Sermon - To Live a Holy Lent (Ash Wednesday B)

 Ash Wednesday - Year B                                                              February 17, 2021

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17a, Psalm 51, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21        Panzer Liturgical Service

A man went to a Friday afternoon baseball game. While there, he did what most people do when attending a baseball game… he had a hotdog. About halfway through his delicious Ballpark frank, he had a startling revelation. It was Friday. It was Lent. And he was eating a hotdog. So he spent the next 1 ½ innings (or 30 minutes) trying to decide if his sin was in eating the hotdog or in forgetting that it was Friday. In the end, he decided to avoid the problem altogether and never attend another baseball game on a Friday. I think he missed the point.

The observance of a Christian calendar began as the year was divided by bishops and congregations to help us reflect on the things that can help us live a more holy life. Easter Sunday is the most important day of our year, the grandest and the best celebration that the church has to offer, and each Sunday during the year is celebrated as a "little Easter." The fifty days after Easter takes the church on a journey to the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit filled the lives of those who were gathered and waiting, as Christ had commanded, recorded in the book of Acts.

But with the emergence of the Easter Season and Pentecost as a time of high celebration, people also saw the need for a time of preparation and discipline. In order to focus on piety and repentance, the season of Lent was born. It was a time when people who wished to be baptized or join the church were trained and brought into Christian fellowship. It was also a time to examine and reflect on one's relationship with God, with oneself, and with the church and community.

Some of the practices of the early church have stood through time. Early Christians fasted for forty or more days before Easter, usually not including Saturdays and Sundays. They were encouraged to spend the time that they would have normally been eating in prayer and to increase their support of ministries that helped the poor.

The practices that we now associate with Lent, such as fasting, eating fish on Friday, or "giving up"  things we are love are not just about sacrifice. When we create a void in our schedule or our menus, it offers us more time to reflect on our relationship with God and Christ. Through these small practices, we may come to know a little bit of the suffering that Christ endured for our sakes in his crucifixion and death.

Lent is also a time to reflect on the fragileness and frailty of human life, and on how our relationship with God is not what we or God want it to be. In the early church, a feeling of true, sometimes even anguished, penitence led people to periods of severe fasting, to wear clothing made from sackcloth (a material similar to burlap) or shirts made of horsehair, both very itchy garments, or to place ashes on their faces or bodies to signify a penitent spirit. Psalm 51, today’s responsive reading, reflects the desire to say to God, "I am sorry for all I have done and thought and said that does not honor you. I know it is because of your love for me that you forgive me, not because I deserve it."

The first time I received Ash Wednesday ashes I was in seminary. As I left school, I walked across the Duke campus to the parking lot, and I noticed that people kept brushing their foreheads as they passed by. Finally, a sweet Duke co-ed flagged me down, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but you have a smudge of something on your face… would you like to borrow a tissue to brush it off? “No, thanks,” I replied, “it’s there on purpose – it’s Ash Wednesday – the start of Lent.” Her blank smile told me all I needed to know. There, in the bowels of a United Methodist college campus, she had no idea what I was talking about. So I countered, “That’s ok, I’ll take care of it when I get home.”

On a normal Ash Wednesday, we would participate together in the ritual of confessing our sinfulness in a way that is outwardly visible. Receiving the ashes is a tangible way of saying "I know that I am a sinner and that my life is a mere second in God's time. I’m sorry. Have mercy on me." By itself, that statement seems cold and fearful. Our joy comes from knowing that this is not the end of the story.

But what happens, when by a significant majority, religious bodies and leaders say that the act of giving and receiving the ashes put us at greater risk of spreading a contagious disease. Some pastors I know are sprinkling ashes in people's hair – some are using a really long q-tip – some people are packing up ashes to people to take home and apply themselves. And many, many people are not gathering to worship together at all. Is any one method better than another? Does it make the action of our own repentance any less valid? I say NO.

The reading from  Matthew talks about practicing our piety in secret. We may or may not see the ashes on people’s foreheads or hands, but God sees all of the stuff in our hearts. God knows when we are giving it our best shot, and God also knows when we are playing to the crowd. The season of Lent is designed to help us reflect our own mortality and sinfulness, and also in how the love of God redeems us from taking ourselves too seriously. We love one another because God first loved us. We repent of our sin, not just today but regularly, in response to the great sacrifice that God made for us. And in the process, we welcome the new life that we have been given, and we live it out in the world in whatever ways we can.

When you come up tonight, instead of a smudge of ashes on your forehead, you will receive a card with a blessing. There is a cross, reminiscent of the cross that you may have received on your forehead or hand in years before. On the card, there is also this blessing, May God who has called you forth from the dust of the earth, and claimed you as a child of the light, strengthen you on your journey into life renewed. I encourage you to stick it in the pages of your bible, tape it to your bathroom mirror, or place it where you can be reminded of the great and gracious love that God has for you and all of us. And if you really feel the need for physical ashes, when you go home, light a candle, blow it out, and use some of the soot from the wick to mark your forehead or the back of your hand. There’s nothing magical about the ashes themselves… it’s all about the process of remembering who we are and where we are going.

In the shadow of this Ash Wednesday and these next 40 days of Lent, we are blessed, because know that Easter day will come. In six weeks, we will experience anew the life-changing resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The seasons of Lent and Easter seem very different. But it is because we celebrate them together that we are able to keep our lives balanced.

Only when we hold together the knowledge of our own sinfulness AND the joy that is resurrection on Easter morning, can we have full knowledge of who God is in our lives. We must hold those two things in equal tension with each other, for until we do that, we cannot honestly reflect on our lives; past, present, and future. We are lucky because we know how Lent will end, not just with Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but with Easter sunrise and joy. We know that after death, there is life, life eternal, and because of that special, holy day, this Lenten journey is filled with both joy and hope.

Tonight's gospel lesson from Matthew reminds us that we can not get too swayed in either direction, that there is a balance between being too pious and not paying enough attention to what God requires of us in our Christian walk. Whatever disciplines we follow for Lent, and for all the other seasons of the Christian year, we have to practice them for the right reasons. We pray and fast and give to others in service to God, because these are some of the ways we can acknowledge God's love for us, especially considering Christ's sacrifice for our sake.

None of us is immune to the temptations that separate from God, such as the unwise use of power and money, or things that keep our focus away from God's purposes, so we must keep before us the call to live in such a way that we are constantly reminded that God's way is our way.

And if we fall, we pick ourselves up and prepare for God to love us even more. We can’t give up, neither can we abandon truth and life in Christ's name. For whatever we do, however we live, we do it before God. Being aware of and accepting God's constant presence in our lives will produce in us the ability to continue on the journey to live and to love in God's name. That is the promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our joy. It is our hope. Thanks be to God.

Amen

(C) Deb Luther Teagan 2021