A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
"Beware of practicing your piety before others ... and whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting."
"Don't do it!" the Bible seems to say, "Don't put those ashes on your face." Don't let others see your piety.
In Lent, we hear about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and it is assumed that we will do these things. But not in public. We are told to do them in secret, because our father who sees in secret will reward us.
The underlying question is which rewards are more important, which should we treasure most: the rewards of the world, expressed in the opinions of others, or the rewards of God, expressed in our relationship with God?
The ashes remind us of this relationship They are a sign for ourselves, rather than a sign to impress others. The ashes are for us a sacramental sign -- "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The ashes are a sign that we are embodied creatures, created from the earth. The ashes are a sign that we are not pure spirit, but material beings. God could have made us pure spirit, and chose not to. God made us from the earth and said "It is good." And God chose to become incarnate – to become human. God becoming flesh is another way to say about humans, "It is good." Here is God with a real body, that like ours came from and returns to the earth. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
We were created out of the earth, and God breathed God's Spirit into us.
Yet we made a made a mess and dirtied things up. And then, even before we clean up our act, Jesus comes along and invites us to dinner!
Jesus invites us into a relationship with God. Prayer, fasting, and giving; Self examination, Bible study, and repentance; all can be ways of saying yes to that relationship.
But the focus is in the relationship, not on the what we might be doing in public or secret. The ashes remind us of that relationship - and that even when we make ashes of our lives, God's forgiveness is ours.
Because God does not wait till we're clean and righteous to love us. The love is there under the ashes: in the godly spirit breathed into the mud from which we were created, in the cross of our baptism on our foreheads, in the forgiving, cleansing, loving welcome that God offers each one of us, however filthy we may feel.
Without a relationship with God, we are but ashes, no matter how good or holy we seem in the opinions of others. But when God enters our hearts in secret, the dust that we are is filled with God's life-giving Spirit, and we are made beloved children of God.
Where, then, is your treasure? -- in the corruptible and changing opinions of others? or in your secret relationship with God who offers you life?
We remember that we are but dust ...
and that God makes miracles out of dust.