Ash Wednesday Sermon

Luke 5: 25-39

Feb 10, 2016

Ash Wednesday

Death

We live in a culture that doesn’t like to deal with death.

Sure there’s a murder every minute on TV,

and we’re obsessed with it on the news

but that’s someone else.

We act like if we have the right combination of

exercise, food, health care, and plastic surgery

that we will not ever have to deal with our own mortality.

And yet here we are today:

Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.

We come here on Ash Wednesday to remember our own death.

There is no shame in dying. No exclusive rights to living to anyone.

We will all die, it is something that we all share.

Every living thing will die.

This is actually something that binds us together.

And we also live in a culture that doesn’t want to deal with sin.

Everything can be rationalized,

We feel in this day and age,

that guilt is just a blow to our self-esteem.

as long as I don’t murder or steal, I am clean.

As long as I make good choices, sin is someone else’s problem.

And yet here we are today: Remember that you are dust.

We come here on Ash Wednesday to remember our own sin.

Even if we make some good choices in life,

we are still a part of the systems and processes

that kill and oppress and isolate and exclude.
If we are human, we sin and we are part of sin.

In bondage to it and cannot free ourselves.

It’s actually something that binds us together too.

Sin and death.

These are two things that we talk about a lot in church

Maybe that’s why less people seek out church these days,

or they opt for the exclusively happy, self-help type churches.

Churches like ours aren’t so popular because

we are here to embrace and  talk about

the very things most people want to forget.

And some people think that Ash Wednesday is just too

depressing we should change it or avoid it.

We don’t want to bring the children

and expose them to this kind of sad stuff.

But we are not here just to be maudlin.

And we aren’t here to beat ourselves up about our sin.

We are here to look at the truth of our lives and our situation

And sometimes truth is not fun or joyful,

but it always sets us free.

The truth is only depressing if we think

that it’s our fault or that we are personally responsible

for this whole thing and all we have to do is try harder.

It’s only depressing if we think that it is

somehow our job alone to fix the whole thing.

In the gospel story in Luke,

Jesus is eating at Matthew’s house and

the Pharisees come up and ask him why he’s eating with

sinners and tax collectors.

Those Pharisees, they were, of course, sinners just the same.

They were in bondage to their sin and their own death

the same as the tax collectors.

The only difference is that the tax collectors and prostitutes

and other people like that knew that they were sinners.

They already had the veil removed from their

eyes because they were told that they were sinners

so many times by the rest of the population.

The only thing that separated them from the Pharisees,

is that they knew. They knew they needed a physician,

that is why Jesus found a place with them.

They let the physician in.

We don’t see the doctor and we don’t want the cure,

unless we know we’re sick.

God wants to get in there and fix, change, and make new.

The ones who knew they were sinners just get to join the party.

Ash Wednesday is about us taking off that veil,

it’s about taking away the pain killers and the

anesthetics and being truthful about our situation.

Lent is about acknowledging the reality that we’ve been hiding from.

It’s about turning around what we’re able to and

and laying the rest of it at God’s feet.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are only depressing

if we think that the ashes are the end.

It’s only depressing if we think that our bondage

to sin and death will have the last word.

But we’re also here to say that it will not.

This cross on our forehead,

this reminder of death and sin,

traces the same place on our forehead where

another cross was traced.

Where our old self died and a new life rose up from the waters,

and we received a promise of baptism:

Remember that you are God’s and to God you will return

sin and death will not prevail.

Ash Wednesday is a stop we make on the way to that promise.

The reminder that we need that promise.

That we need God.

That is something that binds us all together too.

We are in bondage to sin and death.

And the great healer, the great physician

will make each one of us whole again.