Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 Psalm 51:1-17 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. In a few moments we will each hear those words as ash, the dust of a once living plant, is smeared on our foreheads. As we enter into the season of Lent where we journey with Jesus to the cross and the grave we take time to consider our mortality Generally when we think of THE END, that is death, we tend to lean more in the direction of Joel: “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near— a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.” THE END is scary, and while Joel ultimately offers hope in the form of the mercy of God we’ve gotten stuck on the scary part, and we’ve become so scared as a culture we’ve taken to denying death, we hide it, we try to pretend it won’t happen to us, we try to make it look less like death, and the result is that we’ve become so afraid of death that it gets in the way of life we’ve forgotten the fundamental truth that out of death comes new life. We see this truth in nature after a wildfire when flowers cover a newly opened meadow, as a bear catches a fish and feeds it to her young, we’ve experienced this when the death of one relationship has paved the way for one more life giving and most of all we have Easter morning and the empty tomb, a miracle because the tomb was full on Good Friday. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. In a few moments we will each hear those words as ash is smeared on our foreheads in the sign of the cross. A symbol of death turned into a symbol of salvation. Where Joel calls for repentance saying who knows, God in mercy might relent? Paul says we know how it will go for us because: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God knew that no matter how much we repented, or fasted or offered sacrifices or did any of the other things that humans do to try to get right with God that we would never be able to get there, we would never be able to make ourselves right with God. So God took care of it, through Jesus and joined to Christ in baptism God counts us as righteous Which means, we don’t have to wait until THE END to find out what is going to happen, the scary unknown of Joel is resolved we know where we stand with God, we have been saved past tense continuing action. Salvation in now and stretches into the future God says “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you." See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! “ Now is the day of salvation. Right now. We don’t have to wait. In fact God is working through us as ambassadors for Christ so that others may be relieved of fear and the unknown by the salvation available now, no waiting required. But in this world where there is always a catch it sounds too good to be true and there are times when we doubt even as we call ourselves Christian, the Corinthians doubted so Paul wrote to them saying “As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.” And that brings us right back to Ash Wednesday because accepting the grace of God in vain looks like saying we have the grace of God but not living like we have the grace of God. It looks like a fear of death so great that it gets in the way of life, it looks like storing up treasures on earth, placing trust in ourselves in our own hands rather than entrusting our lives to God who has already saved us by grace. The repentance of Ash Wednesday and Lent is about living into the grace of God that is ours, now. Any fasting we do or spiritual practices we may add in this time are about quieting the distractions that call us away from living in the present grace of God. And yes this is difficult, we live in a world that profits from fear and seeks to quiet those who say otherwise and so we start this season by marking our opposition on our foreheads, embracing without fear that which the world fears most, and in doing so turning as best we are able to live in the grace of God that is ours, now. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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