Putting our Hearts in Lent

 Ash Wednesday - 2-17-21

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

In “the before times,” I feel most of my pastor colleagues – and myself included – often started our Ash Wednesday sermons with some version of “I’m not ready for Lent!” But this year feels different. Because the original lockdown from Covid-19 happened during the season of Lent last year, we joked at first that we were just in one long Lent until we could come back together again. In fact, some proposed delaying Easter (for just a few weeks) to be celebrated when we could all be “back.” How naïve that feels now, almost one year later.

Ash Wednesday is truly one of the “Last big things we did together in the before times.” Everything else from here on out, we will have done before in lockdown. Thank goodness for the gifts of previous experience! But almost one year later, it certainly does feel as though we have had a year of Lent. So, this year, I’m not ready to start a season we really never left. 

But ready or not, Lent happens. Just like life. Like Lent, life arrives like an unwelcome guest. Our lives have been interrupted when we become marked by death, grief, and pain. When we are suddenly not the person we were before, but aren’t yet the person we will become. And this is a very uncomfortable place to be.

This has been the human story from the very beginning, as we heard from the story of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. After they had eaten from the fruit of the tree, they were no longer the same. God asked them a lot of questions about what happened – “Where are you? Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree? What is it that you have done?” And, instead of exploring these questions, our first parents chose to blame one another… the snake… God… anyone but themselves for their own actions.

In one of her songs, Sara Bareilles describes the scene in Eden from Eve’s perspective: “Walking in the garden was a serpent-shaped heart and he told” her a lie about God: “What is broken cannot show,” and “less than beautiful is worse than unholy.” She did not trust that God had created her good, just as she was. Like for our first parents, it’s hard for us to see ourselves as God sees us. It’s hard to image that God actually does love us for who we are.

I’m guessing, if you are human and have lived on this planet for more than a few seconds, your heart is not pristine red, shiny, or intact like the decorations for valentine’s day just a few days ago. Of course, we all know that love and other feelings don’t originate with this blood-pumping muscle in our chests. But we CAN feel so full of love our hearts feel as though they might burst. Our hearts can ache with compassion and empathy, or with longing or loneliness. Our hearts can sting from being hurt. Our hearts can get bruised. Our hearts can even get broken.

We have a saying that we “put our hearts into” things that we care deeply about. Some of these things seem innocent enough – family, friends, country, our jobs, living a comfortable life, freedom. But, as Jesus says about what happens to these treasures after a while … these things we think we should love above all else WILL fail us. Our homes and our cars, our careers, our health, all the stuff we bought online out of boredom…. They will let us down.

We are human. We love what is bad for us – and I’m not talking about chocolate or giving up sugar for Lent. I’m talking about how we hang on to what feels comfortable and normal. And how trying to go back to these things is one of the reasons we are still here, almost one year later. We love what is comfortable, familiar, and convenient, because – let’s face it! Change is hard! Altering our behavior is hard! Even when – ESPCIALLY WHEN – it would be for the best.

We’re not in Eden anymore (as if we ever were) but we are definitely in a strange and unfamiliar place. Our efforts to ignore this wilderness only prolong our time here, until we cannot keep it out any longer, and this reminder knocks us off our feet. Like Ash Wednesday, the start of our 40 days in the season we call Lent.

Ready or not, Ash Wednesday is the time to take stock of our dusty, sore hearts. And we often find what we don’t want to find. We find our sinful and broken actions have left scars on our hearts, and left scars in the lives of others. We find we are lost in a wilderness we don’t want to be in.

But we are not left in our dusty, heartsick state. We are not abandoned to the wilderness surrounded by our comfortless treasures. Our damaged hearts are not cast aside and thrown away, like unwanted valentines on February 15th. We can show our broken selves to God and know that Love will find us there. God renews our hearts, minds, souls, our whole being. The good, the bad, the ugly, the parts that feel unlovable and unworthy. All of it. All of us. No matter how long it takes. 

And so, we wear the sign of the cross in ashes on the outside to remind ourselves of the work that God is enacting on the INSIDE Of us. The confessing our sins. The accepting and embracing of our brokenness and trauma. Acknowledging and processing the ways that we have been marked by death and loss in the last year. Beginning the slow and painful process of the transformation of our dusty and broken hearts into ones that are healed and whole…. All so that we might be better able to love the other dusty and hurting hearts out there in our lives and in the rest of the world.  To love one another with our whole hearts… with hearts that are broken AND beautiful. 

We know that will likely take more than forty days. It might take more than a year. It will likely take our entire lives. But together, trusting in Jesus, we will get through this Lent-within-Lent, hearts intact and ready to love, beautiful broken bits and all. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Marked with Ash, Burn with Grace

Ash Wednesday 2-26-20

Every year Trinity Episcopal and Family of God Lutheran trade off hosting and preaching Ash Wednesday. This year they hosted, I preached. 

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

It started a few weeks ago – my friends giving advance notice by posts in my Facebook news feed, letting us all know that they would “signing off” Facebook during Lent, or disabling the Facebook app on their phones in an attempt to use it less often. That’s when I really know that Lent is on its way – that, and when I start seeing advertisements for fish sandwiches at all the fast food places, and an email message, from our bishop at least, that we should be ADDING a spiritual practice to our Lenten Discipline instead of giving something up for Lent.

Are you still not sure what you are going to be giving up for Lent, if anything? Not to fear - I also saw a friend share a way for your phone to decide what you should give up! Don’t do it right now, but later, simply type in “For Lent I’m giving up” and then keep pressing the predictive text option, and voila! Instant Lenten Discipline. For example, my phone’s predictive text says this “For Lent I’m giving up on me and I will be there at the same time.”

I would like to think that my social-media generated Lenten discipline would be one that Martin Luther would approve of – simultaneously giving up on “me” – my “self”/ my ego/ my need to be in control – and at the same time, taking on the intention of being present wherever I am at, with my FULL SELF, my being, my attention. After all, this is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are about at their core – not to make ourselves suffer to reenact Christ’s suffering, but to deny ourselves, take up our cross, so that we may more fully be ourselves – beloved children of God – for the benefit of other people.

We are lucky that this is the year of Matthew, where we spend an entire year reading through Matthew’s gospel. Most years, this expert from the Sermon on the Mount we just heard from Matthew seems to come out of nowhere (sort of like Ash Wednesday some years when Easter is at its earliest). This year, we have already spent weeks with Jesus up on the mountain top, listening to him preach the beatitudes – blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of God – and also about how we are salt and light. Just a few weeks ago, Jesus told us to “Let our lights shine…. So that others may see our good works and glorify God.” As Martin Luther supposedly said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” So, our light shines through our service to others… and not in picking the most challenging Lenten Discipline. In other words, Jesus says: let your light, not your piety, shine before others to the glory of God.

And yet, we still come to worship on Ash Wednesday, to receive and ash cross on our foreheads, which will be pretty obvious if you go out in public after this. It signifies who has been to Ash Wednesday service and who hasn’t. An ash cross on your forehead isn’t exactly secret. But maybe some things shouldn’t be “hidden under a bush basket” or a bowl, as Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, just a few weeks ago. Some things should be done in secret, without attention being drawn to them… like if you do choose to give up sweets. But some things ought to be shared.

This ash cross marks you as someone who came here today, to receive both this remembrance of your death, and also the remembrance of your life, through receiving the body and blood of Jesus. This ash cross will wash off or smudge off if you forget it’s there and the ashes tickle you and make you itch … but the cross on your forehead that you received the day of your baptism can never be erased or taken away. Today you have been marked as a reminder of your death… but under that is the promise of life that is being created out of death – our death, and the death of Jesus.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, an inconvenient day in the middle of our week, to start an uncomfortable season in the middle of our year, to remind us of the inconvenient and uncomfortable truth that we will all eventually die. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” No thank you! Hard pass.

The truth is though, we are surrounded by death…. But we refuse to see it, and we also have forgotten how to see it. Plants and animals had to die for me to eat dinner before I came here. A tree died in order to give you this sermon. And I think that each of us knows what it’s like to say goodbye to a loved one who has died.

But we no longer see death as part of our daily reality. A veil has been drawn over how we spend our last days and moments, and what happens to us after our death, by the medical and the funeral industry. Most of our loved ones – or even us, when our times comes, spend their last moments in a hospital room, surrounded by medical equipment, and our bodies are whisked away and not seen again until the family visitation, wake, memorial service, or funeral. It is a strange time in history - in the last century, we have been separated from the ritual and sacred task than has been a tradition for centuries: mourning for our dead by caring for them ourselves, in our homes, with our families… and thus facing the reality of our own death on a regular basis.

But we have chosen, in this place and this time we live, to remove all things uncomfortable and inconvenient from our immediate sight. As death historian and eco-mortician Caitlyn Doughty writes in her memoir about her time working in a crematorium, she reminds us that: “At this very moment, [people who have died are driven] down highways and interstates in unmarked white vans … [they] crisscross the globe in cargo holds of airplanes while vacationing passengers travel above. We have put the dead beneath. Not underground, but under the tops of fake hospital stretchers, within the bellies of our aircraft, and in the recesses of our consciousness.”

We don’t want to talk about it, and we don’t want to think about it. Not today, not ever. Because death is something we cannot control or fight forever. Mortality is a battle we will always lose. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We would much rather forget, on purpose, until we even forget our forgetting. But the downside is, the time we spend running and hiding from death is time lost that could be spend on living… loving… serving… and shining.

Ash Wednesday inconveniently and uncomfortably reminds us of our death and begins a season in the church year that reminds us of our own sin and brokenness, leading us on the way to the cross, and the suffering and death of Jesus. But this season will have an end, just like death has an end. New life rises from ashes. Death is an end and it is a beginning. Jesus is both the crucified one and the risen one. I can both give up my “self,” and I can also bring myself fully present, in all my “beloved child of God” glory. I can be both made of ash and also made of light.

One pastor poet reflects on today, Ash Wednesday: “I live in a body made of ashes. It is at once fragile and resilient – easily torn apart but never destroyed.” Another pastor wrote a of poems reflecting on the death of her father, and called it “Ash and Starlight,” and wrote “On waves where trembling feet sink and dance, there rises between my toes, a peace… Where heaven and earth embrace, where the ash in my mouth, the starlight in my bones weave together in wholeness…. unfurling my hands in aching yes and clasp the holy gift, which is this day…  Another chance to live, to burn with grace.”

Today we are marked with ash but burn with grace. We remember that we are mortal beings, and that our time on earth has a beginning and an end. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But no matter what, we are held by God, who created us from the ash that comes from stars…. black as the night sky where they can be seen and shine at their most brilliant. 

Black IS the color of ashes, often associated with sin and death. It is the what we wear to show others we are mourning the loss of a loved one who has died. But black is also the color of an empty tomb, where death has lost the battle. And though we have been marked by ashes to remind us of our death, we have also been marked by the cross of Christ at our baptism, to remind us of the new life we have in Christ. We have each been claimed by God. God loves us, and is walking with us through this time. And the end of the Lent road leads us out to and Easter dawn. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Ashes to Ashes, and Dusty Hearts

Ash Wednesday 2-14-18

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Lent really snuck up on us this year, didn’t it? It seems like just yesterday we were taking down Christmas decorations… and frankly my Christmas wreath is still up on my door! Sure, it’s getting browner and browner by the day… but have I had time, mental headspace, or the energy to take it down…? not yet obviously! And now, here we are. It’s Ash Wednesday already, and I don’t think I AM ready for Lent to start!!! Are you?

I feel SLIGHTLY better that Christian mystic Henri Nouwen felt the same way… he wrote, “I am certainly not ready for Lent yet…. I could have used a few more weeks to get ready for this season of repentance, prayer, and preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus.” And yet here it is again, like it is every year.

It’s a heavy season, not to be traveled lightly, and I feel like I could have used a few more weeks, too. I’m not ready to go back into the wilderness when so much of my life is spent trying to get out of it. I’m not ready to take a hard look at where I fall short. I’m not ready to wear ashes on my head and to remember that I will die someday and become so much dust. I’m not ready to take a close look at my unclean heart. I’m not ready to let go of the things in my life that I should let die. I’m not ready for this journey, even if it is with Jesus at my side.

But ready or not, Lent happens. Just like life. Ready or not, life happens. Like Lent, life arrives like an unwelcome guest. We go about our days and regular routines and whoa - suddenly our lives have been interrupted our own personal Ash Wednesdays, when we become marked by death, grief, and pain. When we are suddenly not the person we were before, but aren’t yet the person we will become. And this feeling is certainly not fun.

As Lent sneaks up on us, like a thief in the night, the rest of the world has been reminding us CONSTANTLY - the moment that Christmas is over, really - that another holiday is coming… Today the world celebrates a holiday full of red hearts, flowers, and chocolate gifts, romantic love. Today seems to be a strange clash of a “holiday” and a “Holy Day” 2 days that seem to have nothing to do with one another… much like the premise of so many romantic comedies. Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day. What a strange couple. Or maybe… just maybe…. They go together better than we might have originally thought.

Imagine a valentine for such a day - “Valentines are Red, Wednesdays ashes are gray… You can’t spell valentine without LENT on this day.”  Or:

“Ashes to Ashes, and dust to dust. Being my valentine is an Ash Wednesday must.” These cards might be pretty hard to find at the Hallmark store. Which is a shame, because maybe the rom-coms are onto something…. Opposites attract in this case because love and death are two sides of the coin we call human experience.

After all, God IS LOVE… right? God created us to love one another. And as Mr. Rogers, Presbyterian Minister and beloved children’s television host, was known to sing on his show – “there are many ways to say ‘I love you’. There are many ways to say ‘I care about you.’” And it’s true.

There are as many ways to show love to one another as there are people on this earth. However, what Mr. Rogers did not sing about, is that too often there just as many ways to HURT one another. And by now, we have had thousands of generations of practice at it, and we have thought of every way under the sun to cause one another pain.

Not even our children are immune from our desires to hurt one another… it’s in our homes, our schools, we cannot seem to get ourselves from death’s grip, as reports came in this afternoon of yet another school shooting in Florida… yet more deaths because we cannot seem to agree as a species to priorities the health and safety of the youngest and most innocent among us over the widespread availability of instruments of death and destruction.

Even this holiday of love is not escapes the shadow of death. The origins of today are lost to the eons, but according to legend, today is the death day of Saint Valentine.  He was a rogue priest who supposedly performed weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry, while also ministering to persecuted Christians… but he got caught. The story goes that he wrote a letter before he was executed and signed it “Your Valentine.” This was no cute note saying “be mine” with candy decorated with hearts. This was a heart-wrenching letter written by a man marked for death. And so weirdly, his holiday has become famous for being full of everything “cheesy LOVE” related - shiny, red, cute, and heart shaped.

I’m guessing, if you are human and have lived on this planet for more than a few seconds, your heart is not pristine red, shiny, or intact like the decorations. If you are human, your heart has become a bit smudged and wrinkled from life.

Of course, we all know that love and other feelings don’t originate with the half-pound blood-pumping muscle in our chests. But our hearts CAN so full of love we might burst. Our hearts can ache with compassion and empathy, or with longing or loneliness. Our hearts can sting from being hurt. Our hearts can get bruised. Our hearts can even get broken.

We have a saying that we “put our hearts into” things that we care deeply about. Some of these things seem innocent enough – family, friends, country, living a comfortable life, freedom. But, as Jesus says about treasures being stolen and rotting away… these things we think we should love above all else WILL fail us. Our homes and our cars, our careers, our health, our stuff we buy to fill the empty void we sometimes feel in our hearts…. They will let us down.

We are human. We love what we shouldn’t. We cling to what will consume us. We possess what eventually will possess us. We become lost in a wilderness of our own desires. Like the seductive tunes of the Pied Piper, our hearts lead us down a path that will end in our destruction and death before we know it.  We tend not to realize what is happening until we are already well on our way through the wilderness. It sneaks up on us, like Ash Wednesday, the start of our 40 days in the season we call Lent. Perhaps, on a day like today, with the headlines of death we hear all too often, it seems like we are already there, and there can be no hope for us.

One meaning of Lent is “to lengthen,” like the daylight hours in the coming spring, that hopefully will arrive someday soon.  We long for right spirits that love what will not leave us dusty or damaged. We long to stop causing and receiving heartbreak.  We long to be out of the wilderness and we long for the coming dawn. We long for hearts that are clean so that we can love as God has called us to love. We long to be able to store up treasures not of this world but treasures worthy of heaven, true treasures like love and justice and mercy and forgiveness and kindness and working toward the safety and well being of all people.

Ready or not, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is the time to take stock of our dusty, sore hearts. And we often find what we don’t want to find. We find our sinful and broken human states have left scars on our hearts. We find we are lost in a wilderness we don’t want to be in. We find that, like St. Valentine, we are marked by death.

God uses a mark of death, however, in order to claim us for new life. In a dusty cross smudged across our foreheads, we are marked for love, a beloved treasure that belongs in the heart of God.

We are not left in our dusty, heartsick state. We are not abandoned to the wilderness of our own misguided treasures. Our damaged hearts are not cast aside and thrown away, like unwanted valentines on February 15th. Instead, God renews our hearts, minds, souls, our whole being. The good, the bad, the ugly, the parts that feel unlovable and unworthy. All of it. All of us.

And so, we wear the sign of the cross in ashes on the outside to remind ourselves of the work that God is enacting on the INSIDE Of us. The confessing our sins. The embracing of our brokenness. The naming of our grief and disappointments. Beginning the slow and painful process of the transformation of our dusty and broken hearts into ones that are healthy and whole…. All the better able to love the other dusty and hurting hearts out there in our lives and in the rest of the world.  To love one another with our whole hearts… with hearts that are broken AND healed. With our Valentine’s Day selves AND Ash Wednesday selves.

We know that will likely take more than forty days. It will likely take our entire lives. But forty days is a good start.

It helps us to remember that at the end of these long, dark forty days -  or however long our particular transformation may take -  at the end of this journey there is hope. There is resurrection. There is light. There is love. There is life. And we aren’t doing this alone.

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. God loves you always, and in that you can trust. Amen.