Homily: Ash Wednesday (17 Feb 2010)

Homily: Ash Wednesday (17 Feb 2010)
(Isaiah 58:1-12/Psalm 51:1-17/2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10/Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21)[1]
The Grand Joke

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy:
Come, let us adore him.

The older I get, the less I need reminding: you are dust, and to dust you shall return. I know this. I reckon it in the calendar: fewer years ahead than behind. I see it in the mirror: more wrinkles around the eyes, less hair but more gray in what little remains. I feel it in my bones: a certain stiffness in the mornings and aches on rainy days. No, I need no further reminder of human entropy – the winding down and wearing out of mortality – than what I experience each day; I’m reminded of my dusty origin and end already in far too many ways.

What I really need – and perhaps you do, too, regardless of your age – is a reminder that dust isn’t truly the end, that “you are dust and to dust you shall return” will not be the final word spoken to me or over me. What I really need is a reminder that “though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16, NKJV). And Ash Wednesday with its imposition of ashes provides just that needed reminder.

There is a grand joke built right into the solemn ritual of Ash Wednesday; if you “get it” – really get it – it’s hard to keep from laughing with joy during service, or perhaps it’s hard to keep from weeping with gratitude. As all kneel in preparation for the imposition of ashes the minister’s prayer recalls how Almighty God created man out of the dust of the earth and asks God, in part, that the “ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence” (BCP 265). A bit later, the minister signs each member on the forehead with those ashes saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words and the action they narrate ought to be accompanied by a sly wink and a little grin; taken together they are the grand joke of Ash Wednesday. Yes, the ashes may be – and should be – a sign of our mortality and penitence and a reminder of the dust from whence we came and to which we will return. But, they are traced on our foreheads in the sign of the cross. And that is the punch line of the grand joke: a joke at the expense of death and mortality, of sin and destruction. Death tries its best to return humankind to dust and ashes, but Jesus stoops down and traces in our dust and ashes the sign of the cross, and the Creator once again forms man from the dust of the earth and breaths into him the breath of life – the Spirit of Life – and he rises in newness of life unto the ages of ages, bearing on his forehead the seal of the cross. St. Paul got the joke and – I suspect – laughed and wept his way through his great resurrection doxology:

54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “ O Death, where is your sting?

O Hades, where is your victory?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:54-57, NKJV).

I know that Ash Wednesday is the portal to Lent, a time of intense penitence and ascesis/discipline. I will fast with the Church. I will pray with the Church: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” knowing that my sin is responsible for the evil and death in the world in ways I cannot even imagine. I will repent with the Church and beg God to reveal to me just as much of my sin as I am able to bear, and to grant me true repentance and amendment of life. I will immerse myself in the Word with the Church and give alms with the Church. I will, as God gives me grace, keep a holy Lent with the Church, as will you. But as serious as all this is, as solemn as is the season, from time to time I think I will break out in laughter, because I know the grand joke of Ash Wednesday. The dust and ashes of my mortality – and yours – is sealed with the life-giving cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Remember that you are the son or daughter of God – sealed with the cross of our Lord Jesus – and that to God and to life you shall return.

St. John tells the story of a woman taken in adultery and accused publicly before Jesus. (St. John’s gospel is the only one to record this episode and there are textual issues which lead many scholars to question its authenticity and many to reject it outright. It doesn’t appear in some modern translations of the Bible and, where it does, it is often bracketed and footnoted as of questionable origin. But it is vintage Jesus, and I refuse to part with it.)

The scribes and Pharisees drag this woman – who is really, to them, only bait for their latest “Jesus trap” – right into the precincts of the temple where Jesus is teaching. As I visualize it they shove her down dismissively onto the dusty courtyard where she huddles in fear and shame while they turn to Jesus.

“Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. 5 Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” 6 This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him (John 8:4b-6a, NKJV).

But Jesus pretended not even to hear them: would that we could more often turn a deaf ear to the sins of others! He stooped down and wrote on the ground, in the dust and ashes of that courtyard. When the scribes and Pharisees pressed him further for a judgment he gave it: He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone (cf John 8:7). And then he stooped down and wrote again in the dust and ashes. It’s all a great mystery, of course, just what Jesus wrote. But, whatever it was, it replaced condemnation with forgiveness and death with new life. Whatever he wrote, this much is true: Jesus stooped down to the dust and ashes of that poor woman’s life and with his finger traced in them the sign of his life-giving cross and she was born again. I wonder how often after that day she laughed with joy or wept with gratitude at the grand joke played on death that day.

In a moment I will say to each of you, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” as I trace in ashes upon your forehead the sign of the cross. It’s all very solemn. But, I’ll understand if you grin a little or shed a tear of grace. It is, after all, a grand joke. Amen.

[1] While we will read the appointed lections, I plan to address them only tangentially and to focus, instead, on a different aspect of Ash Wednesday using St. John’s account of the woman taken in adultery.

Homily: Ash Wednesday (25 February 2009)

Ash Wednesday Homily: 25 February 2009
(Joel 2:1-2, 12-17/Psalm 51/2Corinthians 5:20b-6:10/Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21)
Where, O death, is your sting?

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.

I came to liturgical worship in mid-life – not so very long ago – so I well remember kneeling at the altar rail for the first time to receive the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. My wife was to my right with our daughter between us. As Father John made his way from penitent to penitent he reached them first. As he signed each of them with the cross he intoned the ancient words of scripture and the church: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And for the first time, though I had known death before, I was struck that night in a profound and visceral way by the unique human condition: we alone among all creatures are aware of our mortality. Such is the power of sacramental action, of the signs and symbols, the rites and liturgy of the church. I knew in that moment that everything I cherished most in the world – those two who knelt beside me – were dust and to dust must return. I have not yet recovered from that first Ash Wednesday; pray, God, I never do.

On Ash Wednesday, more than any other day, the church reminds us that we are mortal, that we all must die. Death is our common human inheritance, bequeathed by fallen Adam to all his fallen children. There is a strange, spiritual symmetry here, the church tells us. Adam’s sin brought forth death, and now, death brings forth sin among Adam’s children. The awareness of our mortality – of our impending death – stirs and awakens passions within us. Because we sense we were made for eternity we rebel against mortality. These passions propel us into a quest for power: every act of dominance, from the sarcastic comment to war among nations, is a futile show of power in the face of death. We will conquer; we will survive. These passions propel us into narcissism and self-absorption: every botox injection, every facelift, every overweight middle-aged man who leaves the wife of his youth for the ideal nymph, testifies to man’s vain effort to forestall age and death. We will not go silent into that dark night. These passions propel us into mind and body numbing stupors – anything to ease the aching awareness of mortality: every eating or drinking binge, every abuse of drugs, every sexual hook-up is an injection of existential novacaine that fails to deaden the nerve of our approaching end. Death stirs and awakens our passions and these passions bring forth our sin. “Where, O death, is your sting?” Paul asks. He well knows: “The sting of death is sin,”(1 Cor 15:55-56). Death is the enemy; it destroys us – if it does – through its power of sin.

So the church teaches. We have inherited the fallen human condition – we have inherited death. Awareness of death stirs passions within us, passions that strive toward eternity, quite often in vain and destructive directions. Sin is born of these passions. So, whatever in this world or the next, is the church thinking when she says to us, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” as she confronts and seals us with the sign of our mortality? Why does the church stir up these passions within us? In the wisdom of the Holy Spirit the church knows that these passions must be awakened and confronted through the power of the cross, through the power of the sinless One who conquered death by dying and who rose to life everlasting.

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:55-57, NIV).

This is the wisdom and power of God, that when Mother Church traces on our foreheads the sign of our mortality she does so in the form of the death-conquering, life-giving cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

This is the wisdom and power of God, that when Mother Church stirs our passions she arms us for the ensuing struggle: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Eph 6:12-13, NIV).

Yes, Mother Church equips us for battle with the passions – passions St. John describes as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16, NKJV). We battle the lust of the flesh – all our sensual indulgences – through abstinence: prayer and fasting, the church prescribes. For the lust of the eyes – all our selfishness and greed, our compulsive need to acquire – the church prescribes almsgiving, a free gift of the material goods entrusted to us. The pride of life? For this poison of control and domination the church offers as antidote the basin and the towel, the cross, and the way of Jesus – a way of humility and service.

These Lenten disciplines are the church’s way of struggle against the passions which lead to sin and alienation from man and God. But, they are far more: the Lenten disciplines are a way of transformation of these passions into the one, all-consuming and life-giving passion for God. The church is not naïve; passions cannot simply be defeated once-for-all or, worse still, repressed. Passions must be transformed by the cross and resurrection of Christ. The season of Lent, which can seem like a via negativa, a negative way of renunciation, must be experienced instead as a via positiva, a positive way of transformation. We fast from food that we might feast on prayer and Scripture and the Eucharist – the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. We give our alms that we might store up treasure in heaven; we sell all lesser pearls that we might buy the one pearl of great price. We serve, we become least of all, recalling Christ’s words that he came to serve to set us an example, and that the one who is least of all is great in the kingdom of heaven. The church, in her Spirit-inspired wisdom, prescribes for us practices to transform our lesser passions into the one passion worthy of those created in the image of God: to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.

So, let us fast that we might learn to feast. Let us give, let us empty ourselves, that from God’s abundance we might receive the fullness of the Spirit. Let us serve that we may follow the way of Christ. Let us face our mortality, awaken our passions, and transform them through the cross of Christ. Let us exchange the things of earth for the things of eternity (Laudable Exchange, John Michael Talbot).

Let us pray.

O Lord, who hast mercy upon all,take away from us our sins,and mercifully kindle in us the fire of thy Holy Spirit.Take away from us our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh,hearts to love and adore Thee, hearts to delight in Thee,to follow and enjoy Thee, for Christ's sake. AmenSt. Ambrose of Milan, adapted (AD 339-397)