Ash Wednesday + C 2016 The Reverend Robert R.M. Bagwell+
February 10th
Life
is fragile…life is fragile. Oh we
pretend we're so tough, invulnerable (especially the younger you are) But over the ages the scriptures speak through
Solomon "Charm is
deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; (Proverbs 31) The media will tell you, ignore it"
Life
is short…life is short. We try to deny it in healthcare, in beauty enhancement,
in proper dieting, eating and running from "fix it" products and
practitioners.. No longer do our aging and deteriorating population draw a possible future to our attention. They are carefully tucked away in nursing
homes. People die on TV, not in real
life! While for millennia, family members died at home cared for by family and
friends. Now death is systematized,
organized and sanitized. I think now,
the reason so many fear death is because it is so far divorced from life.
Life
is difficult, although we do all we can to deny it as if it shouldn't be so,
but we live in a universe of sin. We may
deny it: "oh that's not nice, so unpleasant", You may have
noticed ISIS has no such scruples.
No, ISIS reveals to us what the world was for thousands of years, before
Jesus came' We Christians, although we may hate to acknowledge it, more than anyone else should joyfully
proclaim that we are great sinners, but even more, that Jesus is a profoundly
great Savior! In our second reading the
dilemma is laid out. Our relationship
with God is broken, it will always be
broken. But God was not satisfied
with this horrible predicament that humanity found to be the core of its
orientation and faltering future.
So
at our human roots, if we think about it and do not buy into the cult of
distraction that refuses to acknowledge anything uncomfortable or makes us
afraid. We are mortal and there is
nothing WE can do about it.
So
God did….God did: " For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal
life. 17 For God did not send his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." what we could not do: God did! The collect says: Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made
and forgive the sins of all who are penitent:". As we move into the loving arms of
reconciliation with God, let us dispel this idea that God hates sinners! Scripture says that God hates sin. You see God has this amazing ability that
many of the human race lack: to separate sin from the sinner. That is why Jesus
was able to love the woman taken in adultery, Zaccheus the cheat, Matthew the
thief and on and on and on till that is how
Jesus can love us, not sinless, but IN our sins. In John chapter 9, the man who received his
sight was verbally attacked by the Pharisees who said to him:., You were steeped in
sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!
Hello??? I guess they didn't get the
memo, they and all of us were steeped in sin at birth. You don't get a get out free ticket for going
to your place of worship. Jesus is a
sinners' savior. Oh yes, Jesus is an odd
duck: He loves SINNERS! Most of the
Christians I know don't particularly LOVE sinners.
There is no day like Ash Wednesday. Here we are all for the moment on the same
level, acknowledging things we had rather not think about much less speak of,
and yet here we are! Ashes, ashes: what good are they? Are they of any use? What are they, some substance whose integrity
has been violated. Worthless, useless.
Ashes are what remains of something that was once alive. ARemember you are dust, and to dust
you shall return?@
I don=t know about you, but that=s
not very uplifting or complimentary and yet...it is true. Today, the powerful and the weak, the meek,
the arrogant and the humbleBthe rich and the poor, all must
ultimately acknowledge the pretense that many spend their whole lives
protecting: "we ..are dust and to dust we will return.@
In the face of our culture that makes this life the ONLY LIFE, and thus despairs when it is over, we
proclaim good news!
In his bestselling book, First Things First, writer Stephen Covey
wrote this as the purpose of life. It is
both profound and yet simple: To live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy. From
the beginning, God so planned for humanity that he made, a way to overcome. So
much did he plan, that he entered into our dustiness in the person of Jesus
Christ.
The
Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news
to the poor.
He
has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the
blind,
to
set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
If we look at these
reading they have a sense of urgency. This
urgency is to significance that the bride and groom are called from their
wedding, something never done, to voice
their own repentance.
As far back as the
fifth book of the Bible, we read: "
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have
set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live! (Deuteronomy 30:19) But this isn't something buried in antiquity.
It applies to every dilemma of the human condition up till this evening. Remember you are dust. People every day choose death for a myriad of
reasons, but death is the only outcome after life. To choose greater life or
eternal death is the mission of life on this fragile earth.. Ashes: this is a tradition, not commanded by
Jesus, but with the force of "do this in remembrance of me." This is humbling. debasing, not building up
self esteem, but the true self esteem is only from God.
Into this chaos, God comes, and we
read " the Lord
God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2) We are dust!
but not just any dust, but the dust that God formed into a vessel to
bear his Divine image and he who alone could, breathed into us the breath of
life. The old protestant hymn says:
"this world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through. My treasures' all
laid up somewhere beyond the blue…."
I would like to suggest that Lent is
an opportunity to re-connect to life. Yes, some think that it is 'painful' but to quote William Willimon, Bishop of the
Methodist Church as he worked with Christian students at Duke University: when
he said "the question is not what can we 'do', the problem is, if I could
get anyone to say 'no' to anything'…"
We have been taught to deny ourselves no pleasure whatsoever. Yet we followed Jesus who did not deny his
life for our sakes. For dust we are, and
to dust we shall return, except, to quote religious spiritual writer, Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin: we are not human beings on a spiritual
journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Lent can deepen our relationships
with God and his people on these Lenten days, not merely use these days to serve
as dates on a Church Kalendar. This is
where we learn to imitate Christ.
Researchers say, if you can do (and also not do) a certain number of
things to change our behaviors for forty days, it can become a habit and thus
change our lives. Largely, the spiritual
battle for growth is inner, not outer. The journey is not to be reconciled to God in
some technical and geographic way, it is
the way of the heart. We are not biding
time, we are 'abiding' until the day we are called home.
Do you have plans for Lent? Mine may be overly ambitious. At worst, you will not fulfill but you can
always, fall down and get up. At best,
something positive will make life better.
It is certainly not what is outside of us, but what is within us. What
we need is the courage to change, the courage to enlist repentance into our
mortal sphere and partake of the life God desperately wants to give and us to
have: forty days of renewal in Him.
After he made sacrifice for our
sins, Jesus embraced "dust" forever. what a Savior!
If we walk the way of Jesus these
forty days, we will most certainly and purposefully: " live, to love, to learn, to leave a
legacy". Not to try means nothing.
What can you and I do not only to engage our fellow human beings for Jesus? Along with me, ask God to open doors and
eyes. Listen to some of our Presiding
Bishop Curry's sermons on YouTube. You
will be challenged to experience the abounding grace of God in all of its
fullness and dust will lose its threat and it's somber character The greater Truth we wrestle here is
mortality and the holy hope that Jesus promised. The word Lent literally means, spring. Spring brings life out of death. 'Lord,
let the dust of our lives, be molded and shaped to the image that most resembles
the grace, the love and the peace of God that you have given us in Jesus
Christ. To Him be glory forever!
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