Sermon - 2014-03-05 - Ash Wednesday

Invitation to Lent

 

Friends in Christ, today with the whole church we enter the time of remembering Jesus' passover from death to life, and our life in Christ is renewed.

 

We begin this holy season by acknowledging our need for repentance and for God's mercy.  We are created to experience joy in communion with God, to love one another, and to live in harmony with creation.  But our sinful rebellion separates us from God, our neighbors, and creation, so that we do not enjoy the life our creator intended.

 

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to a discipline that contends against evil and resists whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbor.  I invite you, therefore, to the discipline of Lent—self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love—strengthened by the gifts of word and sacrament.  Let us continue our journey through these forty days to the great Three Days of Jesus' death and resurrection.

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Lent is my favorite season of the year.  No it does not have the fanfare of Christmas, the costumes of Halloween, or the fireworks of the 4th of July.  But what it does have is something more meaningful and more applicable within our daily lives.  In Lent we have the true and whole understanding of our own salvation.  How it comes from Jesus Christ and is a full and complete gift given to us.  

In the season of Lent, we hear of the events in which Christ suffered for our sake.  We are reminded of our created self, our need for God, and our very mortality. How one day, a day in the future, a day when we will no longer walk this earth. Now is the time to think about what it is. we are truly doing with our lives. What are we teaching our children, grandchildren, and others around us in this community?  Who are we and what have we been given?

Now, I am not telling you to do this through the whole season of Lent, but take some time to think about yourself, your life, and those who are around you. How are you helping them? How are you helping yourself? Perhaps, after a while you will realize it is your very self that is your greatest adversary. We are indeed the ones who separate ourselves from God. We see what others have that we do not, and long to have it ourselves. We say bad things about someone else.   We make ourselves sound so much better than other.  We begin to expect the gifts we receive from God.   We begin to think they will always be there, and perhaps even something that we deserve, or something we are giving and doing for ourselves rather than a gift from God.  Or worse yet, we think that we have control over our own salvation.  

Today is Ash Wednesday, the day when we are reminded whose creation we are.  How insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. From our very beginning, God created us out of the dust.  God made us out of the dust of the ground. It is something which we work with in our everyday lives.  From this very ground God brings forth life in the spring. This ground is the very place from which we came.  Tonight, we gather together to receive ashes upon our foreheads.  It is the very forehead, where we, as children of God, receive the sign of the cross at our Baptism. This Baptismal journey of forgiveness is how we shall journey together every week.

Tonight, we are reminded of this whole journey. We are reminded of our full reliance upon God. Jesus, in our Gospel lesson tonight, reminds us as disciples that we should not be a hypocrite.  It is not by our outward appearance of being faithful, living a righteous life, and flaunting it in front of others that we gain forgiveness.  We cannot even when we give something to others brag about it but rather do it in secret. We may find that we are giving something that God has already given so we should not boast about it.  We are reminded of how God created us out of love. God gives us all we need, or could possibly want. Yet we want more. We run the race of life, trying to run faster and faster to obtain the goals that we have set for ourselves.  We think we are trying to get closer to God.  We see ourselves waking up each day, living life to the fullest, running as far and as hard as we can.  Yet, that running gets us farther and farther from God. We run so hard that we are nearly out of breath. We are reminded that each breath we take is God breathing life into us. Each breath and each moment of life is truly a gift. We think it is a day just like any other day, but we begin to realize, it is a day to remember how truly life is a gift.

In the typical Ash Wednesday observance, Christians are invited to the altar to receive the imposition of ashes, prior to receiving the holy Supper. The Pastor applies ashes in the shape of the cross on the forehead of each person, while speaking the words, "For dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). Ash Wednesday is the day in which ashes are placed upon us. These ashes remind each penitent person of their sinfulness and mortality. It reminds each person of their need to repent and get right with God before it is too late. The cross reminds each penitent person of the good news.  That good news is that through Jesus Christ crucified there is forgiveness for all sins, all guilt, and all punishment.  It is here on the cross, that Christ faces sin, suffering, and death for all of us.  Jesus faces this suffering and overcomes it all for us.  Christ’s work overcomes it and not our own works.

Standing at the graveside of a loved one, we often truly see and hear the work of God. So often in our life, we come to expect each breath. We expected that we can to do everything that we want.  We expect that life shall not end tomorrow or today. Standing at the graveside of a loved one, we bear witness to God giving us everything that we deserve, death. To lose a loved one is indeed hard. It is indeed painful. Yet, at the graveside, we come to realize that our work ends, and we face the fact that we must return to be with God.  We must depend on His work and not our own.  We sometimes think of death as the absence of God, but through Jesus, God is there in our living and in our dying.  

So many times, I see family member crying, weeping for the loss of their loved one at the graveside. They are lamenting: “Why didn’t I do….?” “Why didn’t I tell them that I loved them more?” Why didn’t I spend more time with them? Why didn’t I …..?” The list could go on for hours. 

There is always something more that we should do. There is always more, we wish we could have done, but in the end there is only God. God finishes what we cannot do. God enters into our lives and picks us up. God is with us not only at the graveside but every day. Every day God breathes new life into us. Every day God gives us all what we need. Everyday, God gives to us the grace of life, the gift of faith, and the promise of salvation through no work of our own, but only through Jesus Christ. Amen.