6 March 2019 - Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday  — 6 March 2019

Trinity – 12:15 PM

Joel 2:1-2,12-17   or Isaiah 58:1-12  |  Psalm 103:8-14  | 
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10  |  Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others they are fasting.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”  [Matthew 6:16]

A couple or three or five or whatever years ago, at this Ash Wednesday service, I observed that we hear Jesus saying this in the Gospel, and then a few minutes later we go and do exactly the opposite!

Well, I think, not really!  As with reading any text, context is all!  Jesus is referring to those – maybe some of them were Pharisees, but it wouldn’t be the case with all Pharisees – who make a big public deal of how religious they are.  And there’s still plenty of that going around.  Sometimes it may be us.

When I was a boy – many many years ago! – the issue came up on Ash Wednesday as to whether we had to leave our ashes on our foreheads when we went to school.  (In those days the Ash Wednesday service was always early in the morning.  We didn’t celebrate the Eucharist in the evening.)  And we were told, yes, you should wear your ashes to school, because that way you are bearing witness!  I’m not sure we understood exactly what “bearing witness” was.  We may have thought it was “I went to church this morning, nyah nyah nyah!”  Well, that of course is exactly was Jesus is talking about!

So what kind of witness do we bear with our ashes, if we choose to do so?  Well, as the liturgy will remind us in a few minutes, we bear witness to ourselves and to such of the world as we may contact, one, that we are sinners, and two, that we are mortal.  Not an insignificant witness to bear, in a society that is in serious denial about both sin and mortality.  But that’s not all.  We also bear witness to the grace of God – the God who forgives and heals our sinfulness and who calls us to eternal life.  And the dirty cross on my forehead, and on your foreheads, bears witness that God loves me; and furthermore, God loves you.

In St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, a chapter or so before the part that we read just now today, Paul writes:  “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” [2 Cor. 4:6-7].  Our ashes remind us, and the world, that we are indeed clay jars – “earthen vessels,” as another rendering puts it – yet God works in us and through us.  As St. Paul says elsewhere, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain….though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me [1 Cor. 15:10]. 

Among the many things that the season of Lent is, as we prepare for the Easter celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection (and ultimately of our own Resurrection), is the invitation and opportunity to focus our attention and reflection and prayer on who we really are, and who by God’s grace we are called to be.

Amen.