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Sermon for February 26, 2020
Ash Wednesday
Cathedral Church of St. Paul,
Detroit, MI
The Rev. Vicki Hesse
For
readings, click here
“Take
my lips, O Lord, and speak through them;
Take
our minds and think through them;
Take
our hearts and set them on fire
with
love for You. Amen.”
Listen here
Today
is Ash Wednesday, when we
smear
ashes on our foreheads,
officially
marking the beginning of Lent.
The
first time I had ashes placed on me,
I
was struck by the grittiness of the ashes against my forehead
and
the tickling dust on my nose.
That
surprise was followed by the horror that
I
looked like someone who forgot to wash her face.
And,
the Gospel exhortation to
“beware
of practicing your piety before others”
impressed
on me to go clean up as soon as possible!
And,
for me, *that* day marked a turning point.
That day, in this strange
ceremony –
punctuated by scripture and steeped in tradition
–
That was the day when, embarrassed by a
dirty face,
the fact of my mortality knocked some sense into
me.
That day I reluctantly became
willing to become willing
to accept my
humanity.
That day I began to realize how
we are all
utterly
dependent on God for our very being.
To
accept mortality is to accept our humanity.
Today,
we meet a God
who
confronts our fragile humanity
with
radical compassion.
Of course, there is an app for that.
More than 10,000 people have downloaded the
WeCroak app.
“Find happiness by contemplating your mortality,”
says the ‘about’ clause.
Each day, the app sends five invitations, at random times,
to stop and think about death.
This approach derives from a Bhutanese folk saying,
“to be happy one must contemplate death five times a day.”
But maybe just once a year, on Ash Wednesday, is enough to
remember our fragile humanity, (gesture)
tenderly placed in God’s deep compassion.
Today, we offer to God who we really are:
human and vulnerable.
Because that’s what Jesus did.
Today, we meet a God hates nothing God has made.
Because
that’s what Jesus showed us.
And
– spoiler alert! wearing ashes might be
one
of the most powerful accessories
we
may ever wear.
Why?
Because
strange things happen
when
we *publicly acknowledge our mortality.
We
might find ourselves free to have conversations
that
might not otherwise take place.
By
naming our mortality,
our blessedness and our falleness
in community,
we
are be drawn together into the grace of God.
By
naming our mortality, with ashes,
God opens a way that
permits the proclaiming
God’s deep, faithful and everlasting love.
*_*_*_*_*_*_
Last
summer, at a rare gathering
of
all my sisters and lifelong friends,
we
reluctantly accepted our mortality.
Over
a 3-hour meal,
we
bravely answered several prompts
suggested
by a book we all read before the visit,
“Talking
About Death Over Dinner.”
This
experience, my wished-for birthday gift,
proved
the grace of a difficult conversation held
with
my closest circle of intimates
now
that most of us are over 60.
·
Maybe that’s the consequence of being a church
geek?
·
Maybe we just all realized how only in that
circle
could we muster the courage required.
·
Maybe we all longed for that deeply personal
and intimate conversation that is possible
only when we recognize the shortness of life
and we bumble our way through.
We
named our mortality, that night,
As
a gift to ourselves, so that conversation
can
be less difficult when one of us dies.
Which
we will.
**_*_*_*_*_*_*
Today’s
psalmist echoes our place
as
creatures, not the Creator
for
God “knows whereof we are made”
and
“remembers that we are but dust.”
To
accept mortality is to accept our humanity.
Today,
we meet a God
who
confronts our fragile humanity
with
radical compassion.
In
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
Paul
“wore” (airquotes) his “ashes”--
That
list of “afflictions, hardships, calamities,
beatings,
imprisonments, riots,
labors,
sleepless nights, and hunger.”
In
this letter,
Paul
acknowledged his mortality, his humanity
…and
in so doing,
he
entered into a conversation
with
his beloved friends from Corinth
that
might not otherwise have taken place.
Paul
“wore” his embarrassing ashes
to
teach the Corinthians
that
faith was not a protection from
hard
times or from challenges.
See,
the Corinthians had been called “imposters”
by
society, and in response,
they
began to argue amongst themselves.
That
stress on the community led to more difficulties:
hardship,
sleepless nights, calamities.
The
people of Corinth, too, found that
faithful
Christian living was not a protection from hard times.
So
Paul encouraged them to turn their energy
away
from each other and reorient their hearts toward God.
Don’t
you ever find that
faithful
Christian living is a daunting affair?
The
Corinthians’ experience of difficulties, tension and anger
is
not unlike what we face today:
an
increase fear of people who are not like us and
a
demonization of those who are different.
All
this negativity increases our grief –
that
things are not the way they used to be.
Do
you know someone afflicted
by
the disease (dis-ease) of alcoholism?
Their
families are hoping someone will see their ashes
and
answer their cries for help.
To
name powerlessness over alcohol
is
to acknowledge mortality.
Do
you know someone imprisoned
by
shame, consumerism, or greed?
They
are yearning to be free from society’s message
of
image, things and more-is-better.
To
name this imprisonment is to acknowledge mortality.
Do
you know someone
drenched
in the ashes of exhaustion
as
they work for justice,
witness
to the needs of immigrants,
or
feed people who are hungry or homeless?
To
name this longing for sustained rest
is to acknowledge our mortality.
I wonder, what is your
humanity right now?
What is the way that you
“wear” your “ashes”?
How can you name your
mortality
in
order to be set free?
Christian
living can be daunting.
Paul’s
letter to the Corinthians, in the Message translation, really brings it home,
naming
the striking, human paradoxes.
Listen
to the last line of today’s reading:
“We
are …
true
to our word, though distrusted,
ignored
by the world, but recognized by God;
terrifically
alive, though rumored to be dead; …
immersed
in tears, yet always filled with deep joy;
living
on handouts, yet enriching many,
having
nothing, having it all…”
These
are the mortal paradoxes we acknowledge today,
As
we face with courage that tragic gap
between
our appearance and our actuality.
As
Paul reminded the Corinthians, and us,
we
are called to faithfulness, not to earthly success.
Like
the Corinthians, we, too, can reorient our hearts.
See, the Good News Ashes,
today,
are not the end of our story.
These ashes mark the beginning
of Lent.
The beginning of
preparation,
of reorienting our
hearts,
of remembering our
humanity and God’s Divinity.
In
confession, we state to God our reorientation:
that
we no longer want to be that person;
we
want to become a different kind of person.
This
powerful confession affirms of our *becoming
and
empowers us to proclaim God’s everlasting love.
Neil
DeGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist & author
was
once asked in an interview,
“what
is the most astounding fact you can share with us
about
the universe?” (which he knew a lot about!).[1]
He
answered by teaching how
the
same atoms that make us human
arise from the cosmic atoms of the stars –
Those stars that were formed from
crucibles of extreme temperatures and pressures
that collapsed and exploded all over the
universe.
Then Tyson offered his most
astounding fact. He said,
“when I look up at the night
sky,
and I know that yes, we are part
of this universe,
…perhaps [the most
astounding fact is that ] …
the universe is in us.”
“The universe is in us,” he says.
He concluded…
“We
are stardust brought to life,
then
empowered by the universe
to
figure itself out—
and
we have only just begun.”[2]
Today,
we wear our ashes,
naming
our sins before God and before each other.
Today,
we name our mortality
on
our foreheads and trust the promise of eternal life.
Today,
we proclaim God’s gracious re-membering of us.
Because
God’s universe, is in us.
In
this world where we are stardust,
to
stardust we shall return;
Can
we place our trust in Jesus,
the
One who brought
to our dusty world
the
Cosmic salvation of God? Amen
[1] This
quote arises from what is known as the “Most Beautiful Video.” “The Most
Astounding Fact” is a video adaptation of Neil Degrasse Tyson’s famous answer
to the question “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about
the Universe?” read by Tyson himself. Found here: https://youtu.be/9D05ej8u-gU
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