Ash

Ash Wedensday Sermon, March 2014

St Matthew's Episcopal Church, Chandler, AZ

Joel 2:1-2,12-17
or Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103 or 103:8-14

Is it not just a little odd that the day many Christian traditions set aside to receive ashes as a public sign of penitence and our need to turn back to God is the day we also read Jesus saying that we should "beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them”?

Does anyone else find that somewhat jarring?

How about the line in which Jesus says not to disfigure your face or look dismal.  It’s hard to be joyful while wearing a sign of one’s own mortality on one’s face.

And yet here we are, ready to smudge ashes on our foreheads.

What’s going on here?

Why would we open the possibility of questioning a religious practice on the day we participate in that practice?

You might already have personal answers to these questions and I am not going to spend a sermon telling you about how Ash Wednesday is somehow not biblical.

All the same, I love that momentary feeling of dissonance.  The parts of the Bible we read on this day are meant to get our attention.  To get us thinking.

A few months ago, I gave a sermon about the prophets here at St. Matthew’s.  In that sermon, I mentioned that one thing that I greatly appreciated about the prophets—and Jesus—is that they were great biblical examples of a religious tradition critiquing itself.

I see our reading of these particular passages to be a continuation of that practice of critique—a critique of how religious tradition feeds personal vice.  It would be so easy on a day like today to take on the smudge of ash as a sign of self-righteous glory...as a sign to be proud of—and so possessing this sign sets us as judges of those who we suppose can’t be bothered to make it to church today.

The readings, our tradition, Christianity as a whole says “no” to this tendency of considering our taking on ashes as a sign of an obviously superior humility, a more fine-tuned recognition of our sin, and a greater repentance while we walk among others who may not even know what today means to us.

Our tradition has always pointed us to ways of getting closer to God.  In Lent that has traditionally meant to fast, to pray, and to give.  But the tradition always asks us to examine our motives and be aware of the internal disposition that might use such virtuous activity as a cover for a deeply embedded vice.

What’s more, Jesus says, with all of the talk 

about disfiguring the face 

and announcing our goodness

and making loud public prayers

and putting our piety on display for all

is that we should be willing to forego the recognition of holy work for the sake of the work itself. 

Furthermore, the more we make a show of how hard we find Lent to be, without the balance of speaking of the loving relationship we seek to cultivate—not earn!—with God, the more difficult it might be to bring someone who does not yet know the Lord into such a relationship.

We here return to the commandments God gives us, and the Good news that we share to the world even in such a seemingly dour liturgical season. 

The simplicity of stating the truth is beautiful.  We are to love God unreservedly, as God loves every one of us, and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.  The difficulty of living this out is staggering.  Our rebellion against these truths take many, many forms.  Lent is the time to examine those tendencies within us—subtle and egregious—that conspire against our ability to love God and neighbor as we should, and as we could.

Our readings point to one of those tendencies:  to make a spectacle of the trappings of faith without the commitment to the demands such a life entails.

Our readings jar us into considering the taking of the ashes as more than a show our commitment to a belief system—and they certainly compel us to be wary of false humility.

So I ask you, beloved of God, to consider the following:

Take these ashes as a sign of your return to God.  Renew that relationship, for that is a good and joyful thing. Take on a fast, for that will help you slough off the things which weigh us down in our spiritual life, and remind us that we can indeed live with less than we think we can. Give something up, and make more room for the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life. Add something to your spiritual life, and listen for the still small voice of God that beckons you.

But do not forget, Children of God, these ashes are not for you alone.  We are beckoned to a purpose as high as heaven.  Taking them is a sign that we also recommit to our duty to not only love God but love our neighbors as ourselves, as agents of the ministry of reconciling the world to God.  Take these ashes as a sign that you are willing to bear this news into the world and be for others a living sign of God’s indiscriminate love.

May you find in this, our Lenten journey, that your return to God propels you into the world as God’s instrument of justice, love, and mercy, with a face smudged by ash but bright with glorious purpose.