Ash Wednesday, 2014
March 5, 2014
I have sort
of a love-hate relationship with Ash Wednesday. Even as a child, I used to love
Lent and the special Lenten services, but nearly every year I remember being
sort of disappointed by Ash Wednesday. Maybe it wasn’t an interesting enough
service, aside from the ash piece, to keep my attention. Or maybe I just didn’t
like the ashes falling into my eyes, and then I was always disappointed that my
ash cross never really looked much like a cross, but more like a smudge. Who
knows.
As an adult,
I have more language to apply to my persisting love-hate relationship with Ash
Wednesday. It is a difficult day, to be sure, an uncomfortable day in which the
concept of our mortality is literally rubbed in our face. It starts off a
season with a reputation for gloom, in which we think a lot about sin and the
need for repentance. It starts off six long weeks of a Lenten discipline –
fasting, giving, praying, all things we know we should do, but ugh, do we
really have to? And all this as we are already enduring a long and frigid
winter – do we really need one more thing to bring us down? And then you add on
top of that the fact that so many of us live under the weight every day of
shame, inadequacy, and self-doubt, so why do we need to dedicate six whole
weeks to dwelling on our bondage to sin?
Yes, I can
see the temptation to hate Ash Wednesday. And yet, all of you came here
tonight, so you must see some value in it. And actually, I’m curious – will you
tell me why you are here tonight? Why do you come to Ash Wednesday service year
after year, or even if this is your first time – why are you here? [wait for response]
Well I did
say that I have a love relationship
with Ash Wednesday as well, so let me tell you why I love it. It’s one of those
loves like I love having gone running – I don’t so much love how running makes
me feel in the moment, but rather I love the feeling I get for having done it,
and the health I know it brings to my life and my body. That’s how Ash
Wednesday and Lent are for me. No, I don’t like thinking about my sins and all
the ways I fall short, and I don’t like having to name them before God. But it
is worth it for the forgiveness that follows. No, I don’t like the various
disciplines I have taken on over the years, but they have always been good for
me, and opened my mind and my heart to new ways of experiencing God and God’s
creation and even God’s grace. No, I don’t like remembering that my time here
on earth is fleeting and that someday I will return to the dust from which I
came, but I do love the celebration of new life that comes at the other end
with Easter, and that celebration is all the sweeter for having taken the time
to remember why we are having it.
But perhaps
the thing I love-hate the most about Ash Wednesday is that it reminds me that I
am human, and not God – which also falls into that category of not loving the
realization in the moment, but loving what it means in the long run. Perhaps
the recognition that we’re mortal and not God seems obvious, but are we not all
guilty of that sometimes? We think we can do it on our own. We think we can
make big decisions without consulting God. We think we can plan and schedule our
own lives. We think we can handle tough situations by our own devices. We put
out a front like we have our lives all together, like the hypocrites in the
street that Jesus talks about in our Gospel reading tonight, and we might even
fool ourselves into thinking that we built this life by our own brilliance,
skills, and abilities. But then Ash Wednesday comes along and bursts our
bubble, reminding us that we are, as e.e. cummings says in one of my favorite
poems, “human merely being,” and that none of this is possible without God,
without Christ.
I heard a
story this week about a little girl, age 7, whose dad asked her to clean her
room one Saturday morning. She emerged five minutes later, announcing that she
was finished. Skeptical, her dad went to see if her room really was clean, and
was amazed to see that it was… until he opened the closet, and an avalanche of toys,
dirty clothes, books, and trash came tumbling out. So he got a book to read and
a stool, and sat in her room with her while she properly cleaned her room –
this time she did so happily! When she had finished, she hugged him and
declared him the best dad in the world for having sat with her while she
cleaned up her room.
It’s a sweet
story, but it is also a story that points to our Lenten task and the presence
of Jesus Emmanuel with us in it. Lent is a time of recognizing what in our
lives we may have just shoved in the closet in an effort to present to the
world and even to ourselves a nice, clean front. It is a time of intentionally
working on cleaning out that closet. And it is a time of knowing that this is
not something we must do alone, but rather, that Jesus is sitting there beside
us while we work on it.
That is why
many people decide to take on a Lenten discipline. Last night over pancakes I
had a conversation with some folks about whether Lutherans are supposed to give
up anything for Lent. Well there’s no rule about that. But like so many things
that first look like law, the suggestion to either give something up – or
popularly now, to take something on – is actually one that offers the
possibility for life. If Lent is indeed a time for cleaning out our closets and
getting rid of some of the muck that clutters up our lives and keeps us from a
deeper relationship with God, then why not take these six weeks to focus on
just one of those things. Maybe this Lent you can clean up just the dirty
clothes, or just the old books, or just the trash that you have hidden in your
closet. You could focus on prayer, since that is our Lenten theme this year.
Your discipline could be to attend our midweek gatherings, to expand your
understanding of prayer and learn more about ways to pray. You could find 5
minutes each day when all you do is sit in silence and focus on God. Or, your
discipline could be to set an alarm on your phone for the same time each day –
maybe noon – and stop whatever you are doing and pray for whatever family is
highlighted in our covenant prayer vigil. You can find this vigil in your March
newsletter.
Has anyone already decided to do
this, to take on a Lenten discipline? If you have, would anyone mind sharing
what it is and how you hope to grow from it? [wait for responses]
It turns out, I guess, that my
love-hate relationship with Ash Wednesday can be attributed to the awareness of
the growing pains that are about to come. But more than anything, I know that
as we embark on this path of growth and drawing closer to Christ and
understanding more deeply what God has done for us, that God will be there with
us ever step of the way. In a moment we will come forward to receive an ashen
cross, and even as we are reminded that we are merely dust, and will return to
the dust, we are also reminded of the cross that was traced on our foreheads at
baptism, when we were told that God loves us, claims us, forgives us, and will
be present in and with us forever – as we learn, and grow, and prayer, and
reflect, and as we strive to be the people God claims we are.
Let us pray… Lord
Christ, you have done so much for us. Give us the strength to give something of
our own hearts during this Lenten season and beyond to better know and love
you. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
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