Ash Wednesday, 2020

Good afternoon, thank you for joining us here today. If you decided to use your lunch break to come and be a part of this worship experience then you have already been marked as unique and different. In a culture focused on what is next and can be made, you have decided to take an hour or so right out of the middle of the workweek to sit and be still and remember that we are mortal. The world will be made better because we are here.

The world will be made better because we could all use a season of Lent, couldn’t we?

Well, before you answer that, I feel as if we should define what we mean by Lent.

You see I grew up in a tradition where the only Lent we knew came from the dryer.

Ash Wednesday, as I have come to understand it, is a revolutionary moment declaring a time period of great upheaval in the way we live our day to day lives. No big deal, right?

Our passage today is meant to guide us in that revolutionary act. It is a passage written to a people who had spent generations running from God. It was written to a people who were being oppressed because of sin. It was written to a people with whom we may share a lot in common.

Hear the word of the Lord from Isaiah 58:6-10

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“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

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Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

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Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness[a] will go before you,

and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

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Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,

with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

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and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the noonday.

This afternoon we will continue the Christian practice known as the imposition of ashes. This is when we as a church will come forward and have the sign of the cross smudged onto our forehead, reminding us of our mortality and how everything we see now is in the process of constructing and then deconstructing.

The thing about ash is that it comes from fire. I am a great big fan of fire. As soon as the temperature outside dips below 65 degrees, you are sure to find the LeBlanc family staring into a great big blaze emanating from our fire pit.

We like to use the bags of firewood sold at Publix and will occasionally have enough fallen limbs from our great big oak tree to get a good fire going. We have a palm tree and so fronds from that make for a good show. Today we will be using ashes from the palms of Palm Sunday last year. These ashes show the cyclical nature of our Christian life. Constantly putting sin the death and raising up a new life in Christ.

And even though a palm frond goes up pretty quickly, there is no greater blaze than the burning of a Christmas tree. At the risk of sounding like a pyromaniac, allow me to elaborate.

When the pine tree has died and Epiphany has come, we essentially have 6-7’ of mulch in our den. What to do? Now, some would remind me that the city will take my Christmas tree off to the dump for me-- but that sounds like something an adult would do.

The beauty of the big pile of mulch that stares at us and judges us starting on December 26th from the corner of the den is that the paper mache nature of the tree mixes with the pine sap and oil to create a blaze that is just-- awesome. The water we leave in the stand is never enough to keep the thing alive and so by the time it comes to get rid of the thing, we have a campfire lover’s dream.

And then of course you can go the fake tree route, but then my analogy doesn’t work so for the sake of our time together pretend you have a real one.

In the imposition of ashes on our heads, we acknowledge that some sort of deconstruction has occurred. Something that once existed no longer does. In the imposition of ashes we acknowledge that we too will one day cease to be. Something that is right now will at some point be no longer.

Lent is driving us towards those three days where Christ was no longer here. Those dark days where Christ was not here with us and all of creation suffered because of it. And then it drives onward to the Resurrection Sunday when we remember that death and sin has been conquered. That which for all of creation had never been overcome, was overcome by the man Jesus, God incarnate. By conquering death, Christ invites us to conquer our own death while we live-- by letting go of our sin and our guilt and our shame.

Lent is also a time where we can practice that human thing-- messing up. We can set these high bars for ourselves-- to be vegetarian to not look at our phone or to not complain. And by the time we lay our head on the pillow, we may have used our phone to complain about the hamburger we had for lunch. It gives us a chance to shake hands with our humanity and acknowledge that without the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, we are powerless to stop the onslaught of sin and temptation in our lives.

Lent invites us into a journey where we could, if we are brave, allow the sin that has held us back to no longer be. It allows us to acknowledge the dead weight we carry around with us and call it as it is-- dead. Acknowledging this sin within our lives frees us to move on to the funeral of our suffering, the wake of our trespasses, and the memorial services of our shame.

Now, I hope none of you still have your Christmas tree up, especially if you have a real one. I promise, my tree is usually gone by Epiphany… but I have been known to allow for the tree to stay up for a period of time that my spouse would not appreciate. And, from time to time, you might bump into said tree and see a flurry of bright orange needles fall to the ground. At that point, the tree which originally gave Christmas cheer simply brings guilt. Staring at me from the corner of living room-- judging me.

But what I need you to hear this afternoon is that all of us are keeping dead christmas trees in the living rooms of our lives. They are wilted, crackly things taking up space. The needles are on the ground, cluttering the life God has called you to. Instead of the living room God has called you to-- filled with hope and love and life, there is this dead thing, not even gathering flies.

Siblings-- let us have a bonfire. I invite you that when the ashes are spread on your forehead to ask for forgiveness from God, knowing that the work of forgiveness has been done. Let us have a bonfire to addictions and to hatreds. Let us have a bonfire to backwards thinking and to broken relationships. Let us have a bonfire and allow the fire of God’s grace to consume the things tripping up our lives. This bonfire will leave nothing but ash and a bright flame. Siblings-- you are that flame.

You are that flame, freed from the oppression of sin so that the world around you might be transformed. The world needs this light. The world needs the light of your heart that is being covered and burdened by the dead Christmas trees of our sin.

The world needs this light because it doesn’t come from us. Like our passage today says if we were to call on the name of the Lord-- if we were to proclaim today, in our hearts that we are in need of transformation, then the light of our redemption would shine in the darkness. The night of our sin would become like the noonday sun. The light of Christ would shine!

Siblings don’t you have some night within you? Don’t you have some habit or some hangup that is keeping your life in the dark? I feel that sometimes I can keep that habit or hang up in my life, like a pet that doesn’t listen. Like a dog who won’t stop barking or a cat who doesn’t like me. I keep this pet around because it makes me feel like I have a sense of security or that I have a sense of normalcy.

Like a dead Christmas tree, this sin sticks around, taking up space that needs to be saved for company and for new adventures. So may we today say aloud to our sin-- you will grow no longer. You are evicted. Let us take this sin that so easily trips us up to the fire pit of God’s love and warm ourselves by the glow of God’s radical grace.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.