Ashy Wednesday

2024 02 14 Ash Wednesday Sermon

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Ashes are humbling

Do you hear Jesus echo Joel? For centuries, the spiritual practices mentioned by Joel have been essential to the people called Jews. These practices of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer have been key to the relationship between God and God’s people.

In Jesus’ time, some people did them for show instead of as a demonstration of the relationship between them and God. They were intent on showing the “other poor saps” just how faithful they were. It’s like they were walking billboards for their own faithfulness. Jesus called them out on it. God doesn’t need a billboard to see into their hearts.

Just as key as the three spiritual practices has been the idea of graciousness and mercy. The Hebrew word is hesed. It is everywhere in the Hebrew scriptures. God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God is full of hesed!

On Ash Wednesday, these themes: sinfulness and the need for repentance, collide with God’s hesed. Ashes have been used as a sign of grief and repentance – grief over our sinfulness – for thousands of years. One famous example is the way Job sat in ashes, so great was his repentance at the end of his story.

Ashes are humbling. We remember that when our bodies have died, and the worms and critters, or the fire of cremation, have finished with us, we are nothing but a pile of ashes. Applied to our foreheads, ashes remind us that our earthly bodies are finite, and we can’t take whatever we own with us. In the grave it’s just us, crumbling away into the earth. We are out of chances to make amends with God or anyone else.

How much better, then, to have spent our lives in a way that pleases God! When King David realized – actually when the Prophet Nathan forced him to realize – the sinfulness of claiming Bathsheba as one of his wives – David spent significant time confessing his sin and guilt. He sought God’s forgiveness through prayer and music. He asked God to cleanse him through and through.

Lent is a time for heart work, a time to discover, again, that we are sinful beings. We may not think we do wrong things, but we often fail to do the right things. We are not always kind, we do not always share, we do not always forgive. When we ponder the ways in which we have hurt others, we may feel like David: contrite, needing forgiveness and a clean heart.

When we confess our sinfulness, we ask God to cleanse us, too. When we take time to pray, give alms, and fast in Lent, we are reminding our hearts that we are not perfect. We are reminding ourselves that we are so dependent on God’s grace that we dare not forget we are baptized and forgiven.

So, today, we receive ashes on our forehead as a sign of our sinfulness. But we don’t have to leave them there. We can pause at the font and wash the ashes away as we remember we are baptized and forgiven children of God. Our hearts have been made clean through the grace and mercy of our loving God.

Amen