Ash Wednesday Feb. 25, 2009 Matt 6: 1-6, 16-21 The Rev. Benton Quest
What are you doing here! How can you consider yourselves good Americans and be sitting in this church on this day of all days! Quick! Before anyone notices, leave!
In America, we are the society of staying alive. We are the society of staying young. We do all kinds of things to deny the fact that we are going to die. We work out. We have face-lifts. We go to the tanning booth. We dye our hair. The thought of death is something we in America try to avoid. We want to hear sermons that are uplifting and make us feel good. Frankly, I like to preach sermons that are uplifting and make people feel good.
But on Ash Wednesday, preaching the uplifting sermon is a little difficult. I read one commentator who said that Ash Wednesday is the most uncomfortable day of the church year. It is a day that we try to avoid. The service is not happy. The songs tend to be in minor keys. We leave the church with a big black mark on our heads. That black mark reminds us, and all those who see us, that no matter how hard we try to avoid death, eventually this body will give out.
The whole point is that on Ash Wednesday, we have to face our own death, and let’s be honest; facing our own death is not very pleasant. As I said before, we live in a world that is into denying that death even exists. As such, to proclaim that “You are dust and to dust you shall return” is a subversive act. We are going against everything the advertisers are trying to tell us.
Ash Wednesday causes us distress because it rubs our face in our mortality. In our observation of Ash Wednesday, we come face to face with our sin and with our death. And this is not just our physical death, although that is difficult enough to deal with. But we also have to deal with how our sin, our forgetting that we are created in God’s image, has brought death to the joy that could be in our lives: The joy that Jesus came to bring to our lives.
Another thing we are forced to do on Ash Wednesday is to look squarely at our limitations. We live in the Lone Ranger, I-can-do-it-all-alone, kind of world. In our society of today, it is not respectable to need help. Yet Ash Wednesday reminds us that when left to our own devices, we can give up self-will as easily as we can give up death. When we choose our will over the will of God, when we choose things over people, when we refuse to be the wonderful creations which God has made us to be, it is at that time that death has already cast a shadow over our lives.
Then finally on this day, this Ash Wednesday, we are asked to repent, literally to turn around and head back to God. We don’t like to think about repentance because to turn around means that we are headed in the wrong direction. To turn around means that we are doing is not OK, what we are doing is NOT WORKING. To have this made obvious and place in as a large black mark on our forehead is uncomfortable to us but unfortunately, that is the point of the day.
Actually, the point of Ash Wednesday is not to make us feel bad, not to make us feel no good, not even to make us feel guilty! The point of Ash Wednesday is to help us to realize that we cannot make a go of life alone. That to truly live life we must rely on God. We must turn our hearts over to God. We must live our lives for God.
In our readings for today we hear of God’s expectations for us, God’s followers. God doesn’t want us just to make just a show of repentance; God wants more. God wants us: heart and soul, mind and body. God wants us to look beyond what is here before us and look to what is more important, more enduring.
It is in the realization that we are mortal that we begin to touch the immortal. It is in gaining a fuller understanding of those things which are finite, that we can begin to understand infinity. It is in knowing that our life will come to an end that we can begin to understand what it means to have eternal life. When we look at a dear loved one, we know that that person will eventually die. We know that the body that we see before us will eventually cease to function. We know that that person is mortal. However, we also know that the love that is shared between you and your loved ones will never die. Because Christ has loved us, our love will continue. We can hold our loved ones in our memory and when the great day arrives, the day of the reign of God, we can again hold them in our arms. It is in realizing the mortality of the person that we can look beyond and grasp the immortal.
Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are indeed mortal. It reminds us that all we see must come to an end. It reminds us to be aware of what is around us. The prophet Joel tells us to change our way of living. He says to rend our hearts, not our clothing. We are to change our whole way of being, not just make superficial gestures. We are to return to the Lord.
This is our call during this time of Lent; this is our call on this, the most uncomfortable day of the church year. Christ is here, calling us, calling us from beyond the grave. Calling us to turn around, turn back from the ways of the world. Calling us to turn around and follow him. It is only through him that we can find our righteousness. It is only through him that we can find our life.
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