Ash Wednesday (Feb 22, 2012) – Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Okay: We’re Ashes, but We’re God’s Ashes
Ash Wednesday – February 22, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In a few minutes as ashes are placed on your forehead,
you’ll hear the familiar words from Genesis pronounced over you:
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
I know it sounds morbid.
But friends: it contains a truth we all know.
The truth that life is fragile.
The truth that life is both precious and very very precarious.
On Sunday afternoon I held a dear little child in my arms:
Olivia Lois, the stillborn daughter of Rebecca and Jared Waddell.
At seven months from gestation she looked perfect in every way.
So lovely and so beautiful.
So precious – and so terribly fragile.
Life is such a gift. This child was such a gift.
But the gift is fragile.
We took turns holding dear little Olivia, handling her so so gently.
Would that we all handled one another so gently all the time.
For life is indeed fragile, which you really come to know at moments like these.
In our better moments we know that life is fragile.
That kid who annoys you at school: his life is fragile.
That woman you can’t stand at work: her life fragile.
The people in the pews next to you: their lives are fragile.
Your life is fragile.
In our better moments we know this.
We know that each of us is composed of fragile dust.
And when of course we sometimes forget this basic truth,
God graciously takes the trouble to remind us.
God reminds the people through Isaiah this evening, right?
The people had forgotten that human beings are fragile and so they had forgotten their purpose.
They had forgotten that their neighbours’ lives were fragile.
They thought that if they observed the proper religious fasts and
said the right words at the Temple they’d done they’d fulfilled their purpose.
But God notices that really the things they do they do out of self-interest:
they do them for what they can get out of God.
God notices that all the while they’re fasting and praying
they’re oppressing and exploiting their workers and
taking advantage of their neighbours.
They’re transacting with them for what they can get out of them.
They’ve forgotten, says Isaiah, God’s righteousness, that is, God’s deep and abiding
passion for justice, for all people’s well-being.
Isaiah reminds them that a true fast, a true fast is not done for one’s own sake or
even for God’s sake, but for the sake of one’s neighbour.
A true fast is to go without bread so you have some bread to share with your hungry neighbour.
A true fast is to fast from injustice.
Isaiah reminds them that their true purpose is to be restorers of streets to live.
Just as Paul reminds a quarrelling Corinthian congregation that its true purpose is
to become – to actually become, to embody – God’s righteousness,
God’s passionate concern for justice, for all people’s well-being.
For we are indeed dust and ashes: our lives and the lives of our neighbours are fragile.
Two of my friends at Food Bank lived in that apartment building on Sherbrook Street that
burned down a month and a half ago.
One day they had a place to live in, and the next day they didn’t.
They’re having a hard time finding a place to live.
Another fellow I know from Food Bank is also looking for a place to live, but
a reasonably priced clean apartment is very hard to find in this neighbourhood.
So he’s staying with a friend whose apartment is infested with bedbugs,
and the bites he’s received from them have become so badly infected that
he’s been hospitalized.
And my friends’ lives are not the only things that are fragile.
Our motivations are too, as Jesus pointedly reminds us in the Gospel reading,
and as we ourselves confessed at the beginning of the service.
So: what are we to do?
On this day, Ash Wednesday, the church invites us to remember that
we are dust and ashes – that we are fragile – and so to turn to God:
to repent, which simply means to turn to God.
On Ash Wednesday we say:
“Okay, maybe we are dust and ashes, but we’re God’s dust and ashes,
We’re dust and ashes that God makes alive.”
Yes: we are fragile – but God is strong.
Yes: we are often unloving – but God’s love is more constant and all enveloping than
we can ever imagine.
Yes: we may die but God’s life is stronger than death and will raise us up alive.
Friends: we have been created out of a vast, vast love, this universe and everything in it.
Our dust and ashes have been brought to life in order to be loved by God,
and so that we may love in return.
And so when our fragile lives return to dust and ashes,
we return to the one who formed us from the dust of the earth.
For truly, all of our moments from beginning to end are held in the embrace of the triune God.
So let us turn again to that God: Lent is an opportunity to do this.
As new monasticism proponent Shane Claiborne writes this week in his blog,
“Lent is an opportunity to give up something that is sucking the life out of us so that
we can be filled with God, with life, with love again.”
That is what our Wednesdays in Lent are all about.
So that our lives may rise from the ashes:
In order to share bread with the hungry,
to work for the justice and well-being of our neighbours,
to participate with God in restoring streets for them and
for all of us to live in,
to write Amnesty International letters on Sundays after worship,
to handle one another gently.
And finally come to that day when with Olivia we will all be returned to God,
and live and love together within the triune God of love and life.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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