Sermons and Reflections:

Ash Wednesday
February 9, 2005
Lutheran Theological Seminary Chapel
Dr. Elizabeth Huwiler

Psalm 51:1-17; Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Consider the irony of Ash Wednesday. This is the day when we most forthrightly admit to God, to one another, and to our own selves the depth of our sin. On this day we are invited to have our repentance publicly marked onto our foreheads. And on this day we hear Matthew's warning against practicing our piety in public. Yet we stand together praying long prayers in the assembly, not in closeted privacy, and we disfigure our faces to show that we are keeping the fast. Indeed, our sin is before us today: it is a black blot on the front of our faces. The mark on our foreheads shows not only our repentance but also our guilt.

For behold, you look for truth deep within me,
and will make me understand wisdom secretly.
Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure;
wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.
Make me hear of joy and gladness,
that the body you have broken may rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquities.

Here is more of the truth about us this day, there is truth deep within us; not our own truth, but God's truth, and so we live in the paradox, God's future in our gathered midst, even on this bleakest of days. For the Holy One says, "At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you." Yet Paul's words to the Corinthians ring proclaim to this assembly: "see, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!" We are treated as imposters-may even know ourselves as imposters, yet Christ in us is true; as unknown, and yet well known, and dying-and see, in Christ we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

This too is the mark we bear into the season of Lent: all that is true and known; all that is alive and life itself in our assembly, and in ourselves: all is Christ.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your holy Spirit from me.

There is a longing in our communal heart: to have something to bring to the Holy One when we are empty, spent, and lost. This is the longing in the voice of our first lesson, the anguish of repentance in a time when invading armies, whether human or insect, have wiped out the crop that could provide a food offering and a drink offering for the God with whom we long to be reconciled. We are entering Lent in a culture that runs from recognizing its own neediness, its inability to be self-sufficient, its mortality. We long for security, not only safety from war and terrorism but safety from the insecurity of old age. We see hope in new Israeli-Palestinian agreements and yet are afraid to hope, knowing that the possibility is so precarious. We grieve the Roman Catholic Church, both in its continued recognition of the depth of child sexual abuse that is its shame, and the fears associated with new reminders of the pope's mortality. We grieve the hesitant witness of our own church. But we cannot answer our own needs; we have nothing to offer but our own neediness.
It's into that neediness that we hear the call of Lent, the call to return to the Lord our God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to repent from evil. We hear that call from a Holy One who entered our human longings and limitations, who lived them all the way to the cross, and beyond it to the resurrection to new life. We hear that call as ones baptized into that cross, a cross that is the deep sign of mortality not only marked on our foreheads but etched on our hearts. And we hear it as ones baptized through the cross into new life.

And so: we will walk out of this place wearing also our own emptiness. And yet, this is the hope of that lesson as well, that the Holy One may yet turn and relent and leave a blessing behind, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord our God. Because this too is Lent: the time when face to face with our own emptiness we lean our whole selves on the One who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents about inflicting harm.

Give me the joy of your saving help again
and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
I shall teach your ways to the wicked,
and sinners shall return to you.

Deliver me from death, O God,
and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness,
O God of my salvation.

And-it has all happened. The Holy One has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our wickedness. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so is divine mercy upon the God-fearing. As far as the east is from the west, so far has the Holy removed our sins from us. As fathers and mothers cares for beloved children, so does the Holy One care for us. For the Eternal knows whereof we are made and remembers that we are but dust.

That's the hardest thing. The One who has delivered us from death knows that we are but dust. And so do we. You see-the cross inscribed upon us is not just about Ash Wednesday. It points back to the sign marked upon us in our baptism, when we were drowned out of our first life and reborn into life abundant. And yet we, born into abundant life, come here to be marked with the cross that reminds us that we are but dust.

So we will leave this space marked not only with guilt and emptiness; we will leave marked with our own funerals. And yet, this baptized life, this mark of the sign of our own first death, marks us as dying into a life made abundant-in the cross of Christ.

Open my lips, O Lord,
and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Hade you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice,
but you take no delight in burnt offerings.
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Yes, please do open our lips, O Lord, because without your help, we would not know how to proclaim your praise. These 40 days our troubled spirits, our broken and contrite hearts, follow our Savior to Jerusalem and ourselves enter the way of the cross.

Oh, I don't mean to make too much of it-this black smudge of last year's palms dirtying our foreheads. The ashes will wash off after all. But you-every baptized one of you-you are indelibly marked with the death that brings life. The Holy One will not despise your broken and contrite heart, because you know, you keep reminding yourself:

The one who has redeemed you is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, abounding in steadfast love.

AMEN