 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
 |
|||
Ashes to AshesFebruary 10, 2008 First Sunday in Lent Last Wednesday began our season of Lent, which, as you can tell by all of our marching around today, we seem to take rather seriously. Christians of various stripes have a wide variety of practice concerning the Christian year, and since we represent a very divergent set of backgrounds, there’s a good chance that many present today don’t have much knowledge about, or experience with the traditions of Lent, beyond a sort of vague idea that it’s a time when one is supposed to give something up. I hope you read the brief introduction to this season on the back of your bulletin today to either refresh your memory or learn a new thing. It will help you make good use of what goes on here. Because it lasts for forty days leading up to Easter – not counting Sundays, since in the language of the church Sundays are mini-resurrection celebrations – Lent always starts on a Wednesday. A day we call Ash Wednesday, since on that day we have services that include the imposition of ashes. This past Wednesday was just such an occasion. Many of you probably don’t know that during that service we ask participants to write on a slip of paper those things that block them from living into loving relationships with God and neighbor as well as with themselves. They might think of this block as sin, but they could also think of it as any impediment that prevents them from moving into the place of forgiveness, acceptance, love, wholeness and so forth, keeping them separated from God, separated from the people who populate their lives, even keeping their own identities broken, fragmented, and unfocused. We do this little odd activity because it makes explicit our intention to help one another do some serious reflecting about our lives. We should always practice serious reflecting of course, but since we tend to be a bit lazy and need reminding as well as specific opportunity, we set up this Lenten season to help us accomplish this. You could think of Lent as one long, extended opportunity for self-reflection. So on Ash Wednesday everyone is invited to jot down the things that block them from living full and holy lives on a slip of paper they’re given when they arrive and receive their bulletin. These slips are folded once for privacy and collected, brought to the front in the middle of the service where they’re burned in a vessel up here by the communion rail. We have a mini bonfire of the vanities right here. The ashes from these various offerings are then mingled with the ashes that are imposed on the foreheads of those who come forward. Interestingly and tellingly, participants routinely say to me afterwards that this service is one of the most significant markers in the year for them. First-timers report how surprisingly real the experience is, how intimate and challenging; how the ashes of their own brokenness mingle with the brokenness of Christ and mark them in some important way that defies words; that they do this in the company of others; that together in a spirit of humility everyone present collectively takes stock of their fragile humanity as the minister intones while tracing the cross, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” This past Monday an old and close friend of mine told me he had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. Just a few years older than me, he asked if I would be present to him in these final months. I wrote on my slip of paper on Wednesday the word fear; too many sorts of fears to describe on the paper so I let the solitary word suffice. And as I wrote I said to myself, “Allow me to be present, Lord, conscious of my own mortality, and with humility, to be available, loving, alert. Let this spill into the rest of my life, my daily encounters, and what I care about in the larger world. Help all of us to remember that we accompany one another on our respective journeys regardless of how many days we have yet to live. Make me and those present more conscious, Lord. Help us to face our fear and offer it up. Help me and all of us to honor the life remaining by listening to the better angels of our nature.” That was the prayer that attended my jotting the word fear and receiving the tattoo of an ashen cross Cathy traced on my forehead. I wrote a few other words as well: courage, responsibility, forgiveness, repentance. These markers captured a number of intentions, some of which had to do with my relationship with you, with myself, and with the wider world. No doubt some in attendance wrote whole sentences, or names, or specific actions. Others surely sent in words written in invisible ink suffusing the paper with only an energy that couldn’t yet find tangible expression. The fire that consumed these papers was not large, but in my imagination it burned hot, the way molten metal separates the dross of less desirable elements. You can see that we participate in these sorts of odd activities not to accomplish an artificial ritual obligation, but rather to offer ourselves an honest-to-gosh opportunity to take ourselves, our lives and the lives of others, completely seriously. We make the seemingly enormous effort to set aside our cynicism, or awkwardness, or laziness, or some other foolishness, to actually think, pray and meditate deeply on the condition of our lives, our place in the world, and our fundamental identity as citizens of the kingdom of God, people who follow along the path blazed by Jesus. As Matthew reminds us this morning, immediately following his baptism Jesus walked out into the desert where he did his own personal homework. He confronted his own demons of power and who knows what else. He offered it all up to God. It strikes me though, that from one vantage point this story tells us that like the rest of humanity, he had to make sense of his fundamental identity. In this he is just like us. He had to situate himself. He had choices to make. Some thirty plus years ago, serving as a head resident of a college dormitory, I would commiserate with other heads about the particular travails of the freshmen class. We came to lump these into a category we named “the freshmen identity crises”. Separated from home, launching out into life, choices had to be made. Sometimes these choices took the form of life experiments, trying on various identity options. Surely many of you know what I’m talking about. “Who am I really?” is the question that agitates. What is my relationship to the person my parents thought they were raising? What matters to me anyway? How will I employ the various powers that have been embedded within me? How shall I use or abuse my mind, my body, my spirit? To what end shall I direct the major portion of my energy? And so on. To greater or lesser extent these questions get answered – or not. And actually, they never really go away. Sometimes a sort of awkward truce among options masquerades for a real identity, a real acceptance of the truth. Sometimes this masquerade falls apart somewhere along the line. Sometimes we call that a mid-life crisis. But underlying all other factors, factors that we might label psychological, or sociological, or environmental, or developmental is the more fundamental realm of the spiritual which holds all the rest of it. Get the spiritual aligned with reality, and we have a much better chance with the rest of it. So Jesus marched out into the desert. The scripture says the Spirit led him out there which would seem to indicate this was a necessary bit of work Jesus had to accomplish. And let’s be clear that it was work. Sometimes we post-modern seekers fall into the trap of believing this spiritual thing should be a rather easy, pleasant experience leading to all sorts of financial gain, bliss and whatnot. And while I certainly believe there is astonishing glory to witness and experience – absolutely astonishing – this does not come without a certain price. Each of us has our personal work. We ignore this at our peril – our own peril, of course, but also the peril of those in our lives. The closer they are, the greater the peril they’re in from our own frailty, and our unwillingness to do the work that has been assigned to us. Fortunately we’re not asked to do this utterly alone. As Matthew indicated that Jesus was attended by angels, so are we. Surprisingly, sometimes these angels look just like the persons sharing our pew. Sometimes they don’t. But at all times we’re never entirely alone. Atheists call this sort of idea a psychological crutch. I call it spiritual truth. Bedrock truth. Fundamental. The air I breathe. The ground I walk upon. That same ground was on the path the choir traced this morning . If we pay attention we’ll follow that same grounded path on our way home. May God bless your pilgrimage home. Previous sermon: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord • Next sermon: Caught Like Moths Around Manhattan's Light All past sermons |
| ||
|
|