Sermon for the 5th of March - Ash Wednesday
Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.
These are the words that will be said when you receive the imposition of ashes later in the service and they are an excellent summary of what lent is all about.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten journey, where we start to look towards the events of Holy Week – Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the last supper and garden of gethsemane on Maundy Thursday, and then to Good Friday and the crucifixion. We enter into the story of Jesus’ faithfulness to his father, of his temptations in the desert, his suffering and his obedience, even to death.
The words used as we are ashed, remind us that, like Jesus, we too will die, we too will suffer. We won’t have the same journey, but this is life – we can not escape some form of suffering, and we certainly can’t escape death. Today we remember our mortality, we remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
Now if this was the end of the story, it would be rather depressing….if the story ended on Good Friday, with sacrifice and death, there wouldn’t be much room for hope.
But it doesn’t. We have the benefit of knowing that beyond Good Friday there is Easter, there is the resurrection and death is defeated. We are therefore able to journey through Lent, with hope – hope in a God who loves us and gives us life.
We live with this paradox - I am beloved of God. And I will die. Both of these are true. Just as true for us as it was for Jesus.
Lent is about learning to hold these two truths together - how can we be faithful to God in wilderness times? How do we experience God’s love, when we encounter the darkness, the loneliness and the pain?
As Debie Thomas says: [In the wilderness, Jesus] “has to trust that he can be beloved and hungry, precious and “insignificant,” valued and vulnerable at the same time. He has to learn that God’s care resides within his flesh-and-blood humanity. To be beloved is not to transcend the other, grimmer truth, the truth of dust and ashes: he will die.”
During lent we are invited to join Jesus in the wilderness and in learning these lessons. We are challenged to give up our comforts and safety blankets, the chocolate, alcohol, social media or whatever we use to escape the emptiness and pain that we all experience.
We are invited to learn instead, to trust in God’s mercy, and to turn to him for our comfort and sustenance…So that when the hard times come, (and they will come), we will know how to lean into our Father’s love and stay faithful to Jesus calling.
Looking at our world today, it seems there is a lot of wilderness around us – a lot to fear and to grieve. There is the potential for even more suffering, even more injustice and even more hatred – and it’s devastating to see. It seems to me that we have rarely needed Lent more than we do this year.
Perhaps we need to go with Jesus into the desert... Seeing both ourselves as we really are and what’s going on in the world. It’s time to look evil in the face and recognise it. It’s time to hear evil’s voice, understand its allure, and confess its appeal. It’s time to stop making excuses. As Edmund Burke said “all it takes for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing”.
It’s time to decide who we are and whose we are. It’s time to decide, will we do what is easy, or do what is right? Will we stay silent or speak out? We will only protect our own interests, or will we sacrifice our own comfort for others? What kind of world do we want to live in?
For example, do you consider where the money you are spending goes – without wanting to get overly political, I must confess to being somewhat pleased to see so many Europeans boycotting Tesla that the share price plummeted – what if we came off X (or Twitter) and switched to BlueSky instead – what if we thought about who and what we were putting money and time into and the impact it has? We have enormous power in what we choose to do with our money and time – how will we use it?
Lent is not about deliberately making ourselves miserable or showing others how holy we are. The readings today are clear – this is about our relationship with God, not an outward show to others. Lent is about connecting with God and doing his will - not only developing the strength to resist the temptations to be comfortable, to be powerful, to escape death - but also learning to see with God’s eyes… to see where we are called to loose the bonds of injustice, to feed the hungry and to let the oppressed go free, even when it costs us to do so.
Jesus prays, and invites us to pray, he fasts and invites us to fast, he gives and invites us to give.
Our Lenten journey starts with denying ourselves, learning to receive from God in our weakness and vulnerability, in our suffering and our fear – but it doesn’t stop there.
We are being invited to share in God’s work – to see where God is asking us to put others’ needs before our own comforts – to see where we are being called to serve others – to love others – just as Jesus does.
In Lent we are invited to join Jesus in the wilderness, learning to resist temptation, learning to hear God’s calling on our lives, and learning to serve and care for God’s creation and all within it.
We are invited to recognise our humanity, acknowledge our sins and our vulnerability and accept death...knowing that death is not the end of the story, knowing that Easter Sunday is coming, knowing that we are beloved children of God.
Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.