Ash Wednesday

February 6, 2008

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 

Psalm 103:8-14

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

When the Lord God saw that humankind had done much evil on the earth and that our thoughts and desires were always evil, God was sorry to have made us. God’s heart was sorely grieved. And God said, "Oh, these people I created! I’m going to wipe them off the face of the earth – all of them, right along with the beasts, the birds, and the reptiles. I’m sorry I made the whole lot of them." But there was a man named Noah who found favor with God. God said to Noah, "The loathsomeness of humankind is clear to me. Because of them the earth I created is full of violence. I intend to destroy them and the earth with them. But not you, nor your family. With you, I will make covenant."

At the very beginning of the story of the Flood the writer of Genesis shows us God sees the evil in humankind at the same time God sees the goodness in Noah. When God looked upon creation there was never a time when God could not see the good in creation. It was God’s intent with the flood to save what was good and destroy what was evil. The flood was the first redemption or salvation story in the Bible.

If we go back a little further to the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve, disobeyed God, God dealt with their disobedience by banishing the serpent who tempted them to the ground, to eat dust all of its life. Eve was sentenced to painful childbirth yet God gave her the desire to bear children, and to Adam God said, "The ground you stand on is cursed because of you. You will labor to get food from it until you are returned to it because you are made from it. You are dust and to dust you will return."

The earth God cursed because of Adam’s sin was destroyed and made new again when the flood waters receded. The earth was included in God’s redemption. When God promised never again to destroy the whole earth with water, the rainbow in the sky was the sign of God’s promise, the sign of God’s redemption, the sign of God’s continuing love for the world and for humankind.

Then when we continued to grieve God’s heart because of our sins God became one of us in the person of Jesus to show us how to make the image of God present in the world. Since it wasn’t possible for us to live on the earth without giving in to the temptation to disobey God, Jesus subjected himself to the same temptations except he chose obedience.

God saw that there was one more thing to be redeemed and that was the consequence of our choosing evil over good which is death. So Jesus took the evil of humanity on himself, was crucified, his body returned to the earth and God raised him from death to life. It was a new covenant between God and humanity. From then until now the sign of God’s continuing love for us and for the world God made is the resurrected body of Christ.

I’ve just summed up the whole Christian story and the reason we are here today, on Ash Wednesday. What we do today, throughout the season that begins today, is about our attending to the sign of God’s steadfast love for us all. The church is the Body of Christ, the presence of the image of God in the world. We are the sign of God’s continuing love. Only because we are human and over and over again we choose to disobey God, we have to clean up the sign we are by acknowledging our sins and asking God’s forgiveness Jesus made available to us through Jesus. In him God redeemed us from death, the consequence of sin, by removing the power of death to separate us from God forever.

When our bodies return to dust the breath of God that gave life to the dust, returns to God. We don’t have to worry about the end of the story, we know how it turns out. It’s the middle we’re writing now. It is our vocation to be the sign of God’s continuing love and presence in the world. We begin a season today that will give us the opportunity to reflect on our vocation as Christians, to see where we fall short, and to renew our commitment to our vocation as an act of thanksgiving for what God has done for us in Jesus.

I had a dream a couple nights ago. In fact, I’ll confess to you it’s a recurring dream where I miss a Sunday service. You all show up on time and I overslept. Then I call to apologize, to say I’m coming and when I’ll be here and y’all are all talking in the Narthex and no one answers the phone. By the time I come everyone has left. No one is here and I feel terrible. In the dream I had Monday night, I was late for worship. Overslept again. But when I called, someone did answer the phone and said ‘It’s okay. We’ll wait on you.’ So I finally got here. Then, I had asked someone to preach for me that day while I sat in the pew. I was supposed to get up and make communion after the sermon but I fell asleep again. When I woke up the nave was empty, no one was here but me.

That’s where the dream took a turn because it wasn’t the nave of this church. In fact, it wasn’t any church I’ve ever been in before, but I was clear in my dream that it was a church. When I woke up alone I walked outside the church. It had a big porch across the front like the one at Cracker Barrel and everyone was there. No one had gone home. They were all just waiting for me to come back to them. They were waiting for the holy meal we would share together. They were smiling and happy.

I felt terrible about sleeping so much! I was aware I had let them down not once, but twice in one day. I apologized profusely. Not a single person said, "Well you ought to be sorry making us wait like that. You ought to take better care of yourself. You ought not work so much. How rude it was for you to sleep during someone else’s sermon. You of all people should know better than that." No one said anything like that. They said, "It’s okay. You are awake now. Now we can have our meal together. We can do what we’re here to do." I felt the weight of having let them down and the powerful gift of their forgiveness both at the same time. I felt their love for me. It was an awesome feeling. It’s how I imagine it feels in heaven.

I won’t take the time to exegete my whole dream (there’s much for me to learn from it) except to say that in my dream I represented the church and the church who waited patiently for me represented God.

I hope all of you have a dream like that this Lent. A dream where you know your sins and shortcomings and God’s love and forgiveness at the same time. I can’t think of a better way for the church to renew our commitment to the vocation of being the sign of God’s steadfast love and forgiveness present on the earth than for the members of the church to experience that in some way this season. And the middle of the Christian story that we are writing with our lives now, will show the same loving, merciful God that we see in the beginning and the end.