February 25, 2009
Ash Wednesday (Year B)
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-14, (15-22); 2 Corinthians 5: 20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
This year I am going to do something I have never done before on Ash Wednesday. I am going to share some thoughts, thoughts that have caused me to stop in my tracks and think, thoughts that I want to share with you. But not any one of them is a big enough thought for a whole sermon, or maybe each of them is a sermon that could last a lifetime.
The thoughts, all of them dealing with Lent, of course, and keeping a Holy Lent, and being a reflective, repentant people, are not my thoughts. They are other people’s thoughts that capture a truth, a truth that speaks to me and makes me want to make them my thoughts, makes me want to roll them around in my mind and examine them from many angles.
I invite you to make them your thoughts, too, to wander with me through them. And if one captures you, go with it and tune the rest out. That’s okay with me. Get lost in the thoughts, and may they help us all to keep a holier Lent, to be a more reconciling, forgiving, repentant people. May these thoughts become a communal repository for a common experience that under girds our parish Lenten life together. I will pause with silence following each thought. Some I will comment about, some not.
The first – Ann Weems wrote:
“Lent is a time to take the time to let the power of our faith story take hold for us, a time to let the events get up and walk around in us, a time to intensify our living unto Christ, a time to hover over the thoughts of our hearts, a time to place our feet in the streets of Jerusalem or to walk along the sea and listen to his word, a time to touch his robe and feel the healing surge through us, a time to ponder and to wonder . . . Lent is a time allow a fresh new taste of God.”
“a fresh new taste of God” – lovely thought!
[Silence!]
And another thought – as we contemplate the dust of which we are made and the dust to which we return as the liturgy this day so powerfully reminds us, I found this quotation from Wayne
“Kurt Vonnegut once described human beings as “sitting up mud,” the word ‘humility’ comes from ‘hummus’ which means earth or mud. To be ‘humble’ is to feel ourselves as part of the earth, made from dust, returning to dust. The Hebrew creation story says God created humans by mixing dust and Spirit. Thus, even the word ‘human’ reflects our sense of oneness with the earth.”
As we in this day and age of global warming and pollution and endangering species and water supplies and even sustainable life itself on this planet, this basic connection to the earth seems even more profound this day as we smear ashes on our heads, and acknowledge that the elements of which we are made are elements out of which all life is made. God being the creator of all, didn’t need endless material to make us, only God’s own endless imagination. And so it seems to me as we contemplate connection to the One who made us out of dust and Spirit, we might well also think more profoundly about the connection of those basic raw materials that connect us to each other and to all creation, from the frozen waters of the Arctic seas to the ancient lizards and brilliantly feathered birds in rain forests to algae on deserted stones in desolate mountain tops. Think of the connection as we think of the dust that we are and they are.
[Silence!]
Margaret Silf wrote:
“Could it really be, as Jesus suggests, that we are rich only in what we give away, secure only in what we relinquish, great only in our littleness and strong only in our vulnerability?”
When I hear this quote of hers, I think of the Native American custom of the “great giveaway.” When something in the Native American community is to be celebrated, a birthday or a wedding or a graduation or an anniversary or the birth of a child, the community is gathered, not to throw a party for the birthday person or a shower for the betrothed couple or the parents of a new baby, but so that the birthday person or parents or couple may give away from their substance. They give gifts to all their friends. They do not receive but they “give away” in thanksgiving for the blessing in their life that has precipitated the celebration where all their beloved friends are gathered. They give because they can, and it would be an insult to take a gift from others for such occasions.
When I think of Jesus, I think how he gave for us. I remember how Jesus walked to
[Silence!]
Another thought, one from Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
[Silence!]
And one from the editors of Synthesis when speaking of the words of the prophet Joel: “Repentance is not just an act of individual piety; it is a function of the entire community. Thus the prophet calls people of all ages to gather in a solemn assembly, where the priests and ministers will pray to the Lord to ‘spare your people’ to preserve the heritage of the Lord.”
Repentance is not a singular activity. It is the work of communities, of families, or churches, of entire nations.
[Silence!]
Finally, a quote from N. Nagle about sin: “Perversity and pride can lead us to insist on our suffering for selected sins. This one, my special sin, I am going to make atonement for. This is a denial of Christ and
[Silence!]
We do confess our pet sins, don’t we? And we do think we can atone for them by some action of our own design, but the truth is nothing we can do can really atone for them. Everything has already been done that needs to be done. It was done by Jesus. One of my favorite phrases is “growing into the person God created me/us/you to be.” I pray this so often for people when they ask for healing or for pardon. I pray it for myself and for my children and for this community. May we become the person/people God created us to be. And it occurs to me that we can only grow into that person/people because Jesus did what he did on the cross, because Christ rose from the tomb and showed us that nothing can separate us from God, not even our pet sins, nothing, not even our inability to be one who embodies the great give away, nothing, not even our disregard for our commonness with the mud out of which we came, nothing. Nothing can separate us from God!
Hang on to that this Lent, and feel it in your bones. Hang on to that and go on the journey of a life time, the journey to
May the thoughts and the words of all these wonderful people provide nourishment for your journey.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd