On Dust and Ashes

Haven’t the last two years been like one endless, involuntary Lent? So what do we do with this season, this year?

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

6“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. ²“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ³But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

⁵“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ⁶But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

¹⁶“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

¹⁹“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God who is in secret, through Christ Jesus who reveals that secret as love.  Amen.

I think Lent can be a very complicated season.  It’s loaded down with all kinds of emotional baggage, accumulated over hundreds of years.  And this year, it has the added baggage of arriving two years into a global pandemic.

For many of us, the entirety of the last two years has felt like Lent – a kind of endless involuntary Lent, where we had to give LOTS of things up.  Things ranging from a dependable supply of toilet paper to gathering in person with other humans.

And that whole time was accompanied by regular reminders that YES we are dust and YES to dust we shall return, as the daily mortality rates from Covid appeared in the news.

So what can Lent hold for us this year?  How can these beautiful words, from across four different times in the story of God’s beloved, make sense for us in these dark and difficult times?  In these days where even though Covid seems to be waning, the horrors of the world are not?

The prophet Joel reminds us to “return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” – this is the phrase we will sing each week before hearing the gospel.  It’s our reminder that God desires deeper than we can imagine for us to be enveloped in God’s boundless love.

Psalm 51 – the psalm so associated with this day – is a plea to God to create us anew.  To put a new heart and spirit into us.  But God made the heart and breathed the spirit that is in us, and invites us instead to turn and go a new way, that the old heart and spirit might be renewed and transformed.

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians recounts our lives as followers of Jesus in the full spectrum of human existence, summed up in the great paradox of “as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

But it is Matthew’s words tonight that may hold more for a path through Lent.

Matthew’s Jesus tells his audience that inauthentic piety – particularly on public display – holds no merit.  Going around reminding all your friends that you are fasting today, or giving selflessly to others, or whatever other noble task you’re undertaking can only serve to let your friends know you’re kind of a bore.  Not to mention rather self-centered.

We don’t do these things to impress others, but rather to give thanks to God for all God has done for us.  Which seems a rather odd thing to hear on a day when we publicly receive a mark of ash on our foreheads.  How more public can we be?

It is authenticity that blurs the rigid lines of public and private, so that neither need be read legalistically.  Private acts are not authentic, and public ones inauthentic, by default.  Rather, the authenticity of an act of faith, or an act of piety, is determined by wanting to do it, and why we do it. Those desires and motivations can’t be judged externally.

There is a story in a children’s book that illustrates this beautifully; the book is The Frog and Toad Treasury by Arnold Lobel.

Frog and Toad are good friends. In chapter after chapter, Lobel describes ways they pass time together, explore the world together, and support one another. One chapter is titled “The Surprise,” which takes place in October. The leaves are falling. Frog decides to go to Toad’s house, secretly, and rake his leaves for him. “I will rake all the leaves that have fallen on his lawn. Toad will be surprised.”

Toad has the same idea. Both manage to arrive at the home of the other unseen, ascertain that no one is home, rake the leaves, and return to their own houses unnoticed.

On their respective ways home, however, a wind comes. The wind blows and blows. The piles of leaves do too, so that the leaves are scattered everywhere. At the end of the day, neither Frog nor Toad realizes what the other has done, because both return home to leaves strewn across their yards. Both pledge to rake their own leaves the next day.

“When Frog got home, he said, ‘I will clean up the leaves that are all over my own lawn. How surprised Toad must be!’” Toad echoed Frog. Lobel writes, “That night Frog and Toad were both happy when they each turned out the light and went to bed.”

The sense of purpose each friend got from his acts of love and service didn’t depend on any kind of public acknowledgment; it was not, in the end, even dependent on the accomplishment (thanks to the wind!). The acts were, in a word, authentic.

In contrast to Frog and Toad’s private, unacknowledged, and authentic acts of service (or in our gospel, the call to prayer, fasting, and giving) stands the Ash Wednesday practice of the imposition of ashes—as a public display of faith and an act of piety. However, Ash Wednesday is so much more. It marks the beginning of Lent and calls us to reflection and repentance; it invites us to begin our preparation for Good Friday and for Easter. It does all these things by the very use of ashes, which remind us of our humanity and our sinfulness: that we are of dust and to dust we shall return.

It reminds us of the very real truths about life; that it frequently disappoints, that it sometimes lies in ashes – but in the very sifting of that ash we find ourselves in some of the most honest places.  Ash Wednesday reminds us through all that we see and hear and experience this night that even in ashes, God does not leave us.

I was saying to some folks who stopped in this afternoon that the expanded confession we use on Ash Wednesday allows us to speak broadly of the brokenness of the world.  We might say we have enough evidence in front of us, that we don’t need to say it out loud – but when we speak and hear these words together, we realize that these things we confess maybe hiding in our own hearts as well.

So Lent makes space for us to re-learn what it is to live as a baptized and beloved child of God who turns away from “the devil and all his empty promises” and who turns toward Christ crucified and risen – the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

It MEANS things in our lives that we turn away from one and toward the other.  That’s the whole point of this season.  God keeps showing us love and forgiveness, no matter what.  God’s deep desire to be in relationship with us never wanes.  The ashes on our foreheads will remind us of our mortality, but they also remind us that we are beloved of God.  God is not asking us to spend the next six weeks beating ourselves up, but rather that we grow into the person God created us to be.

The word “Lent” comes from the same root word as “lengthen” – like the days are beginning to do.  In springtime here in the northern hemisphere, the days lengthen and living things begin to show their growth.  What if our Lenten journey this year is intentionally – and authentically – one of growth?

We’ve spent two years in deprivation, but I don’t hear Jesus asking us to deprive ourselves in any way in this text.  What might happen in our lives if we hear God’s call of “return to me with all your heart” as invitation, not as judgment?

Perhaps the idea of “return to God” means that giving something up is very central for you in this season.  That’s ok.  Maybe you will give something up to make space for something else that you need.  A friend has decided that even if it means the dishes don’t get done right away, this Lent she will make space to spend 30 minutes in quiet meditation.

In recent years, some folks have “taken something on” as a means of renewing the season.  This year, what if you took something on that nourished you, instead of being a burden to you?

Or maybe you just want to walk the path of the journey this year.  Maybe you don’t have the capacity left to either add OR subtract anything from your life.  That’s ok too.  Whatever works for you, I urge you – GOD urges you – to let yourself rest in the grace of knowing that you are far from alone.  These past two years have been a wilderness season for all of us; we don’t need to do anything extra to remind ourselves of that.

Return to God with all your heart.

However that looks for you.

And on this Lenten path, remember that you are already reconciled to God through Christ.  God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

For you.

Amen.