Ash Wednesday
Category: Lent
Speaker: The Rev. John Shellito
The prophet Joel says “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love”
I think we can all be grateful that we are not called rend our garments this morning. You have been courageous enough in venturing through through the ice and snow to get here today—the rest of the trip back home, to work, or elsewhere would be a lot colder with torn clothing. Not to mention the challenge of explaining yourself to your peers when you get there, and time spent later on to sew the clothing back together.
But even with our clothing unripped. I think some congratulations are in order. The sermon has barely begun and we have already covered some pretty heavy duty topics-- judgment, hypocrisy, suffering, repentance, and endurance, to name a few—are you feeling warmer from the prophet Joel’s fire and brimstone concerning the “day of the Lord”? Are the foreboding threats getting your heart pumping? Maybe if we read this kind of stuff more regularly we wouldn’t need that new boiler and heating system after all. Joel was writing with and for a community that had seen suffering at the hands of their enemies, and promising retribution for the perpetrators and those who cooperated with them was a fairly standard for the time period. Of course, our faith plenty of other avenues towards safety, forgiveness and restoration—whether it is through praying for our enemies, or a more direct response of restraining them (to the degree that we are able) naming what they did, and preventing them from committing injustice again.
So, in case it wasn’t already clear, fear and foreboding are not what I am interested in sharing today. In Eucharist, we share the Word, the bread of life, with one another, and it is a life-giving Word, a Word that challenges us to look at our lives and our choices in a prayerful way.
So. As I wade through the painful history Joel portrays, what I see is a depiction of the Lord of lovingkindness working to bring new life out of chaos—not only out of the chaos of potential invading armies, but also, in the verses immediately prior to our text today, the chaos of desertification, drought, and locust swarms, both destroying the crops and countryside. The locusts could in fact be an image of the “clouds and thick darkness” Joel describes as being “Like blackness spread upon the mountains”
My grandfather grew up on a farm in Kansas. I think of him when I hear stories of the dust bowl. During the dust bowl, the dry weather encouraged a particularly large number of grasshoppers. Locusts are a particular type of swarming grasshopper. There are accounts of clouds of grasshoppers descending on farms and consuming not only crops, fields, and other vegetation, but also wooden farm implements. The insects would consume the wood because the wood had salt from the sweat of farm animals or humans. The combination of drought and insect invasion, as happened in both the dust bowl and in Joel’s time, was both ecologically and economically devastating. And yet, even in this experience of challenge, Joel finds inspiration to encourage others to return to God.
In this I hear a witness—that God is not only our source of protection, but also that God is the source our source of strength and courage, to face whatever may threaten us. God is generous, but for us to remain connected in the midst of challenge, our relationship with the Lord of lovingkindness must be primary.
In the times when the drought and locust both descend, that is the time when it is most important to attend to our relationship with God. If our foundation is in God, then even when a physical threat presents itself, we will be spiritually victorious because the external threat will not become our focus. Our focus will remain on God. This is what I hear in Paul’s letter, when he describes how the early church members were in his words “treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
Paul did not “accept the grace of God in vain”! He recognized the significance of his spiritual life. And his attention was focused on his connection to the divine, regardless of what happened.
To me this issue of relationship is also Jesus’ primary concern in our Gospel today, as he reminds us not to let our relationship with our Creator be co-opted by the external, reputational concerns that can get tied up with our life of faith. Our relationship with God must be the ultimate goal. If you are anything like me you might be asking yourself “Jesus standards are impossibly high—how can I possibly measure up?” To me, this is similar to the disciples question: “who can be saved?” when Jesus says “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”. His answer is “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
For God all things are possible. This is the promise, and the call. For me this is crucial, because when I hear Jesus’s words about praying, fasting, or giving in secret, I am tempted to be carried away by the challenges of living our daily life in this area, as we are pulled between responsibilities at home and work, as well as a desire to give back and remain connected with those close to us. We want to be connected to family and friends, and those in need, but it is not always easy. In fact, it is quite hard.
The return to God and to our own humanity is the primary opportunity of Ash Wednesday. It is an opportunity to let God be present with us in those areas of our life where we are seeking to grow.
The imposition of ashes is given with the reminder—“remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. We are not only recognizing our mortality, our imperfection, and our dependence on the Creator—we are also remembering that we were created out of dust and declared good, that each of us has been formed in the image of God—one could say, formed in the image of lovingkindness. God is still doing the work of bringing forth new life even now. The breath of life is in us, and the Spirit inspires us to reflect God’s lovingkindness in a darkened world. We are called to be renewed, day by day.
I wonder if an underappreciated gift of Ash Wednesday can be found in the practice of lament. We are certainly invited into confession and penitance today, but lament raises up a challenging circumstance and gives it over to God with the question “why”—a Priest friend once described this as a “fifth” type of prayer, separate from adoration, confession, thanksgiving, or supplication. I wonder what wisdom we could glean if we gave our challenges, our mistakes, and our disappointments over to God?
In my creatureliness I feel I am often reminded of my need for physical sustenance. But, how much more important is it that I be reminded of my need for spiritual nourishment? The practice of Lent is an invitation for all of us to let God be at work in our life, through intentional practices of return. Invite God to work with you in the areas of your life where you can see an opportunity for growth—it may mean a season or pruning, or of disciplined attention and watering. Whatever you do, may your choice bring a blessing of new life and new growth as winter turns to spring.
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
1. Adapted from Psalm 51:10-12