| The Rev. Catharine Montgomery | Ash Wednesday |
| Grace Memorial Episcopal Church | Year C |
| February 21, 2007 |
| Isaiah 58:1-12 | Psalm 103:8-14 | 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 | Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 |
We live in the shadow of the cross. Our grand processions begin behind the cross. Our walls are lined with the Stations of the Cross. We are marked by a cross in baptism. We are marked as Christ’s own forever with crosses of holy water and oil. We are blessed and absolved from our sins by the sign of the cross. Our salvation came to us through the horror and shame of a cross, and we preach Christ crucified.
In a moment I will mark you with a cross made from the ashes of the palms you waved last Palm Sunday. We adults tend to be a little self-conscious about the black mark on our faces as we go about our business. Some people believe the powdery black smudge marks us as sinners. And of course we all are – we have much in our lives that calls for repentance and the need for change. Everything we do and say on Ash Wednesday reminds us of our need to turn our hearts back to God. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
When I teach children about Ash Wednesday I take them back to Genesis and the story of God creating man from the dust of the ground. I like to read part of the exciting, creation poem of the great black preacher and poet James Weldon Johnson. It tells of the intimate relationship God wants with the people he has created and it helps the children make a connection between what God did in the beginning and the ashes I mark on their foreheads. Children and adults love it…here is an excerpt from the part of the poem called “Creation.”
“God looked on his world with all its living things, and God said, ‘I’m lonely still.’ …..I’ll make me a man! Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay: And by the bank of the river he kneeled him down: And there the great God Almighty - Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand: This great God… Like a mammy bending over her baby… kneeled down in the dust; toiling over a lump of clay: ‘Til he shaped it in his own image; Then into it he blew the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” [And God saw that it was good…]
We human beings did not stay close to the Creator for long….we fell…we strayed….we went by the wayside. God found out that we are willful – prideful and full of self-importance. Ever since that first bite of an apple, God has been saying, “Come back to me.” The age old question is how did we move so far from what God wanted us to be? And how do we get back? Ash Wednesday is a day when we can make a commitment to fix our relationship with God and with each other and with the earth from which we were made. This is the day we can begin to remove the things we use to protect and cover ourselves and shut God out of our hearts. The forty day season of Lent gives us a framework in which we can do some work on our hearts and souls as we prepare for Easter.
The Prayer Book helps us. It calls us to keep a holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial. It instructs us to read and meditate on God’s holy word and provides scripture, prayers, and psalms. The Scriptures for Ash Wednesday really make us think. Yet if you read them carefully, they contain the prescription for salvation. The disciplines of Lent are the ways we clear a path back to the great God Almighty, but it is hard work.
Our greatest stumbling blocks are attitude and lack of commitment. For instance, self-examination requires time for deep reflection. Look at the fast pace of our lives - my own included. If we have no time for prayer or looking deeply inside how can we truly repent of anything?
And what about the discipline of fasting or doing without? Think for a moment about what happens when we get rid of an all-consuming obsession. Space is opened up in our lives. But the prophet Isaiah warned his people about fasting for the wrong reasons. The practices of fasting and self-denial and giving to the poor can be used wrongly to be a way to show we are in control of ourselves and others. Isaiah says the fast that the Lord requires is that we love others enough to loose the bonds of injustice, help remove the yoke that breaks the back and spirit of the poor.
The fast the Lord requires is that the hungry be fed and those who are homeless are clothed and have a place to stay. The fast the Lord requires is that families be reconciled to each other. Prayer, fasting and self-examination are supposed to clear our minds and hearts and leave space that can be filled with love for God and others.
Jesus keeps saying in Matthew’s Gospel, “Go to your Father who is in secret: who sees in secret.” Go to that room alone deep inside your heart and talk with your Father there. What if in this season of Lent all the words we say in the Psalms and litanies of penitence went deep into that secret place where God comes to us and we meet in a loving, forgiving relationship.
What if in this season of Lent our thoughts and words and actions reflected a deep awareness of who we are and to whom we belong. We live in the shadow of the cross today and every day. May the ashes of Lent bring us back to that great God Almighty who toiled over that lump of clay - who molded that dust of the ground and loved us and breathed us into life. Amen