Sermon for Ash Wednesday

Kindness, Simplicity and Reconciliation

Jesus says, 

"For where your treasure is, 

there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21).

Ash Wednesday

begins our journey into Lent.

Lent invites us to travel with the question:

where is my heart these days? 

Where are we placing our treasures?

The treasures of our time, 

our resources,

our health,

our energies,

our very lives?

Are the steps of our journey

drawing us closer to God

or building walls

to keep God from coming too close,

to keep us from becoming 

whom God created us to be?

Too often we think of Lent

as a time of harshness.

The ultimate finger-wagging,

“You are SO bad!” 

That is not the intention of this season.

Lent is a wandering in the desert sort of time

but it does not have to be miserable.

Lent can be a time

when we learn to sit with our discomfort and dis-ease and fears,

instead of running or hiding 

or feeling ashamed.

This holy season of Lent

I have three words for you:

Kindness.

Simplicity.

Reconciliation.

Let me say those three words again.
Because I need to hear them.

Kindness.

Simplicity.

Reconciliation.

Almost all our music tonight is from the Taizé community.

The Taizé Community

is an ecumenical monastic order founded in 1940,

located in the town of Taizé in Burgundy, France.

There are more than 100 religious brothers who live there year round.

They are from both Protestant and Catholic traditions--
imagine that! And they get along.

 They are from over 30 different countries throughout  the world.
Imagine that! And they get along.

A diverse community.

A diverse community that lives and works and worships together.

The community has also become 

a very important site of Christian pilgrimage,

especially for young people.

Every year over 100,000 young people--

from all over the world--

make pilgrimages to Taizé--

for prayer, Bible study, communal work--

and yes, singing. 

The words of these short songs from Taizé

are sung over and over many times,

prayerfully repeated

until they become like breathing,

helping us to attentively listen to God.

The pilgrims who travel to Taizé

are encouraged 

to return to their ordinary, every day lives

and to live 

in the spirit they have discovered at Taizé--

the spirit of kindness, 

simplicity and reconciliation.

What is God saying to you this Lent 

about kindness?

Is there someone you have treated unkindly?

Are there times when you treat yourself unkindly?

How might that change?

What is God doing in your life these days?

Do you have space and time for God 

and for those you love

or is every nook and cranny

stuffed too full?

Are you being suffocated by your possessions?

What needs simplifying?

Whom do you need to forgive?

Where in your own life do you need forgiveness?

What is broken

that needs to be made whole?

What might you claim anew

if you forgive yourself?

Reconciliation.

Metanoia--the word which we usually translate as “repent”--

is better translated to mean to turn around,

to go a different way.

I saw on a sign outside a church one time
that said: 

Use your GPS--God Positioning System.

That is a good description for Lent.
Sometimes we need a repositioning.

The landscape of Lent calls us to watch and wait
and to pray

and to pay attention to where God is leading us,
guiding us out of the wilderness.

Where is the path that leads

to kinder, simpler, and more merciful lives?

Lent is not about being or becoming perfect.

Lent is about listening for God

and understanding that God

is always listening for us.

Kindness.

Simplicity.

Reconciliation.

How will God unfold these three 

for you

during this holy season of Lent?

Jesus says, 

"For where your treasure is, 
there your heart will be also".

Turning Over the Rocks........Ash Wednesday 2012

Turning Over the Rocks

Today is the day we begin our journey into Holy Lent.
Ash Wednesday.

There was a wonderful video posted on Facebook this week.
It was titled ASH WEDNESDAY AND LENT IN TWO MINUTES.

If we had some high tech equipment here at St. John’s,
I could show you that YouTube video
and we’d be done in--well, two minutes.
But you’re going to have to endure the low tech version--
which is my sermon
and we won’t be done in two minutes.

First the basic facts.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent.
It begins about 40 days before Easter.
I say ABOUT 40 days because we don’t count Sundays.
Sundays are always feast days.
Days of celebration.
Every Sunday is a day when we celebrate the resurrection.
That’s right.
We don’t just do that on Easter--
we are celebrating resurrection every single Sunday of the year.
So get your joy on for Sundays--even during Lent!

And yes,
that does mean that if you give up something for Lent
or take on something for Lent
you can have a break on Sunday---
but then back at it on Monday!

So Lent has 6 full weeks.
6 weeks x 7 days is 42 days.
Minus 6 (those 6 Sundays, remember)
and that means 36 days.

But we need 40 days.
Why?

Because it mimics Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the wilderness.
And also the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert
after their exodus from Egypt.

So the way we go from 36 days to 40 days
is by starting on the Wednesday before the first full week of Lent.
That would be Ash Wednesday.
We then add Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week.
So 36 days plus 4 days is 40 days.

That’s why we begin Lent on a Wednesday--
so we can legitimately come up with the 40 days.

Those are the numbers.
Those are the facts.

But facts keep us in our heads
and this day, Ash Wednesday,
the portal into Lent,
calls us to engage with our heart and our spirit.
With apologies to Dragnet and Sergeant Joe Friday,
“just the facts, m’am” is not going to cut it on this Lenten journey.

We live in a world where too often “it is all about me.”
We are obsessed with ourselves.
Our desires, our achievements, our physical appearance, our opinions.
Spiritually, this is a dangerous and destructive way to live.
But it’s hard to remember that
because “all about me” is the norm.

Ash Wednesday is a day when we shine a spotlight
on our “all about me” thinking
so we might notice the cracks,
if not the total fracture of our egocentric thinking and living.
Ash Wednesday is an uncomfortable day.

It is hard to think we have everything under our control,
when we hear the words,
Remember you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

Remember that you will die.
Remember that life is short and we do not have much time.
Remember that we waste so much time and energy
seeking to be right, to be first, to be better than others.
to get our own way.

We don’t wear ashes on our foreheads to show others how holy we are.
We wear ashes as a symbol of our deep, deep desire for repentance--
our painful awareness
that we need to make some changes in our lives.

Lent is not a season for glorified New Year’s resolutions.

I once heard Lent described as the season of the year
when we turn over the rocks in our lives
and see what crawls out from underneath, from the darkness.
We turn over those rocks and face up
to what has been hiding underneath.

That’s a pretty frightening image.
But Lent is a time for serious self examination.

We can often fool ourselves.
We can sometimes fool others (thought probably not as much as we think).
But we cannot fool God.
Lent is the season to own up to that.

In our scripture readings today we hear the prophet Joel’s trumpet sound--
and it is sounding for us--
calling us to repent, to change.

We hear Paul’s anguish
as he pleads with us to reconcile our lives with God.

We hear Jesus warn us
of how even our fasting
can slip into the “it’s all about me” mode.
Look at me! I’m fasting! Don’t I do it so very very well.
Jesus says please...please don’t embark on this holy journey
to try to win a blue ribbon for keeping the most holy Lent.
Pay attention to where your heart is.

This season of Lent is really not a punitive season.
Is it serious, somewhat somber?
Yes.
We don’t even put flowers in the church
during Lent.

Is Lent about looking under those rocks in our lives?
Yes.
Because as long as we try to keep secrets
and hide a part of ourselves,
we are trapped.
There is not any part of our lives--of us--that God does not already know.
No secrets are hid, no desires unknown.

Lent is about letting go
and trusting those words we hear in today’s opening prayer:
God, you hate nothing you have made...

Take home that scripture insert
and mark those words with a neon yellow highlighter:
God, you hate nothing you have made
and forgive the sins of all who are penitent.

No matter how flawed we are,
no matter what ugly, horrible events
may be hidden under those rocks of our lives,
God loves us.
Go figure!
God created us and it is impossible for God to hate us.

But God does call us to a spiritual journey.
Our journey is to move towards repentance, change and accountability.

Not just to utter words that so glibly flow from our lips
and then are quickly forgotten--
God asks us to repent--
that’s a major action verb--
to change the things we know we need to change--
not so we can be perfect
but so we can become the person God created us to be.

So that we can be in a deep and honest relationship with God
and in a deep and honest relationship with other people.

Because it is about community.
It’s NOT all about me. It’s NOT all about you.
And it certainly is NOT about “divide and conquer.”

God tells us over and over and over again,
Old Testament, New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostic gospels--
God tells us
the purpose of being alive is to
to be in full communion with one another and with God.
Community.
Loving God and loving one another.
This is how we are called to live as God’s people.
It’s not easy but I’m not sure God cares an iota about easy or hard.
It’s just true.

Showing up for ashes on Ash Wednesday
is how we say okay.
Okay, God, at least for today--I get it.

Today is the day
we start to move the rocks.
Today is the day
we start to face all that we have so desperately tried to hide
or ignore or deny
about ourselves.
Today is the day
we start to believe--to really believe--that God loves us,
that God forgives us, that God is merciful,
that God desires only what is wonderful for us.

The singer Keb Mo might put it this way:
Get out of the way and let your light shine.

As Episcopalians we put it this way:
Remember you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.