Ash Wednesday – Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Kept by God
Ash Wednesday – March 5, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Many years ago one of our elderly members died,
but she had no relatives left living in Winnipeg.
She was cremated, but it was going to be some time before her closest relative was able to
come and retrieve her ashes.
Where should the urn with her ashes in it be stored until that could happen?
Well, in my office, of course!
This member was very dear to me.
And for nearly a year I lived with her here in my office.
And every day I looked at the urn and remembered whose ashes were inside.
And was grateful.
I loved keeping those ashes – and to tell you the truth,
I was a little sad when they were finally picked up and taken away.
Ash Wednesday is our most solemn day of the year.
On this day we recall that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
On this day we recall our fragility:
The fragility of our good intentions.
The fragility of our mortal bodies.
The fragility of the lives of those around us.
And so we are marked with ashes, recalling the words of the funeral liturgy:
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
It was reported to me this week that someone said they weren’t coming to
the Ash Wednesday service this evening because it was too depressing.
Well, I said, that’s true if the service is about us.
We are fragile.
We are sinful.
We are mortal.
And let’s face it: we don’t really need to be reminded of our fragility:
many of us feel it in our bones, in our arthritic hips, in our sore backs,
in our coughs and in our cancers.
I guess it’s a good thing, then, that Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent is not about us.
It’s good news that it’s not about us.
Ash Wednesday is about being honest about ourselves: we are ashes and we are dust.
But we are ashes and dust that are kept by God.
And that is very good news.
It’s good news because it means that being ashes and dust is not the end of our existence.
Being ashes and dust doesn’t ultimately determine us or our fate.
But the fact that we are kept by God does.
The fact is that out of dust and ashes God has created something wondrous.
Out of dust and ashes God has created life and usefulness and
consciousness and tremendous beauty.
Out of dust and ashes God has created you: full of wonder, full of potential, full of usefulness.
Ash Wednesday is not about us and our finitude.
Ash Wednesday is about God and God’s infinitude,
the infinitude of God’s love for this world and every person in it.
Ash Wednesday is about the love of God for you, dust and ashes though you may be.
Ash Wednesday is about being kept by this God.
Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent is about being renewed in our lives in this God.
It is about re-turning to God who is the source of life.
And being renewed in wonder, renewed in a sense of our potential, renewed in our usefulness.
It is about being forgiven, and moving on.
It is about being filled with the Spirit, and moving on.
It is about being raised to life, and moving on.
Ash Wednesday is not about us: it is about God’s renewal and healing of us,
so that we may be renewed in our potential and healed for usefulness.
Even though we are dust, we are full of human potential.
Even though we are ashes, we are useful.
When Jesus speaks to us this evening from Matthew’s Gospel,
he reinforces the notion that this day is not about us:
it is about our re-turning to God and it’s about our usefulness to our neighbour.
The disciplines of Lent he reminds us of are helpful to us: alms-giving, prayer, and fasting.
Alms-giving or feeding the hungry reminds us of God’s own generosity in
always providing for us and it encourages us to share our manna with those in need.
Prayer strengthens our relationship with God and
expresses our concern for our neighbours in any distress.
Fasting reminds us of our dependence on God and
leaves us with more to share with our neighbours.
The ashes are a sign of our fragility, our sinfulness, our mortality.
But they are given us in the sign of a cross – a cross that leads to resurrection.
A cross that reminds of whose we are.
A cross that reminds us that in life, in death, and in life beyond death we are not alone –
we are kept by God.
A God who loves us.
A God to whom we are full of wonder, full of potential, and full of usefulness.
So let us this Lent be renewed in God’s love for us.
And re-turned to our neighbours in need.
And together let us say, Amen.
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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