Tag: Ash Wednesday

Different Audiences (Ash Wednesday)

I didn’t capture the recording, but here is Ash Wednesday’s Sermon with a little reflection about a recent commercial embedded…

Text: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10

I’m often stumped on Ash Wednesday or in the season of Lent itself.  Here is my general thinking why. Lent is supposed to be this penitential season. And Ash Wednesday has this extremely heavy call to repentance.  “Remember that dust you are.”  And maybe my history or understanding is off, but in the days of Christendom, the days with a name – like Ash Wednesday – were days of Holy Obligation. Everybody showed up for services.  So the Christendom preacher actually got the chance to proclaim to those far off, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near.”  And the beginning or the renewal of Faith is always repentance.  A holding before sinners the cross of Christ.  “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

But today, the preacher rarely gets such a chance. Today, those who show up for Ash Wednesday, or a midweek service, are most like those who already keenly feel their poverty of spirit.  The law has already done its work.  Proclaiming “repent” again feels like whipping the defeated.  It risks turning the deadly serious into play acting.

This is the tragedy of the “He Gets Us” Superbowl add, but reversed. It is not exactly that the ad’s message is wrong, but it misses its audience.  I can take that ad and proclaim it here tonight completely.  “We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” Today is the favorable time.  All those failures that have brought us here with our cry to God.  Today He has listened to you.  What those later Ashes represent – our death due to our sin, “now is the day of salvation.” Christ has become sin, that we might have his righteousness.  He had washed your feet already in those waters of baptism.  He washes your feet every time we receive the absolution. Don’t receive the grace in vain – but believe it. God has heard you and has saved you.  Let that mighty work of God strengthen your faith.  There is nothing that Satan or the World can do that shall take the Grace of God away from you.  Not afflictions, or hardships or calamities, beating or imprisonments. Honors or dishonors, slanders or praise.  There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the grace of God – from the absolution of all our sin by that cross. Receive the grace of God for you – today.

But broadcasting that message to those who have not repented is proclaiming acceptance, not absolution.  And that also makes vain the grace of God, just as much as not believing it.  If God just accepts there is no need for sacrifice, there is no purpose in the cross.  God wishes to absolve us, so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.  God does not say “poor child, I know that you will never be different” and leave us in that sorrowful state.  For that is ultimately what acceptance would do, leave us in our sins.  It would not really be a listening and certainly not a day of salvation. But the grace of God has come to us and creates a clean heart and renews the Holy Spirit within us.  And does this so that we might become righteous.  To the extent “He Gets Us” is proclaimed to the unrepentant, it confirms us in self-righteousness.  Not the righteousness of Christ.  It says don’t worry about repentance or holiness or receiving the Grace of God, because you are just fine.  It makes the cross vain.

An old saying from the world of salesmen, “stop selling when you get to yes.”  Stop preaching the law when people are desperate enough to show up mid-week. Today, you are reconciled to God.  The Father has heard and sent Jesus.  The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The one through whom all things were made, who will gather our ashes and remake us on the day of salvation.  Amen.

Ash Wednesday 2022

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Biblical Text: Jonah 3:1-10, 2 Peter 1:2-11

Justification from Jonah, sanctification from Peter. Ash Wednesday as something of a yearly reboot of the Christian life. A life which starts in the ashes and proceeds through incorporation into Christ to being part of the divine life.

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Ash Wed – Are You Weary?

Biblical Text: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:13

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Ash Wednesday is typically about repentance. Now there are a bunch of ways that our need for repentance can manifest. This is a sermon about what that feeling of weariness that I think we are all feeling it telling us.

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Ash Wednesday

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Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, has a very specific ritual. And rituals, for some deep reason, fulfill a need in humans. Out problem is perverting the ritual. It is the same thing the sin does to lots of good things. It takes the action and twists the direction the wrong way. Instead of love flowing outward to our neighbor, or love coming to us from God, sin wants love to flow from our neighbor and then believes it can give something to God. The Ashes tell us otherwise. They set us in proper relation with God and with out neighbor. Or they should. If we are listening to them instead of trying to get them to speak for us.

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Ash Wednesday – Neither Flight nor Fight but Submit

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Biblical Text: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10

Paul’s extended argument in 2 Corinthians is an argument with what we might naturally want to do in s stressful situation. We might want to fight it, which means defeat and domination of the enemy. Or we might want to avoid it, flee from it, which means by varying degrees denial and disappearance. Paul could flee by just never seeing the Corinthians again. Paul could fight by “defending” his apostleship and proving it all over again. But neither of those things are what an Ambassador of Christ does. The one who has not received the grace of God in vain, is the one who can control themselves and not fight or flee, but submit to what God calls them to be. That may look like all kinds of paradox, and the world doesn’t know how to respond to it. But that is the way of the grace. That is the way of Jesus

Bearing the Ashes

Biblical Text: Matthew 6:19-34
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Ash Wednesday is one of the occasional services of the church year. I alter up the text a bit, because I think the assigned texts don’t reflect our actual practice. It is not that the historic practices are bad, just that we don’t do them. I think we might consider them in the right light if we understood the section of the sermon on the mount right after them. And by understood what I really mean is feel cut to the heart by it. That is what this attempts.

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Repentance Walk

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Ash Wednesday

I like the church year because along with Christmas and Easter and the days that you naturally blow the trumpet it has days like Ash Wednesday. Days that force us to think about things we don’t want to think about.

I’ve been told that the word sin has no meaning in modern English. That what sin means to the vast majority of Americans is an understandable indulgence. The sinful chocolate. The scale says you don’t need it, but hey. The sinful car. Yes, the payment is a little more, but you’ve always wanted that badge and now can swing it. Biblically those really aren’t sins. They might be foolishness, or they might even be just enjoying God’s creation. Jesus was called a drunkard and a glutton by the Pharisees.

Sin biblically is dominated by two metaphors. There are the purity metaphors – clean and dirty. And there are the special metaphors – missing the mark, walking the wrong way, ever before me. A common division of the Jewish law is between the ceremonial and the moral. The ceremonial law is what governs what is kosher and non-kosher. The breaking of the ceremonial law was cleansed by the ceremonial washings and the sacrifices. Purity being the primary way to talk about it. And purity – clean and dirty – tends to be digital. You are clean or dirty, there is no space in between. Eat a bacon cheeseburger and you are ceremonially unclean. Offer the sacrifice and you are restored to cleanliness.

The sacrifice of Jesus fulfilled that ceremonial law for all time. That cross has made us clean. It has washed us, created in us a clean heart.

The other portion of the law is the moral. The 10 commandments are the shorthand for it. This is where those spacial words start to take over. Cast me not away from your presence. Uphold me with a willing Spirit. The word that becomes resurrection is literally stand up, be put aright.

When you read repent in the New Testament, there are couple of different words used. Metanoia, which focuses on the mental. The recognition that we by ourselves are unclean. And the first call of metanoia, repent, is believe. The other word is epistrepho, which is spacial and means turning around and walking in the other direction. We start walking in the ways God intends.

Luther said in the first of the 95 theses, When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. That is not a life of constantly changing our minds, but of constantly walking in the correct direction.

And here is where Ash Wednesday is unique. Our justification is immediate. We are made clean by the righteousness of Christ by faith. But because we went wrong, we wandered a far distance “east of Eden”. And the consequences of sin are death. Abraham never possessed the promised land. Moses never entered it. David’s kingdom fell apart. Dust we are and to dust we will return. However far we walk in the way God intends, this flesh is not going to make it.

But this flesh is not our hope. As the writer of Hebrews says in the chapter of the heroes of the faith.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. (Heb 11:13-14)

Our hope is not here and now, but then and there. Our repentance walk here and now, turns into a triumph then and there. When we are no longer clothed with this mortal flesh, but we receive the resurrection – are stood aright. There are plenty of days on the calendar to celebrate that. But Ash Wednesday is on the calendar to remember that it is not yet a full on triumph. We only share in that triumph to the extent that we seek a homeland. To the extent that we pick up our cross and follow him past Calvary. Amen.

Zero to One – An Ash Wednesday Sermon

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The following is the text of the sermon delivered today…

Text: Joel 2:12-19
Peter Thiel was one of the founders of PayPal and one of the first investor in Facebook. But unlike most highly successful businessmen, he has a philosophical disposition. He attempts to distill his experience not into phrases that are clichés the minute they are uttered meaning nothing, but some of surprising depth. His recent book title is the example I want to steal for a second – Zero to One.

At a simple business level what he throws out of his venture capital office is any business pitching 1 to 2 or 1 to any number. If the presentation can be reduced to “I want to be the next Facebook”, Mr. Thiel isn’t interested. He wants to invest is businesses that are going from zero to one. If you want investment, come up with an idea that nobody is really doing.

But then start asking questions about how you do that. Going from 1 to 2 can be a process – picking a somewhat useful cliché – it can be a process of continuous improvement. Microsoft might be the example of the ultimate 1 to 2 company. Xerox PARC did all the 0 to 1, Microsoft just made it better, and sold it better, faster. They used to be famous, and in some ways still are, for getting is right on the third try. The surface 3 is getting raves. Going from zero to one is not a process. What is half of a new idea? half a vision? You either have one, or you don’t. Like Louis Armstrong said about Jazz, “Man, if you gotta ask…”

Now how does this apply to on Ash Wednesday?

There are lots of religions and even lots of Christian churches that are about 1 to 2. And by that I mean they are preaching a gospel of self-improvement. Do this, do that, have your best life now, the power of positive thinking, and every other cliché. You never get THE ONE in that method.
Clinging to the zero, The ONE is given by grace.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. You don’t get much more zero than that. I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Create in me a clean heart, O God. No continuous improvement there, but creation. You only get God, the ONE, when there are no others before Him – not even yourself, maybe especially ourselves. Hence on Ash Wednesday the ashes, a clear expression of our personal spiritual zero.

And when we remove the other Gods, when we cling to the zero, God is pleased to take up residence with us. To restore to us the joy of His salvation, and uphold us with a willing spirit. To take us from the last seat at the banquet to a seat of honor. To give to the prodigal the coat and the ring and the fattened calf.

The reading from Joel is interesting in this way. Israel had been hit by a plague of locusts. It wasn’t just any plague, but everything had been eaten and destroyed. So much so that the elements of the sin offerings – grain and wine and oil – had be removed. It was a very literal demonstration of Israel’s zero. There outward circumstance reflected the state of their hearts. Would they embrace the truth, or continue in pride? “Rend you hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord, for he is gracious…abounding in steadfast love…who knows…he might relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering.” In other words the Lord might leave the sin offering for them.

And that is exactly what He did in Jesus Christ. For all who cling to their zero, he’s given THE ONE, our sin offering. Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Grace and truth go together. The ONE, God is found in the weak places – contrite hearts and crosses. Amen.

Ash Wednesday Meditation

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Text: 2 Cor 5:20b-6:10; Psalm 51:1-12

“We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God…we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain…behold, now is the favorable time, behold, now is the day of salvation.”

Not to receive the grace of God in vain, isn’t that a strange string of words? What does it mean to receive the grace of God in vain?

We are not talking about pure unbelief or the enemies of the gospel. They do not receive the grace at all but deny that it exists. Instead we are talking about someone who has received it, but it does no good, or it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do. So what does the grace of God do?

It breaks down and it builds up. It kills and it makes alive. It cleanses and creates anew. Both the law and the gospel are a grace. By the law we know our sins. As the psalmist says, “I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me.” That is the peculiar grace of the law. But the overwhelming grace of the gospel follows, “create a clean heart….renew a right spirit…restore to me the joy…the joy of you salvation…uphold me with a willing spirit.”
So what does it mean to receive grace in vain? The core of it is to have heard the law, but never applied it to ourselves. Our ears have heard the 10 commandments. Our intellect has turned them over, maybe even memorized them along with a bunch of scripture and catechism answers. Our parents, physical or spiritual, have led us in green pastures. But the terror of that imposing law has never got to our hearts.

To receive it in vain is to receive the grace as if you don’t need it. To stand in the light of the law and think as the Pharisee, “Thank God I am not like that publican”. To stand in the light, and not see the darkness of our natural heart. To be put next to purity and think oneself not to shabby. To be shown just how lost we are, and not ask for directions thinking we are fine. We are rich, we have means, we have years, we will get out of this and be the stronger for it. We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.

The entire passage, maybe like the ashes of today, might seem a little overboard. We implore…we appeal…behold, now….a second time, behold, now. To the one who receives in vain, why all the histrionics? We’ve got this under control, calm down. But we don’t. The proclamation over the ashes, dust you are and to dust you will return is true. We don’t have this under control. We can’t add a single hour to our given time. Yet, we can receive that in vain. Never let that sink into our hearts.

Yet God holds out his grace for us. He proclaims it in many and various ways – as Paul talks about in the rest of the passage. In Christ God has declared us reconciled. God has stopped counting. He’s drawn up unilateral terms of disarmament with the most beneficial terms imaginable. We get the kingdom, as long as we don’t think it is ours by right, it is only ours by grace. And now is the time to sign that peace treaty. Now is the time to let that grace move our hearts. To break our stone hearts…and to receive new clean ones.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God…now is the favorable time…a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Amen.

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