Dusty Roads and Foreheads

Ash Wednesday 2017 (March  Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

      

            In a few moments, we will be receiving ashes upon our foreheads. Just before that happens, before we are each marked with the ashen cross, together we’ll confess to God and to one another that indeed, we have sinned and it is nobody’s fault but our own.

            We’re going to confess that to be honest about it, we know that we sin by the things we hold in our hearts – those feelings of jealousy and rage, of revenge and hatred, of thinking too highly of ourselves, and too little of our neighbors and those we encounter and engage in our lives. No doubt about it. Our hearts can and do get us into trouble.

            But then we’ll confess that we also sin by the things we have said – and if we think our hearts can be problematic, just think about our words! The words we’ve used, sharpened through vocabulary and tone, have all too often been intentionally formed and flung at others, to insult, humiliate, or make a person feel less than they deserve, especially when you consider that they, too, are fashioned after and in the image of God. Words are the tools we have often used to deceive others and ourselves, steering neatly away from the truth for our own benefit.

            Then, of course, we’re going to confess that it’s not just our thoughts and words, but also our actions that do us in – both the things done and the things we haven’t done – especially the things God told us to do that we’ve either ignored or failed at – like love one another and treat one another as we ourselves wish to be treated.

            Because, the truth is, all of these ways in which we sin; these thoughts, words and deeds, create a chasm between ourselves and God, and between ourselves and other people. We confess that this is a chasm only God can breach, break down and destroy. Without the forgiveness and grace of God this chasm leads us, ultimately, to death. Sin destroys the peaceful existence of God’s creation; it is antithetical to life, and we cannot, on our own, escape the ramifications of our brokenness and our addiction to sin.

            Finally, we will pray for God’s mercy; we will pray for God’s forgiveness; but today, when we are done, we will not hear the words of forgiveness. Not yet. Those words will come later. While you and I know that through baptism God has granted us the forgiveness of sin and the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, we also need to linger in the knowledge of the depth of our need for God.

            Today we hear the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Through this ritual of faith those same words are spoken to young and old alike; they are spoken as the cross is traced with a sooty fingertip upon the brow of the nursing babe, and on the unsteady-on-his-feet elder. These words have been and will be spoken millions of times throughout the world today. They’ll be spoken to people of every ethnicity, on every continent, in perhaps hundreds of languages; they’ll be spoken in churches and on street corners, in nursing homes and hospitals, in the morning, in the evening and at lunchbreak.

            These words will be repeated over and over again, as they have been for centuries, and they will remind us that we will not be around forever. We will all one day, return to dust. And there will be nothing at all to distinguish your dust from my dust.

            In the beginning God, gathered up the dust of the cosmos and formed the earth and the planets, the stars, and all moons. Then, God gathered the dust of the earth and with it, God formed human beings. There is something both humbling and equalizing in this knowledge. We all get the same cross. We each hear the same words. Every one of us is reminded, as good as God made us, for we are, indeed, marvelously made, we are also each made of the same dust, and we will all reach the same end one day – we will return to dusty dust. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “don’t get too attached to your incarnation for it is made of perishable stuff.”

            In this season of Lent, we confront our mortality. We confront our sinfulness and our need for repentance and forgiveness. Ash Wednesday invites us to search ourselves and to know our failure to follow Christ’s command to love, to share our compassion and bounty with the poor, to love justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with God.

            The gift of this season of Lent is that it helps us reset our priorities. Lent isn’t about facing our iniquity so that we can feel bad. It isn’t about guilt-tripping. Lent isn’t about the poverty of our flesh and our person so much as it is about the holiness of the ashes which we will each bear when we walk out of this place and into the world and into our everyday routines and lives, with the sure knowledge that while we were formed of dust and shall return to dust, the entire scope and sphere of the cycle of life represented by that image is guided by God.

            Taylor reminds us that in our beginnings it was God who breathed on the ashes with which we are made. It is God who brought these ashes to life.  “We are certainly dust and to dust we shall return, but in the meantime our bodies are sources of deep revelation for us. They are how we come to know both great pain and great pleasure. They help us to recognize ourselves in one another. They are how God gets to us, at the most intimate and universal level of all.” 

            “The ashes we bear today are not curses but blessings, announcing God’s undying love of dust no matter what kind of shape it is in,” Taylor says.

            While we might embrace that notion, and I encourage you to see ashes as both reminder and blessing today, there is this other thing that nags at us. It is the conflict we experience as we read the gospel text. We’ve come here today to be marked with these sooty ashen cross-shaped smudges, marking us as penitential Christians, yet this text seems to discourage any outward signs of piety and devotion. We hear this conflict between the ritual, and text. Ashes are visible – if they should be worn in secret, should we wipe them off before we go out the door, before we are seen in public, before they bear witness to what we have been about in this place today?

            More and more these days, as church affiliation has fallen out of vogue, we Lutherans are feeling increasingly vindicated in keeping our faith a very private thing. Isn’t Jesus just confirming this as the way we should live, when he says to pray, give alms and fast “in secret?”

            Let me put our minds to rest. Jesus does not forbid fasting and piety in public but warns against making theater out of it so that you might be praised for your faithfulness by your friends and neighbors. Insincere repentance does nobody any good. Jesus is concerned about the motivation behind our praying, fasting, and almsgiving, activities that Jesus encourages to build up our spiritual lives so that, coming to fully understand how dependent on God we truly are, we can then to reconciled to him.

            Friends, repentance is not something to be constrained or conformed to, but lives through the joy and freedom of a cross that doesn’t allow death to have the final word. In baptism we have received the assurance that the only death we have ever had to fear is behind us. The baptismal font is the means that conveys this grace: it is as if the ashes of our repentance are washed away by God in the waters of baptism, when we are inextricably joined to God and to others who have received that same washing.

            The reconciliation that takes place through the waters of baptism is a reality for us every day, as we live into the grace that only God can give. As we walk through our Lenten journey this season, we are invited to embrace the font as the symbol of our hope and our life, a reality in which we are made new each day.

Amen.

           

            

Puzzling Riddles and Conundrums

Romans 7:15-25a

            I enjoy puzzles, and I love the fact that they come in so many shapes and sizes. There are jigsaw puzzles and crossword puzzles, wordsearch puzzles and sequence puzzles. There are puzzles involving numbers or shapes or logic. A few years ago I was obsessed with Sudoku; since I was a teen I have loved to play another kind of puzzle, Scrabble, whether on a good old-fashioned playing board or more recently, with any of the many computer-generated or internet games that resemble that game – is anyone here up to a Words With Friends challenge? If so, meet me on Facebook!

            An ancient form of puzzle is the riddle. Riddles have been around for about as long as language has existed and probably, in some form or another even before. Riddles may include “everlasting nuggets of wisdom” or “silly twists on words”.  They may be intended to impart wisdom, speaking common truths and bits of logic, or they may simply be designed to challenge and entertain.

            Sumerian riddles are found on cuneiform tablets dating to the 18^th century BC, for instance. Here is the paraphrase of one of them:

There is a house. 

One enters it blind and comes out seeing. 

What is it?’

Answer: A School.

            Philosophers and comedians alike have used riddles to test their listeners. Albert Einstein, wrote this one:

If you were standing on the South Pole facing north, and you take one step backward, which way would you be traveling?

Answer: North, since all directions from the South Pole are north.   

Kids love riddles too. My four year old grandson fancies himself king of the knock-knock joke these days – yet another kind of riddle.

While all riddles have answers, and if you are lucky the answers might even make sense if you think about them long and hard enough, there are some puzzles that seem to have no sensible answer. Those are called conundrums.  People like me like puzzles, because while challenging, through using logic and intelligence, and sometimes, I have to admit, more than a little luck, we can often come up with the answer – and then our ego is fed. But conundrums are different. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a conundrum as “a confusing or difficult problem.” Some people consider true conundrums to be truly unsolvable.

Many of the writings of the Apostle Paul frankly read and feel a bit like puzzles or riddles – or, more accurately, like conundrums. Today’s Epistle is one of these. In this Epistle, Paul describes the battle that takes place within each and every one of us. “I do not understand my own actions,” Paul laments. “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” There is a strong sense of universal puzzle present in this passage – a struggle we can all identify with pretty well, I think. It’s a conundrum – I continually do the things I know I shouldn’t do – and, no matter how hard I try, there are some things, I cannot seem to avoid doing. Paul’s not alone here, is he?

We all face temptation. Our world, our lives are filled with them, in fact. If we took the time to examine ourselves, most of us would pretty quickly come up with a laundry list of the “things we shouldn’t do” – but “do” anyway. Some of those things are relatively harmless – like, I know I shouldn’t really drive those extra 5 miles per hour over the speed limit – yet, you know I do. (I can see my husband rolling his eyes over there).

And I could identify those things I should do that I don’t do – like I really know that I should forgive and forget the slight, the thoughtless word directed my way, or the hurtful thing someone else did. After all Jesus himself tells us that forgiveness is crucial to our well-being and our relationships – and we should forgive as we have been forgiven. Yet I confess that sometimes, it’s the forgetting part that is a real challenge for me. Forgiving often comes easier than forgetting.

Paul is describing the overarching, very human, real and dangerous struggle with sin.

            So this is the riddle that Paul built:

I want to do what is right

I know that doing what is right is good

If in my heart I want to do what is right,

Why do I do what I know I shouldn’t do, rather than what I want to do and should do?

The answer: Sin

            Sin is the age-old condition of falling out of right relationship with God. Walter Taylor writes of sin:

            When most Americans hear the word sin they think of individual acts of sinning.  While Paul can use the word that way, his basic understanding of sin is that it is a power--sin with a capital "S."  Does that Sin absolve people of responsibility?  Not at all, if we remember that in 5:12 Paul said that the individual has bought into the matrix of Sin by participating in it. 

The situation is similar to addiction.” Taylor says.  “At the beginning of the addiction, the person freely chooses to ingest the addicting substance, [or, I would add, participate in the addicting behavior] but soon that substance [or behavior] controls the individual, whose life becomes dominated by seeking the next drink or the next fix.  Thus the person has both bought into the addiction at one level, while being overwhelmed by it at another.  And so "it is the sin that dwells within me" that is in charge.”

When we truly examine ourselves, I think that we can all acknowledge that we sin. I was raised in the Catholic church, where we were expected to make regular, (and when I was little that meant weekly), personal, one-on-one confession to the priest and then do some kind of penance in order to receive forgiveness and absolution for our sins. As Lutherans our scriptural understanding, is a little different here. Martin Luther, paraphrasing Paul, said succinctly, that we simply cannot not sin. Yet we know that there is nothing that we can do – no penance or works to be done or payment to be made that can ever bring us into right relationship with God, no reparation we can make that will ever wipe away the guilt of our sins or earn our salvation and forgiveness.

My friends, confession is necessary – the human soul needs to yield to the weight of its brokenness and so, using various words each week, we begin our worship by confessing that we are truly, both together and individually, in bondage to sin, and we are utterly unable to free ourselves. We confess that it’s not just what we do or say or think that that gets us into trouble. We name ways that we fail to live as we should. Either way, we confess that we are guilty of living lives that are not truly God-centered and faithful. On our own, we confess, our brokenness leads to spiritual death, and we are hopeless in the face of our failure. We confess that Sin (with a capital “S”) has taken us captive. We ask God to release us of this prison of our own making.

In the final verse of this passage, we hear the words of assurance that all is not hopeless. To the question, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul himself supplies the answer. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”        

            Friends, the truth is that the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ shows us that through Jesus, God makes us “right” with God. God does what we on our own cannot do. Through the cross of Christ, God has answered the conundrum that burdens us because of our very human tendency toward sin. Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ God forgives our sin. God strengthens us for relationship with one another and divine relationship with God. God makes us resurrection people, people of the Way, people who can live our lives free of the fear of sin and its place in our lives.

            In today’s gospel, Jesus invites those who believe in him into the new life that comes from being followers of the Way, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

            It is in this promise, the promise of divine rest, that Paul finds hope for the deadly dilemma that faces us when we stumble and fall. The hope Jesus holds out for us is real. It is because of this hope that sin and death have lost their hold on us.

            Today we celebrate this truth as we receive little Gabriel into the light and life of hope in Jesus through baptism. Gabriel is too young to understand the liberating joy that is ours today as he is welcomed into this Body of Christ. He is too young to appreciate the burden that is lifted from him forever, and the new life that he is granted through this sacrament. As he grows though, and as his parents, his family, and we as community embrace and teach him, we live will share with him the sure and certain hope that is the answer to Paul’s riddle; that because Christ lives in eternity for us, we, Gabriel, his parents, and all who belong to Christ rejoice in and for his sake and ours.

            So in Haiku fashion, I leave you with this riddle:

Good action eludes me

Thankful for grace

Redemption?

Through Jesus Christ.

Amen.

            

         

The Heart Condition

Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Readings: Joel 2:1-2,12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 

You may not be able to tell this by looking at me, but the truth of the matter is, I have a heart condition. It’s a serious condition, though there is not cardiologist in the world who can do a whit about it. There is no surgeon who has the skill to open up my heart and fix what is broken.

The fact of the matter is, I’ve never even seen a doctor about my heart condition. I know that there is nothing that any one of them can do despite all the medical knowledge amassed over the centuries; there is no research that has come up with a cure, nor could there ever be; and the development of ever-more delicate and intricate procedures, medications and treatments to correct the imperfections of our bodies fail to produce an answer to what ails me.

In a sense, my condition is hereditary and here’s the clincher – I’m afraid that I share this condition with all of you. We’ve all inherited the same heart condition, along with our DNA and all that goes into making us who we are. It is congenital; we were each born with it. As members of a fallen race, there is nothing that our mothers could have done to have prevented it. Here we are, each one of us suffering from the same condition, each with our own set of symptoms and maladies that go along with it. And as I’m sure you’ve surmised by now, this condition is closely related to, in fact is caused by that thing that is undeniably a part of who we are - sin.

Here at the beginning of this season of Lent, it occurs to me that much of the work of Lent is truly about the heart. Our lessons today would certainly lead us to believe that this is true. In them we read words like, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” and, “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart,” and, “rend your hearts not your clothing,” then finally, in the gospel text from Matthew, we are left with these final words, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

So if Lent is a lot about heart, what do we do about this heart condition of ours?

We often talk about Lent being a journey; after all, we are describing something that isn’t over in a flash but takes more than forty long days to unfold. Yet for most of us, it’s not really our journey, but Christ’s journey that we are after. After all it is Jesus who is on his way to Jerusalem. It is Jesus who is literally and figuratively following a road that will lead him to his passion and his death. We are less travelers along this journey with Jesus than we are spectators, bystanders lined up along the roadside, observing the events taking place and marking the signposts along the way.

Those signposts include the gospel images of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, and his encounter with Nicodemus and later, with the Samaritan woman at the well. During Lent we hear from our gospel texts about the man who was born blind and was healed by Christ, and about Lazarus being raised from the dead. Then, finally we arrive at the gates of Jerusalem where Jesus is met by a jubilant crowd bearing royal banners in his honor and waving palm branches in exultation, followed in short order by Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, his being handed over to the authorities under whose watch he will suffer his passion and death.

So, with all of this happening to Jesus, how do we enter this Lenten journey? And why would we even want to? What might we hope to take away from this holy season? How does Jesus’ journey become our journey?

I think the answers to all of these questions lead us back to our heart condition and to these impossibly broken hearts and the sin that we cling to. I think we come looking for a cure. We look for the reassurance that our heart condition will not be fatal. We seek ways to closer union with God, so that our hearts might be created anew and strengthened. My friends, we come to this journey because we desperately need our hearts to be healed and we know deep down inside that our only hope for these diseased, corrupted, and faulty hearts of ours is to be found through Jesus, most powerfully at the foot of his cross.

In Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, a church in conflict with itself, suffering divisions and distractions to the mission of the church, with many of the members at odds with each other and many under the influence of false apostles, Paul talks about the reconciliation of relationships.  Paul makes it clear that it is through the cross, that God’s reconciling sacrifice and God’s love bring a cross-shaped reality to the disciples of Christ. It is God’s healing work on the cross that makes it possible for us to be reconciled and healed in two directions – healed in relationship with God, and healed in relationship with one another. It is through this reconciliation with God that God is able to take our hearts that have been torn apart by sin and brokenness, and create them anew…making possible reconciliation with others and restoring the relationships that reflect the love of God and the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ.

Disciples of Christ, living out the reality of the cross in daily life and ministry, live with a new reality – that God’s reconciling, loving embrace of us, with all of our raw edges and imperfections, with these heart conditions that rule our lives and our interactions, is not only able to change us but save us and bring us to new life. And God uses the cross to do it. Christ invites us into ministry and life shaped by that very same cross.

Our Lenten journey, not surprisingly is also shaped by the cross of Christ, not only on Good Friday but every day; … it’s why the ashes we mark today are in the sign of a cross. While Paul describes reconciliation that is cruciform – it will include the work of opening our hearts to and for God, and opening our lives and hearts to and for one another. It is only through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that this kind of reconciliation and new life is possible. 

Opening hearts to God comes in many different forms – Lenten practices like fasting, praying, exercising patience and compassion and generosity through almsgiving all draw us into the Lenten journey, drawing us closer to God. The reality is that although spiritual practices are needed in order for us to distance ourselves from all that distracts and divides us, it is God who makes all this possible.

Like the people in the encounters with Jesus that we will witness through the biblical texts in the coming weeks, our own encounters with Jesus will be transformative.  God’s heart-work of changing lives, forgiving sins, healing broken bodies and souls and raising the dead to new life, calls us to engage in this journey called Lent that we might experience God’s reconciling reality for all. Therefore, as we begin this season of Lent, let us rend our hearts to the great physician, engaging in those tried and true Christian practices that engage our body, mind, and spirit. And may the peace, love and reconciling grace of God be with you throughout these forty days.

Let us pray. O Lord our God, we come to you with hearts broken by sin. Have mercy on us O Lord, and through our journey with Christ this Lent bring us the healing and wholeness we so desperately need. Make our hearts clean and our spirits, focused on the cross, that our relationships with you and our neighbor might be restored for the sake of your kingdom. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.