Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

February 22, 2012

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Paul writes, “Now is the acceptable time.” Now!

And Joel the prophet, who like all the prophets that said God was unhappy with the way the Israelites were living, tells them that even now, if you turn around, even now, right now, if we change, repent, things could be different.

Now! That now is such a strong word, especially for those of us who are procrastinators. What it is saying is that now is the time. The paper you’ve been putting off writing is due now. The job you haven’t finished is due now.  The phone call you’ve been meaning to make needs to be done now. There is no time. It is right now! Because the truth is, that all we have is now.

For Ash Wednesday after my sermon I will bless ashes and put them on each person’s forehead. Each time I put them on I will say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” I will do that with those who are older, with those who are in mid-life, and to the children who come forward.

It is a reminder that this body, in the not too distant future, will be dust. On Ash Wednesday I sometimes think about the people I have come to love here at St. Barnabas who are now dust in the memorial garden.

Remember that you are dust. Like the flowers in the field that are here today and dust tomorrow. It is sobering. It reminds us of our mortality. And the church every year has this service so that no one forgets, that everyone remembers, that all we really have is now. Some of us here may live 50, 60, 70 more years. Some may die in a year, some in a month, maybe some won’t make it through the night. None of us know.

All we have is now. And what are we to do now? Paul tells us that what we are to do now is to be reconciled to God - to be reconciled. Reconciliation means being in a right relationship. And relationship is really what sin is about. Sin is about not living in a right relationship. Not living in right relationship with God. Not living in right relationship with other people. Or not living in right relationship with yourself.

So tonight, at the beginning of Lent we are reminded that now is the time to get things right. Now is the time to reflect upon our relationships and see what needs to change. Who needs to be contacted? Do you have a brother or sister you haven’t spoken with who needs a call, or a neighbor that you had a fight with and you need to make up with?

Or perhaps you are not in right relationship with yourself. I have noticed that most of the time when people say that they are going to give something up for Lent the thing they are giving up for Lent is something they really should be giving up for the rest of their lives. Except of course chocolate.

You know, “I’m going to give up smoking for lent.” Good start! You are not in right relationship with yourself if you are hurting yourself. Now is the time to look at whether you are treating yourself the way you would want to treat others. If you are working too much, now is the time to reconsider. If you find yourself sitting around too much, now is the time to start walking. If you are ignoring feelings, now is the time to understand them and express them. If you find yourself in a situation that is not healthy for you, now is the time to love yourself and be in right relationship with you.

Now is time for reconciliation with God. The wonderful thing about reconciliation with God is that God longs for that relationship even more than you do. Remember the story of the prodigal son who takes half of his father’s estate and throws it all away and turns around and comes back. All he has to do is take a few steps toward home and his father is running to him. All we need to do is turn around a little bit toward God. Make a first step, a first effort to be reconciled to God, and God runs to meet us. Because of God’s mercy. That is what is talked about in the psalm and that we just read about in Joel, “Because God is a merciful God. Slow to anger and quick to forgive.”

I started out by talking about our mortality, and the service begins with ashes and the fact that we are mortal, at least our bodies are mortal. But the service ends with the Eucharist, with the Holy Communion, in which we remember that Christ died for us so that we will never die. That some part of us lives that is beyond the dust that makes up our bodies. We remember that in God’s mercy and God’s love, we are promised not just forgiveness but everlasting life.

Now, right now, is the right time to be reconciled to God and your neighbor and yourself.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

3/5/2003

The Rev. Valerie A. Hart

St. Alban's, Brentwood, CA

I remember the first time I had the opportunity to be the celebrant at the Ash Wednesday service during the first year that I served here at St. Alban's. I remember how incredibly powerful it was to place the ashes on each person’s forehead while repeating “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Over and over I said those words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” With each repetition it moved deeper into my heart and my soul. The old stalwart of the community, whom I had grown to respect and love, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The vital and very alive young mother, who had become my friend, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And hardest of all was when I came to a young child, three or four years old, looking up at me with the eager expectancy of childhood. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Each of these people whom I had come to love and deeply care about I was reminded were but dust and ashes. At this service, with those words, we are all reminded that we are already dust, reminded that this physical body that we hold so dear, and the physical bodies of those we love, came from dust and will become but dust and ashes.

Before this past summer I had never seen gangrene. My father-in-law, who has diabetes and circulation problems, developed an infection on his toe. An innocent beginning, an ingrown toenail that had been trimmed by a podiatrist, but it never fully healed because of the lack of good circulation to his foot. Once it became infected, even with the best of modern medicine, it would not heal. Without blood flowing to the toe there were no resources with which to fight the infection. A black spot developed and began to grow. Soon the entire toe was black. Gangrene is horrible to look at, for the infected part quite literally dies. The toe became shriveled and black. It was like a corpse with a unique odor, and it was excruciatingly painful. The only treatment was amputation. To see what a toe looks like when life-giving blood is no longer flowing through it was for me a vivid reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

This community has known a lot of grief this year. We have watched parents, siblings, and dear friends die. We have lost jobs, financial resources have shriveled, dreams have been crushed, and relationships have been shattered. We have known what it means to feel things turn to dust in our hands. We have been painfully reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Throughout the Bible images of dust and ashes reoccur. Adam is formed from the dust of the ground, and Abraham refers to himself as but dust and ashes. When Tamar has been raped by her brother she put ashes on her head and tore her robe as a sign of grief. Mordecai, upon learning of plans for the destruction of his people, puts on sackcloth and ashes. Job, that one who knew unbearable grief in the loss of all of his children and all of his material possession and finally his health, sat among the ashes. The psalmist, in psalm 102 writes “For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink.” Jesus uses the image saying  "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

And so today, we take ashes and put them on our foreheads and are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, the first step on our journey to Easter. Why, you might ask, do we remind ourselves of our own mortality on this day? In fact you might wonder why anyone would ever want to remind themselves of their own mortality. What could be the advantage of thinking about our own and our loved ones deaths?

There is something incredibly powerful about confronting death. Human beings have a tendency to live in fear, and the foundation of all the fears in our lives is the fear of death. There are many kinds of death, the death of this mortal body being the most obvious. But there are many little deaths in our lives. Any time we are confronted by the impermanence of the things of this world we experience a little death. When our pride is hurt, when someone we trusted lets us down, when we can’t have what we want, when we lose what we do have, all of these are kinds of death. And we don’t like it. These experiences are painful. We want to shield ourselves from experiencing this pain, and so, over time, we create a cocoon around ourselves. Bit by bit we weave a self-protective coating, a veil that shields us from truly feeling the pain in our lives.

Each person’s is unique, but you can recognize it easily. It is the false pride and bravado that keeps us from feeling the discomfort of not being the best. It is the anger we use to keep love away. It is the disinterest that keeps us from disappointment. It is the addictions that numb the pain through drugs or alcohol. It is the busyness that keeps us from stopping to really feel.

Over the years we create this cocoon, and it helps to keep the pain away, but it also numbs us to the joy and isolates us from love. If we build a shield to keep the pain out, we have also built a shield to keep the joy out. We may feel safe from the pain of experiencing the transitory nature of life on this earth, but it comes at the cost of being kept from experiencing the blessed and transcendent joy of life.

But there are moments when this cocoon is rent. Times when our best defenses are breached. Such is the grace that can come with grief. Grief sometimes comes upon us with such intensity that we can no longer hold onto the presumption of being in control. Deep loss tears away the levels of protection and leaves us stripped, emotionally naked, and feeling deeply. If we have the courage to be with that grief, to let ourselves experience the pain, we discover that we are more alive. It sounds odd, but many people who experience intense grief also describe moments of intense joy. After a deep and cathartic night of tears, the morning may bring a dawn more beautiful then you ever remembered.

The same is true of experiencing and acknowledging our own mortality. After my brain surgery, where I had consciously confronted the possibility of my own death, on the way home from the hospital the colors of the trees were a multitude of vibrant greens, the blue of the sky was iridescent, and the touch of my children was an unspeakable delight.

When that cocoon we develop to avoid the fear of death is stripped away we come to experience the world more directly. Our hearts are freer to receive the love of God that always surrounds us, and we also more clearly see the ways in which we have not lived our lives in harmony with that love.

Our attempts to protect ourselves from pain often end up inflicting pain upon others. It is impossible to truly love others and remain safe, for love always involves a reckless abandonment of oneself. And so, our fear of death, our attempts to be safe, interfere with our ability to love God and to love others. And that is the foundation of all sin.

Lent is a preparation for Easter, a preparation to receive the gift of the resurrection. One cannot acknowledge resurrection without acknowledging death. We cannot know the light of Easter without walking through the shadows of Good Friday. We cannot know love, without risking everything. We cannot know the freedom of forgiveness without acknowledging our sinfulness. We cannot be free to love and forgive without acknowledging the pain we have experienced.

Paul states in the reading today “We are treated 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.”

Lent is a time to acknowledge our nothingness so that we may receive everything. Lent is a time to acknowledge our sinfulness so that we may know we are forgiven. Lent is a time to know our dying so that we may live the resurrection.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Ash Wednesday Sermon

What do spring cleaning, preparing taxes, starting a garden and baseball players at spring training have in common with Lent - other than that they all take place in the spring? Take a look at this Ash Wednesday sermon I gave in 2013 to find the answers.

Ash Wednesday

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Ash Wednesday 2013

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Psalm 103

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Every Spring we acknowledge this season of Lent, this spring season. But as we are remembering Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent something else is also starting this week. Do you know what it might be? Baseball players are gathering for spring training. Some of the spring training starts today some tomorrow.

And there are other things that happen every spring. This time of year, every Lent, is also when we spend time preparing our taxes. They are due on April 15^th, so we are forced to deal with our taxes as part of our Lenten practices.

 Another thing that happens at this time of year is that people begin thinking about their gardens. People start working in fertilizer and ordering seeds and buying plants. Here in California we may be planting peas or early lettuce. Spring is a time of thinking about gardening.

The spring is also a time when we do spring cleaning. That once a year getting a good thorough cleaning of the house.

So what do all of these spring activities have to do with Ash Wednesday and Lent? Well when you think about it they each have a lot in common with Lent and Ash Wednesday.

Think about spring cleaning. Why do we need to do spring cleaning? Most of us do some kind of cleaning all year long. For some its every day, some it is once a week, some it is more or less regularly than that. But we usually tend to keep things orderly and dust periodically. But every so often, and the spring is the time we usually do it, we engage in a little deeper cleaning. You know, all the dirt that gets tracked in on the rugs during the winter and in the rains. We might get the rugs cleaned in the spring because you don’t notice the dirt collecting each day. And you don’t vacuum underneath the furniture or clean those little corners that you don’t see very often. Spring cleaning is that time to take a thorough look; to see the stuff that gets overlooked every day.

Ash Wednesday is kind of like spring cleaning. If you come to church on a regular basis you say confession every week, you acknowledged anything that’s on your mind, you’ve been forgiven on a regular basis. But once a year it’s really helpful to dig a little deeper. To lift back the furniture. To look at those things that, like tracking dirt into the house, you don’t notice the rug getting dirty until you have to clean up a spot and you realize how dirty the rest of the rug is. Well today we remember are all those little things that we do and forget about and don’t think about and don’t feel we have to ask for forgiveness for. But all those little things kind of add up. Or there might be things that we just haven’t been ready to be honest about. Or we may be carrying the kind of sins that are not the BIG SINS that everybody lists, but the little sins of not taking care of ourselves, not remembering our friends, or not caring about the world. So every now and then, and we do it once a year, we need to do a spring cleaning of ourselves where we really look in all those little corners and ask what’s not right. What do I need to say I’m sorry for? What do I need to change in my life? How do I need to be renewed? How do I need to be, as Paul puts it, reconciled with God? And Ash Wednesday is a wonderful opportunity to do that because there is a wonderful litany of penitence that we will be doing shortly. If you think you have been living well and have nothing to confess, you will not get to the end of that without realizing that, yeah you are not living your life as well as you could be.

And then there is doing our taxes. One of the things I find about doing my taxes is that you have to go through everything you did with your money. You are looking for all those deductions, so you have to see how you spent your money for the last year. And it is a powerful reflection on who we are. If you want to really know someone look at their checkbook. Look at where they use their credit card and you can get a pretty good idea of what’s important to that person. How much of your money went to the necessities, to housing and clothing and food? How much went to medical expenses? That will tell you a lot about what’s been going on in your life the past year. Or perhaps there has been money going to support children or parents or cousins. Your checkbook shows who is important in your life. How much money was given away? To whom? When? How much was spent on things that were just for your own pleasure? Which is fine, we are suppose to enjoy life, but what’s the balance? Doing our taxes provides an opportunity to do that kind of reflection -to really look at how we are living our lives. As Jesus says in the Gospel, where your treasure is there your heart is as well. So during this Lenten time for self reflection I invite you to see your tax preparation time as an opportunity for self reflection. I know it helps keep me from being quite so frustrated when I’m working on my taxes.

And then there is planting a garden and preparing the ground. How many of you are gardeners? How many of you have started thinking about what you are going to plant this year? So you know that you go out there and the first thing you have to do is prepare the ground. You have to dig up the dirt so that the ground can nourish whatever gets planted there. You do all kinds of things to try and nourish the ground. One of the most important things that we add to the ground to make it fertile is, and you are nodding your heads, manure, right. And we all know what manure is. It is the waste of animals that has been processed. You know in some ways I think of our sins, the mistakes we’ve made, as our waste, and when we’ve processed it, when we’ve thought about it and we’ve gone to confession and we’ve acknowledged it, it changes from being something smelly and ugly to being something that can be nurturing and healing and help in growth. When we acknowledge what we have done wrong we learn so much about ourselves and how we want to live the rest of our lives. So when we offer ourselves to God and we open up and we confess our weaknesses God can come in there and change it - change our weakness into something that can nourish us. In the Psalm there is a wonderful line, “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our sins from us.” Our sins can become our strength. Our sins can nurture us for the time ahead. Lent and confession is all about preparation so that the seeds that God sows in us can grow and sprout and be strong and beautiful - so that the garden that is our being can produce beautiful flowers and rich fruit that feeds us and other people.

And this is where we get to spring training. Think about the baseball players going to spring training. Yeah over the winter they may not have been working out as much as they could have. They are not in their best shape, and they know that coming up is going to be the season and they have to be ready. So spring training is a preparation. They practice, and they exercise, and they practice, and they exercise so that when it becomes time for the big game, they’ll be ready. Lent is a time for us to practice and exercise. Many of us choose to either give something up or take something on during these forty days of Lent. Sometimes we give up something that we probably should have given up years ago or that is just mildly unhealthy for us like chocolate or caffeine. Sometimes we take on more reading, more study or some disciplines. Part of the reason we do this is as practice and exercise. You see we all will at times be tempted. By taking a spring training time where we encounter little temptations we prepare ourselves for the more difficult challenges of life. Suppose you said on Ash Wednesday, “No chocolate the whole time of Lent.” Then you are at this party, and there is this chocolate and you don’t want to insult the host and there is this little temptation. Now if you choose to have chocolate at that point no one gets hurt. There is no big disaster. It is not a sin. You just have given in to the temptation. You have an opportunity to see how hard it is to follow through on your intentions. If you succeed in not having that piece of chocolate you are going to be a little stronger the next time there is a temptation. It’s like the batter in batting practice, when he hits the ball he knows he’s doing it right and he’ll do it again. But if you give in and you have that piece of chocolate well, you missed. It’s like the batter in batting practice, “Well I missed, I’ve got to do it better next time.” You learn something. You learn about your weaknesses; you learn about your strengths. So by taking on these disciplines during Lent we get to practice for when the big game comes. We all will have moments in our lives when we are tempted to do something that really will hurt someone or hurt ourselves. We all find ourselves in situations where it is easier to do something that would be hurtful. We all will find ourselves in situations where everybody else is doing it, but you know it is not good. We will find ourselves in situations where our desires become so strong it is hard to fight them. But if we have practiced, when we feel that strong desire perhaps we will remember that piece of chocolate and how we do have the ability to say no. We do have the ability to resist temptation. So we can see Lent as spring training, a time to gather our strength, to learn about our weaknesses, and to practice.

Lent for me is always a rich time. And always a bit unpredictable. When we offer ourselves to God at the beginning of Lent we are asking God to take us, use us, transform us, and prepare us for the world beyond. May this be a good Lent for all of you.