Ash Wednesday 2023

Ash Wednesday 2023

Isaiah 58:1-12, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, 

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21, Psalm 103

 

Just as Advent is the beginning of the New Year, Ash Wednesday and Lent are the beginning of our new life. I think we have a deep desire to start over, to begin again, to turn to God and take a deep, refreshing breath of new life, and to say, here I am Lord, I have heard you calling in the night. Today we are marked with the ashes that remind us of who we are, and whose we are. We are God’s beloved, at our baptism we are marked and claimed as God’s own children, forever. Today we retrace that indelible mark with these ashes, this dust. We are reminded that we don’t get out of this live alive, we are dust, and to dust we shall return. These ashes remind us that God is God, and we are not. These ashes remind us that we are chosen and marked by God’s love, delight of God’s life.

 

This is an opportunity and our call. We present ourselves to God, just as we are, confident in the promise of starting over and confident that we belong to God. Ash Wednesday, and all of Lent are an opportunity. An opportunity to put all our attention toward the Gospel call to love as Christ loves. Ash Wednesday and Lent are an opportunity to examine ourselves and find where we miss the mark of that love. Ash Wednesday particularly is an opportunity to come to our senses, to be reminded of who and whose we are, to start over, to loosen our heart’s grip on the things that separate us from the love of God and from our siblings. Ash Wednesday is an opportunity to do that which is described in our gospel reading, to give alms, to pray, and to fast.

 

Far from being a sad story, this is a story filled with hope. It is a story filled with forgiveness. It is a reminder that forgiveness isn’t a one-time deal, forgiveness is every day. This kind of forgiveness doesn’t assign shame or hold a grudge. This kind of forgiveness holds our souls in compassion, this kind of forgiveness heals us and frees us. 

 

Forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice. Turning away from all that distracts us from God and God’s love for us, takes constant practice also. We often fall off the shoulder of the road and into the ditch on this journey, and in that ditch, life seems much darker. But we have been marked as Christ’s own forever, we belong to God.

 

On this day, we recognize our tendency to sin. We recognize our wretchedness, a word that is hard to hear about ourselves, but a word that describes our tendency to fall in the muck and the mess of live, and sometimes even wallow in it. But we are not left there to fend for ourselves. We come to this place of dust again and again. We come because this is the beginning and the end. We come because this is creation, and this is love. We come because we belong to God and to one another. We come because our memories are so short, aren’t they? We so quickly forget about the love that brings us to this day of dust. The love of God in creation, the love that gives up everything for us.

 

Lent is an opportunity. This journey we begin today shows us what true love looks like. It shows us that God’s heart’s desire is to be with us not only when times are rosy, but also and maybe especially when it seems like our brokenness and vulnerably will get the best of us. God’s love creates us and blesses us and puts us back together when we have disintegrated into the dust. When it seems like we will fall apart into the dust of which we are made, God is there to raise us up, and make us anew. 

 

I encourage you to take this lent opportunity and be intentional. Lent is traditionally a time of prayer and fasting. How can you be intentional about your prayer? There are many ways here at the church. Come to bible study, or come to Wednesday night soup suppers, or come after church on Sundays for coffee and conversation. Each of these is an opportunity to be in prayer with one another. And be intentional about your prayer at home. 

 

Especially in these chaotic times, find a place for quiet, open your prayer book, or the app on your phone, or join us at 10 each day, and pray morning prayer, “O Lord open our lips, and our mouth shall proclaim your praise.” Or evening prayer or compline, “guide us waking o lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.” Make space in your heart, and your mind, and your soul, for Jesus to show up.

 

How can you be intentional about fasting? When I was a little catholic girl, like many of you, Friday fasting during lent was an ordeal. Today I would like for you to consider what it is that you may need or want to fast from. What is it that is making you anxious? or annoyed? mad? sad? Do you want to put your phone down for an hour each day, and fast from the news? Do you want to fast from the cacophony of noise and sit in the silence for some time each day? Do you want to fast from food that consumes you, and give some away for another to consume? 

 

And that brings us to hope, this day is a day of hope. This dust that we mark our foreheads with today is the burnt palms of Palm Sunday, the palms we wave in triumph as Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem. This dust gives us hope. The story we stake our lives on is the story of resurrection, and resurrection is always preceded by pain, and suffering, and death. Soon enough we will be walking with Jesus to the cross, soon enough. God loves us so very much, that God puts Godself in our place, wraps us in love, and gives us new life, life that we cannot even begin to imagine. Hope is God’s dream for us, that we may walk a journey on this earth, of intention. Love, compassion, prayer, forgiveness, we are given this opportunity of Lent to practice these intentions. 

 

How will you practice love this Lent?

How will you practice compassion this Lent?

How will you practice prayer this Lent?

How will you practice forgiveness this Lent?

1 Lent Yr B Feb 21 2021

YouTube video

1 Lent Yr B Feb 21 2021

Genesis 9:8-17, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15, Psalm 25:1-9

 

And the walls come a tumblin down. That’s what’s happening here, God’s tumblin the walls. God’s removing any barriers between God and creation, God and humanity, God and us. This is Good News isn’t it? It also means that God is loose in our world. That may be a bit stickier. Because if God is loose in our world, it means that something is afoot, and that something may very well call us into something new, something wild, something not quite as orderly as we are used to.

 

How do we know God is loose in the world? Let’s take a look at what Mark has to say. When Jesus, who is God in our midst, was coming up out of the water after being baptized by John, the heavens were torn apart – that is something to pay attention to, and the Spirit descended into him, and a voice from the heavens said, “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

 

There’s a lot going on here, but in this short piece we get the point. God is on the move. Once the heavens are torn apart, you can’t undo that. God is loose. There’s another place that we hear the heavens are torn apart. Can you remember when? I’ll help you. At the crucifixion, in Mark that is chapter 15 verse 38 “and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.” This is not just dramatic staging or an opportunity for wondrous computer generated imagery. This means that God is loose. And this is a huge change for those who always understood that God was contained in the ark of the covenant and later in the holy of holies. When history gets to the story of Jesus, it had been a long, long time that anyone had heard from God.  The Jewish people believed that prophecy had ceased with the last prophets but that it would be restored at the end-times (Malachi 4:5-6). The heavens had “closed,” as it were, and there was no direct communication from God to humankind anymore. That Mark says that the heavens were torn apart is a daring affirmation. That the Spirit descended and entered into Jesus is even more so. Here we have an absolutely revolutionary claim: the God of Israel is speaking again and has chosen to do it through a humble peasant from Galilee! So God showing up changes everything. God descending into Jesus changes everything. God is on the loose. You and I may not be hearing God’s voice, but rest assured, something is afoot, God is moving about, and there is no putting God back in the box.

 

For whom is God on the move? For whom is God loosed? That question can be answered with location, location, location. This is the beginning of Mark’s gospel, John is not in the power center, in the city or even in the village, John is out in the countryside, in the wilderness, on the margins, baptizing people. And after a long time of no God sightings, God is present. This is remarkable. It is remarkable that God shows up, and that God shows up outside of the city center, outside of the seat of power. You see, the messiah for whom the Hebrew people wait was a messiah who would sit on the throne and make everything right. But that’s not the messiah this story shows us. Jesus is out in the wilderness with John. John who eats locusts and wild honey, John who is an oddly likable character. Jesus doesn’t show up to solidify power, Jesus shows up to enfranchise those who have been tossed out, to restore those, women particularly, who have been tossed to the side because they are unattached to a man, and to heal those who have been tossed out like trash. 

 

Jesus goes from being baptized in the river to being tempted in the wilderness. 

 

Why is all this curtain tearing, Spirit entering, wilderness living, so important for us? God is tearing down walls, boundaries are being breached, borders are being crossed. That is who God is. It challenges our want and desire to define God, to determine what God can and cannot do, who God can and cannot love. God is the God of outrageous, uncontainable love. 

 

But this God who bursts into our lives, this God who is on the loose, this God who breaks boundaries and borders, calls us to see the rupture and hear the voice that is in our midst, maybe even calls us to wonder about the rupture we have experienced in our own lives. And God invites us to see the world from the margins of society. God invites us to see the world through and around the barriers we have built and that must come a tumblin down. 

 

Dear friends, God is still at work, still proclaiming the good news. God is still calling us to follow Jesus. Are we willing to drop so much of what passes for normal and expected in order to follow in the way of Jesus? God sees us as God saw Jesus on his baptismal day, beloved. 

 

Lent is a season of intention. This Lenten season is not the same ol lent. This Lenten season comes to us as we continue to persevere in this time of pandemic. This Lenten season comes to us as the racial and socio-economic disparities in our country have been so clearly revealed. God sees us as worthy of God’s attention, as capable of great things, as called and equipped to be Jesus’ followers in this new and challenging year of our Lord, 2021.

 

We cannot go back, we cannot put God back in the box. We must follow Jesus to outrageous faith and possibility. We cannot put back together that which cannot be mended. We must meet Jesus on the margins, in the wilderness, and turn in a new direction, believing and trusting that, indeed, God is with us and for us. 

 

And let us be blessed by the angels, the angels that cared for Jesus in the wilderness, the angels that care for the lonely of our church and our community, the angels that tirelessly care for the sick, the angels that deliver food and water to those whose homes are torn apart in the cold, the angels that care nothing for boundaries and barriers but who carry the love that wins to the margins.

 

Amen. 

Ash Wednesday 2018

Ash Wednesday 2018 Audio

Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Here we are, taking all this time to remember mortality, to remember that none of us gets out of this life alive. In a world in which death looks like failure, in which death is the enemy, today we come and stare death in the face. You see, the worst thing in this life is not death, but it is loosing ourselves, it is dissolving into hate, or revenge, or even apathy.

This is our beginning. Remembering who we are, remembering whose we are, remembering we are dust, remembering we are God’s beloved, remembering we cannot get to resurrection without first going by the way of pain and suffering, remembering our brokenness, and that the greatest integrating force, is God.

Rick and I have loved exploring this most beautiful part of Wisconsin. On summer Saturdays we’ll go for a drive and see what we can see. Often we’ll say, if only we could fly as the crow, straight over the cornfields to our destination. And then we’ll comment, you can’t get there from here in a straight line. And if we could, we’d miss so much. We’d miss the milkweed on the side of the road that gives life to the monarch butterflies. We’d miss the wildflowers, the hyacinth, the asters and the daises. We’d miss the stink of the fields as they are planted with corn. No matter how wonderful the end of the journey is, or how fast we’d rather get there, we’ve got to make our way, and be present to the beauty and the suffering that surrounds us.

Our journey ends with resurrection, with new life. But we can’t get there from here, unless we follow this path. And it is a path we don’t much like. It is the path of forgiveness; it is the path of repentance. It is the path on which we must let go of whatever it is that holds us hostage. It is the path of dying and rising with Christ.

We begin with these ashes on our foreheads. We begin by remembering who and whose we are. We begin by re-tracing this sign of the cross. You see, you already have this sign indelibly marked on your forehead. It was traced first at your baptism. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. We are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Those are not just words, but a statement of truth. Our lives are witness to all of the deaths and resurrections. Baptism is not an event, but a journey that takes a lifetime. Forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice. Turning away from all that distracts us from God and God’s love for us, takes constant practice also. We often fall off the shoulder of the road and into the ditch on this journey, and in that ditch life seems much more dark. But we have been marked as Christ’s own forever, we are not left there to fend for ourselves.

We come to this place of dust again and again. We come because this is the beginning and the end. We come because this is creation and this is love. We come because our memories are so short, aren’t they? We so quickly forget about the love that brings us to this day of dust. The love of God in creation, the love that gives up everything for us. The love that invites us to know who we really are. The love that looks nothing like a Hallmark Valentine’s card.

This journey we begin today shows us what true love looks like. It shows us that God’s heart’s desire is to be with us not only when times are rosy, but also and maybe especially when it seems like our brokenness and vulnerably will get the best of us. The love that creates us, and puts us back together when we have disintegrated back to the dust. When it seems like we will fall apart into the dust of which we are made, God is there to raise us up, and make us anew.

The ashes of this day, the dust of our lives, is where true love lives, it is where God lives. We present to the world our best put together selves, we strive so hard to make our lives seem perfect, but the only place we are perfect is in God’s love.

We begin with the dust, we begin in death with Jesus in the waters of baptism. We rise out of death with Jesus, to follow Jesus’ lead to outrageous faith. We search for truth, act with justice, strive for mercy. We seek forgiveness, we repent and return to the lord.

This journey is about the relationship Jesus has with you, with us. Lent is a time of intention. Intention that holds space for transformation, forgiveness, and repentance. I invite your intentions today. What is it you intend to do? What is it you must lay down, or let go of, so that you may take this journey with Jesus? Do you want to fast from something? Do you want to unattach yourself from something that holds your attention too strongly?

Write that down. Make that vow. Be intentional. And then put your paper in the brazier, and we will burn those and add them to the burnt palms, and together their dust will mark us.