Ash Wednesday

 

February 14, 2024

 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

 + One of my favorite things to do in preparation for Ash Wednesday si preparing the ashes we use for this liturgy.

 Last night, we had our Shrove Tuesday panske suuper.

 At the end of it, we “buried” the Alleluia, and then we all processed outside to the front of the church, where we burned last years palms.

 This morning I came in and took the ashes of those palms and shifted them with a sifter and made the fine ash we will be using tonight to mark ourselves.

 I love doing things like that.

 It’s very meditative.

 And doing so makes me very mindful of the fact that these ashes we use are important to what this season of Lent is all about.

 In fact, preparing these ashes reminded me of a meme that was going around a few years ago.

 The caption read I JUST TRIED THAT NEW APP THAT SHOWED WHAT I

WILL LOOK LIKE IN 40 YEARS

 And the photo was of a pile of ashes.

 It’s kind funny.

 And it’s kinda sobering.

 Because, it’s real.

 It is the perfect meme for Ash Wednesday.

 Because Ash Wednesday—and these ashes we are using tonight—are also ways in which we too face the harsh reality of our lives.

 They are reminders that we, one day, will die.

 That yes, in 40 years the bodies of most of us who are here this evening will, in fact, be ashes.

 Now hopefully that doesn’t shock you too much.

 I hate to be the one to tell you that News, just in case you hadn’t realized that before.

 We are all, one day, going to die.

 The traditional phrase for a reminder of our death is Momento Mori.

 Back “in the day”—we’re talking the medieval and renaissance day—it was common for people to keep some kind of momenti mori around—a reminder of death.

 Often, that was a human skull- a real human skull.

 Of course, when you think of it, what makes a better reminder of death than a skull?

 In those days, one was encouraged to look at the skull as one would look into a mirror, realizing that what one was looking at was really themselves.

 Well, tonight, we have our own momento mori.

 These ashes that we are about to receive are, truly our momento mori—our reminder that we are al going to die one day.

 To some extent, as morbid as it might seem, I think it wouldn’t hurt us to think about and ponder such things in our own lives.

 In our lives, we do go about oblivious to death.

 We go around as though we are invincible, that we are eternal, that this moment in which we are living will last forever.

 As much as we might wish for that and hope for that, the fact is, it is simply not the case.

 We don’t realize that we are bones and ash essentially.

 In this service this evening, we are reminded in no uncertain terms that one day each every person in this church this evening will stop breathing and will die.

It’s sobering, but it’s what we are reminded of this evening and throughout this season of Lent.

We will stop breathing.

We will die.

Our bodies will be made into something that will be disposed of—either by burying in the ground, or by being cremated.

This coming June, I will be celebrating the 20^th anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood.

In these last 20 years of my life as a priest, I have presided over many, many funerals, with embalmed bodies and cremated bodies.

And, let me tell you, doing so certainly puts into perspective the fact that we are all physically disposable.

With cremation so prevalent these days, out momemto mori is not so much a human skull anymore.

Our momento mori is nowadays ashes.

That essentially is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are all about.

It is a time for us to stop, to ponder, to take a look around us and to take a long, hard, serious look at ourselves and our relationship with God.

It isn’t easy to do.

It isn’t easy to look at where we’ve failed in our lives and in our relationship with others.

It isn’t easy to look at ourselves as disposable physical beings that can so easily be burned to ashes or buried.

It isn’t easy to imagine there will be a day—possibly sooner than later—when life as we know it right now will end.

It isn’t easy to shake ourselves from our complacent lives.

Because we like complacency.

We like predictability.

We like our comfortable existence.

However, we need to be careful when we head down this path.

As we consider and ponder these things, we should not allow ourselves to become depressed or hopeless.

We’re Christians, after all!

Yes, our mortality is frightening.

Yes, it is sobering and depressing to think that this life we find so normal and comfortable will one day end.  

But this season is Lent is also a time of preparation.

It is a preparation for the glory of Easter.

It is a preparation for Easter and the life after death.

It would be depressing and bleak if ashes and the skull were the end of our story.

It would be sad and sorrowful if all we are reminded of when we ponder these ashes is the finality of this life.

It would be horrible if we were not able to see the momento moris of our lives as gateways to something larger and more wonderful.

But for us, death is a gateway.

Death does lead not to eternal non-existence, but rather to eternal existence—a larger life in God, to the resurrected life in God.

The darkness of death leads to the glorious light of Easter.

What I like about Lent is that is shows us that, even though we are living in the glorious light of Easter, bestowed on us at our Baptism, it’s not always sunshine and flowers and frivolous happiness all the time.

If our Christian faith was only that, it would be a frivolous faith.

It wouldn’t be taken seriously because it would ignore a very important part of our lives.

But Lent shows us that, as Christians, we are to reflect about where we have failed—where we have failed God, failed others and failed ourselves.

And it reminds us that death—death of our loved ones and our own deaths—is simply a fact of life.

An ugly fact of life, but a fact nonetheless.

It is a part of who we are and what we are.

It forces us to realize that we are wholly dependent upon God for our life and for what comes after death.

Of course Ash Wednesday is not a time to disparage our bodies, to believe that our bodies are some kind of prisons for our souls.

All we do on this Ash Wednesday is acknowledge the fact that we are mortal, that our bodies have limits and because they do, we too are limited.

Lent is not a time for us to deny our bodies or see our bodies as sinful, disgraceful things.

Rather it is simply a matter of not making our bodies our treasures.

Jesus tells us in tonight’s Gospel not to lay up our treasures on earth, in corrupting things, but to store up our treasures in heaven.

A lot of us put more store in our bodies than we need.

We sometimes don’t take great joy in our bodies at all, but rather abuse our bodies or become inordinately obsessed with our bodies and in what used to be called “the way of the flesh.”

We eat too much.

We drink too much.

We get lazy sometimes.

And we let our bodies go sometimes.

This time of Lent is a time for us to find a balance with our physical selves as well as with our spiritual selves.

That is really the true meaning of Lent.

Where are our treasures?

Are they here, in the corruptible, or in they in the incorruptible?

This is the question we must ask during Lent.

This is the question we should be pondering throughout this season.

Where are our treasures?

What are the things that really matter?

o, as we head into this season of Lent, let it be a truly holy time.

Let it be a time in which we ponder whatever momento mori we might have in our lives.

Let us remember that, yes, we are but dust, but that we are also so much more than just dust.

Let Lent be a time in which we recognize that as limited as we might be—whether limited physically or emotionally or spiritually—we are all still fully loved children of our God.  

With that in mind, reminded of that, let this holy season Lent truly be a time of reflection and self-assessment.

Let it truly be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s loving presence in our life.

Let us observe a holy Lent.

And by doing so, let us be truly holy.

Amen.