Ash Wednesday (February 13, 2013) – Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Healing Ashes
Ash Wednesday – February 13, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Ashes are a biblical sign of repentance, or of turning back to God.
When Jonah invited the Ninevites to repent or return to God, they amazingly did,
and as a sign of this they put on sackcloth and sat in ashes (Jonah 3:5-9).
When Job repents and re-turns to God in a trust-filled way,
he marks this change with dust and ashes (Job 42:6).
And Jesus told the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida that there would be
Unwelcome consequences for their refusal to turn to God and put on ashes (Mt. 11:21).
Ash Wednesday, then, is about new beginnings.
Create in us new and clean hearts, we say in the words of Psalm 51.
Give us a will that is aligned with your will.
Give us desires that are attuned to your desires.
Re-turn us to your will, re-turn us to your desire, re-turn us to your heart.
Put a new heart, a new will, and a new desire in us.
It seems abundantly evident from the readings this evening that what God most desires is not
going through the religious motions in order to impress others or to impress him.
Prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, says Jesus, are not meant to impress anyone.
They’re meant to tune your heart to God’s song of mercy-giving and justice-doing.
Prayer to invites you to listen and learn that song.
Fasting invites you to step into the shoes of the hungry.
Alms-giving invites you to consider the vulnerable state of the poor and
to notice those whom God notices: the fragile ones of this world.
The ashes are not for show either:
the ashes invite us to re-orient our priorities around God’s priorities.
And God’s priorities, Isaiah reminds us with the utmost clarity, are the fragile ones of this world.
The people can’t understand why God seems to take no notice of them after they have
returned from exile in Babylon and are attempting to re-build their broken city.
It’s because, says God,
You’re only interested in yourselves when you come here to fast and pray.
The whole time you’re here paying lip service to me,
you’re oppressing and neglecting other folks:
the hungry, the homeless, the naked.
For while the ashes signify repentance or re-turning to God and having a cleansed will or heart,
ashes also and perhaps even more signify death, and they do in the Bible too.
God tells Adam that one day he will die: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust I said at the graveside on Monday afternoon.
Most deaths these days end in ashes, as cremation becomes increasingly the norm.
Ashes remind us that life is fragile.
That all lives are fragile.
That our existence is transitory.
And that life is short.
The point, I think, is that when we turn to God with new hearts,
we will be turned as well to those for whom God’s heart beats,
the fragile, vulnerable ones of this world.
And when we find ourselves so turned to the fragile, vulnerable ones of this world,
we do so as those who share in that vulnerability and that fragility.
That makes us more effective agents of healing:
knowing that we are all bound up in the transitoriness and messiness of life as well as
in systems of injustice makes us stronger together.
We discover we share a common humanity, and a common fragility.
This year I made the ashes with this beautiful mortar and pestle that was
given to me by one of our members.
Like usual, I took last year’s palm fronds from Palm Sunday, put them in a hibachi,
and lit them on fire.
When the ashes had cooled,
I took this mortar and pestle and ground the ashes in it for the first time.
And it was then, while I was grinding, that I had a small epiphany.
This member had given me the mortar and pestle after I had led the funeral for her dad,
who died unexpectedly and prematurely almost a year ago.
This particular member is a pharmacist, and she likes to give this ancient implement of her
profession as a thank you gift.
I knew back then, even, it would come in handy for Ash Wednesday.
But of course while I was grinding the ashes, I realized that I was using an implement that has
for millennia been used for healing, for the making of medicines.
The ashes are healing.
To have them imposed – as I suppose we must; no one voluntarily wants to be
reminded of their mortality – to have them imposed is somehow healing.
It reminds us first of all of our deep need to re-turn to God and that
we will not be whole and well until the heart that beats within us is attuned to
God’s heart-song for mercy-giving and justice-doing.
And it reminds us secondly that that song of God sings most of all for the vulnerable,
hurting, and fragile ones of this world and seeks most of all their healing.
And finally it reminds us that we, too,
are not only in need of re-turning to God and God’s desires every day of our lives;
it reminds us that we too are fragile and vulnerable,
that our neighbours are fragile and vulnerable,
that the person sitting next to us is fragile and vulnerable and that
we can be agents of healing for one another.
Our own hurt can give us empathy for our neighbour’s hurt.
Our experience of brokenness can help another who has been broken.
God can turn the ashes into life, and a cross into resurrection.
Ash Wednesday is about new beginnings, and there is a lot of hope in that.
God in Christ loves the fragile, the hurting, the broken, and vulnerable –
Jesus even loves the dead – and there is whole lot of good news in that.
But there is also a summons and a challenge, a summons and a challenge to engage in
mercy-making and justice-doing,
but it is a summons and a challenge we don’t engage in alone.
It is a summons and a challenge we engage in as a community.
Ash Wednesday often has the association of being a time for individual reflection and response.
But I think there’s more to it than that: there’s a tremendous community dimension to it.
The thing is, is that this evening you will all be marked together as belonging to the one who
shares our fragility and enters into it in order to redeem it.
We are not just individuals marked by this one, we are a community marked by this one and
dedicated to the same things he was.
Every year at this time I remember an Ash Wednesday in St. Paul, Minnesota when
I was a student there.
Sue and Peter and I went to an Ash Wednesday service and then, being good Canadians,
we washed off our foreheads before going grocery shopping later that evening.
So imagine our surprise when we discovered that
about half the people in the grocery store were
walking around with ashen crosses on their foreheads!
It was a strange experience, but as I think of it now, I’m thankful for it,
because it reminds me that we are marked not so much as individuals,
but as a community, a community bound to the one who took on our fragility,
that we in turn might take on the fragility and the hurt of the
fragile and hurting ones of this world,
in order that we too might rise to become a body broken for the life of others.
That is the promise of Ash Wednesday, and that is the challenge of Lent.
In our brokenness, God is with us.
In our brokenness, we have each other.
In our brokenness, we can find healing.
In our brokenness, we can become agents of healing for all the broken ones of this world,
we can become the repairers of the breach,
we can become the restorers of streets to live in.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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