at our own piety in the ways we worship and the ways we function on our ministry teams during worship. For instance, it’s is easy for a lector to read the words of scripture, but a heart which loves these words and believes in their power to redeem us will prepare these readings in love and be a vehicle by which their power will be translated to the people who hear them. It’s easy for a crucifer to carry a cross in procession and for a congregation to bow in respect as it passes by, but we need to ask if our heart feels sacred regard and deep humility these acts of piety. And when we participate in the Great Thanksgiving of Eucharist, it’s easy to eat and drink the bread and wine we receive, but not so easy to bring a truly thankful heart which is in complete communion with all others who receive these gifts. It’s even harder, I think, to take our gratitude back into the world where it has great power and potential to redeem people and situations we find ourselves in. Jesus’ message of repentance in these examples is clear: if our heart does not match and reflect the piety of our words and actions then we need to repent. We need to turn back to God. We need to examine our heart, because our heart is where God lives. Our heart is God’s home. Our heart is the only place where God can make changes in us which are true and lasting.
But nothing will change in our heart if we never look inside of it; if we never examine what is going on there; if we won’t recognize the places which are in need of renewal, or repair, or even an extreme makeover. And let’s face it, most of us are unwilling, if not unable to look into our heart until we get a wakeup call. And we can get some pretty awful wakeup calls in this life. This is why we need Lent. Because without a regular wakeup call in our life we forget God. And when we forget God we become deeply entrenched in our foolish and sinful ways. Our life gets in the way of the time we need and the attention we can give to examining the only place where God dwells in us and the only place where God can change us—our heart.
We in the church are fortunate to have rituals and traditions which keep us awake and alert to our need of repentance. We are especially grateful for the opportunity we are given at every Eucharist to confess our sins and receive and absolution, and to make peace with our brothers and sisters before we receive communion. But tonight we thank God for Ash Wednesday because it is our gateway into Lent, these forty days which provide us sustained and intentional opportunities to find our way back to God. We thank God for Ash Wednesday because this is our wakeup call. A call which invites us to examine our heart. To go deep. To find those places which need redeeming, and to ask God’s help in redeeming us in them. We thank God for Ash Wednesday because it is the prelude for a story which begins in sin and death and ends with the Alleluias of Easter Resurrection. But it remains to be seen whether the promises God makes to an Easter people will make a difference in our life this year; so much depends on the next forty days.