Ash Wednesday, 2020

Isaiah 58:1-12

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

In the collect for this service are these words: “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” We know we are here to start our annual journey of Lent and to work on contrition, to take on that posture of humility and admission of sin. But I want to talk today about the creation of a new heart.

In the early 2000’s, Mike Myer’s was asked to present an Academy Award. I don’t remember exactly which year or which award but I do remember that he came on to the stage in a tuxedo with ashes on his forehead. You see, the awards landed on Ash Wednesday that year and Mr. Myers is Anglican. His parents were from Liverpool but raised him in Canada in the Anglican Church of Canada. So, Mike Myers is essentially Episcopalian and he wore his Ash Wednesday ashes on television in front of more than 20 million viewers that year.

Was this evangelism or piety? What’s the difference?

I didn’t see much online about Mike Myer’s donning ashes at the Oscars other than a few comments along the line of “What was that? Oh. His religion. Leave him alone.”

This reminds me of the time I heard a girl say about saying Merry Christmas in December, she said “It’s the birthday of their God! So they should be able to celebrate that however they want!”

Well, God was not born on December 25th so she really does not get Christianity. But, thanks for the freedom of religion stuff anyway.

Myer’s did receive a great deal of criticism three years later when he did an interview with Deepak Chopra. Myers said in that interview that “enlightenment actually means lightening up” and he talked about comedy and faith. His own faith.

He got slammed by the negative commenters who said that a goofball comedian can’t be taken seriously talking about religion. They said he was practicing cheap religion and made a fool of himself and of Chopra too. I won’t go into the much worse criticism of Chopra.

Again, it seems no one gets us Christians anymore. Also, everyone seems to think they are smarter than everybody else and right about everything they can post on the comment section of a social media page. But that’s another sermon for another time.

Actually, this afternoon, after I wrote and even preached this sermon earlier today, a friend sent me the link to an article informing me that Pope Francis suggests we all give up trolling for lent. So, maybe I’m on to something.

Let me see if I can clear this up. Myers was simply saying that comedy and the awareness of the love of the living God are akin. He was just talking about joy. He didn’t say a word about the ashes he wore on television. He was just practicing his faith. 

I think that is both piety and evangelism. He did not make a big deal of his faith. Those ashes were for his personal piety. The conversation with Deepak Chopra was a public answer to the questions raised about that faith. That’s good evangelism, whether he meant it to be or not.

The Gospel reading today lays out our course for the coming forty days to ward off ostentation. This is another section of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus preaches to the crowds and to his disciples, identifying blessings which honor the people of God. These blessings are within a crowd of believers, of religious practitioners. So the listeners have a basic understanding of God the creator, of the hope for the messiah and of the need for discipleship, for committing to certain commandments.

Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is a physical healer, responding to the great poverty and malnourishment of the peasant population. Jesus sees the crowds that follow him as people in need from social and economic exploitation. 

Because this is the day of ashes, the beginning of Lent, the time to set one’s vision on the enormity of Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, this is also a day to talk about suffering and death - what we are made of and what we will become. It is a day of utter honesty.

We don’t like to talk about these topics. Talking about death makes us uncomfortable. We would rather stay in our world of denial and enjoy life. That’s joy, right? “Don’t worry, be happy?” Why the downer?

In my Ash Wednesday sermon last year, I talked about my favorite word - juxtaposition.  I learned this word in college as a music major. The meaning of the word denotes something that is in the middle - exactly in the middle - of two things. In music the juxtaposition of an F# between a D and an A is the third of the chord and therefore provides harmony and is also significant on its own. Juxtaposition is like the fulcrum of a seesaw, that post on which everything is balanced.

Juxtaposition also works well in theology, as in, the juxtaposition of each member of the trinity to each other or each member of Hooker’s famous three legged stool - reason, tradition and scripture.  It’s about how things relate with one another. It is about perfect balance, harmony and relationship.

So, the juxtaposition between a sermon on the Transfiguration, like Jon’s sermon on Sunday and a sermon on Ash Wednesday in the same week is -annually - a place for me, an in-between place that, well, I dread and squirm about each year in the same way we all squirm when facing the fact of our inevitable deaths.

On Sunday Jon reminded us about the glory of God as seen in the glowing face of Jesus on the mountain, as seen by Peter, James and John. This story is compared to the glowing face of Moses that happened to him on Mount Sinai with God. But now, three days later, we have to turn and remember our own deaths, that we are finite mortals, that we are sinners who can’t not sin, that we are dust and to dust we will return.

In a few moments, I will invite you to observe a holy Lent through self-examination, self-denial, prayer and meditation on Holy Scripture. This invitation closes with these striking words: ‘to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.’ Two phrases stand out there, the ‘right beginning’ of repentance, and the ‘mark of our mortal nature.’ These two invitations are both caught up in the solemn gesture of silent, knelt prayer.

Why does repentance require a ‘right beginning?’ It seems as though we could simply enter into our regret and sorrow for sin without any preamble, any preparation. But the Prayer Book liturgy instructs us otherwise. We must learn how to repent; what it looks like; and before whom we show contrition. There is a bodily dimension to repentance. It is not simply words, nor an inward movement of a heavy heart. To kneel publicly is rare these days. But on Ash Wednesday the whole people of God get on our knees before our Lord and Maker. This is not the end of repentance; by no means. But it is the right beginning. On this day, as on the solemnity of Yom Kippur, the congregation kneels before the Holy One, a sign of reverence, of deep contrition, and of unmistakable belonging.

This is the ‘mark’ of a creature destined for dust. We do not owe Almighty God only our sorrow; we owe God our very life. We are finite, and this day we acknowledge, as none other, the stamp of mortality that is ours, our body and soul. We will return to our Maker through dust, and the signs we make today to acknowledge this solemn truth is our bent knee, and our silence and ashes on faces.

The juxtaposition I want to leave you with though is actually joy.

How do we balance this moment of knelt contrition, of shear recognition of our mortality, of our utter need of God, with Easter? This is the beginning of a journey that ends with foot washing, crucifixion and resurrection. It seems it would be easier to skip all the parts about suffering and live all the time in the happy place of resurrection, of God’s love for us, of our ultimate fate of joining Jesus in heaven through our baptism, through our own resurrection.

But that would be practicing the cheap religion for which Mike Myers was criticized. We would make fools of ourselves and our Lord if we only spent our lives goofing about our Christian values. 

So we don’t. We take this stuff seriously. We work at our faith through prayer, study, and we always seek ways to grow in our faith, to learn more about how to pray, how to be in relationship with our God, how to serve God and the church. And we need to take this seriously.

That is why we kneel and impose ashes and remind each other of our utter need of God.

Otherwise we are just a bunch of complainers trying to outwit each other with negativity and silliness.

On the other hand - here’s the juxtaposition with joy part - if we degrade the miracles, if we degrade the amazing truth of the incarnation, of the God-Man who died for us and rose again, if we just ridicule or oversimplify Easter with just a bunch of bunnies and eggs, then we are going to end up only moping and whining. 

So, we need to always remember joy. Even on Ash Wednesday. Even throughout Lent.

For my lenten study this year, I am going to read The Book of Joy, Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I invite you to read, or re-read this book with me and let me know if you want to meet for discussion. While we work on our contrition, our sin, our need for repentance, let us not forget our need to also practice joy.

We can learn new ways to live into the balance of suffering with wholeness, sin with forgiveness, and sorrow with joy.

And that is how we can accept Gods creation of a new hearts in us through opening our broken hearts to the love of the living God.

Amen.

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