Homily: Along Comes Ash Wednesday... Ash Wednesday - Year B March 8, 2000 Text: Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 I have a confession to make...of all the days in the Christian Year, my least favorite is Ash Wednesday. I love the joyous celebrations of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. But then along comes Ash Wednesday, spoiling everything! I kind of feel about Ash Wednesday the way Ebenezer Scrooge felt about Christmas - "Bah! Humbug!" You see, one of my concerns is that we Christians already have a reputation for a being a gloomy bunch of folks. The perception of many people out there is that we never laugh or ever have any fun at all. They lump us with the Puritans. And you know what Puritanism is, don't you? It's the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy or having fun! Jerry Clower, a Southern Baptist, who makes his living as a Christian comedian, came to our seminary once and talked about Christians who walk around looking like they just had a hook worm treatment. Clower says that he's convinced there's only one place there is no laughter - hell - and he's made arrangements not to go! I heard a Billy Joel song on the radio not too long ago. In it he sings, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." And a friend told me that he always associated another song with Christians, a song from Hee Haw: "Gloom, despair, and agony on me; deep, dark depression, excessive misery. If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all; gloom, despair and agony on me." And along comes Ash Wednesday, confirming it... I mean, just look at the name "ASH Wednesday." "Ash..." something burned up, consumed, dead. We come here together as if mourners to a funeral at this time each year and the minister smudges those ashes on our forehead and says, "Remember, from dust you came, and to dust you will return." Have a nice day! Ash Wednesday makes us think about our death! Our mortality! Who wants to be reminded of that? And if that's not bad enough, it's the beginning of Lent, forty days for penitence and fasting and feeling really bad about our sins. So not only are we reminded of our date with death, we're also reminded of what miserable offenders we are. Garrison Keillor says, "For Midwestern Lutherans, every day is Lent." Well, that might fit the rest of us as well. No wonder Billy Joel and so many others would rather laugh with the sinners when too often all they hear from the saints is crying. Does not even Jesus tell us not to make our faces look so dismal or disfigured, but to take a bath and put oil on our heads, and a smile even? (Matthew 6:16ff). Don't go around looking like those other gloomy religious folks! Doesn't he tell us that he came to give us joy, his joy? And that he offers us "abundant life"? But along comes Ash Wednesday... So, I think maybe we should cancel it. In fact, let's do away with Lent altogether. Let's get a petition going to the Pope or the various bishops. Let's see if we can erase this date from the church calendar. It's a rotten apple in the church's barrel and we had best remove it before it spoils the whole lot! It's about time we showed the world we are not a gloomy bunch of folks who manage to take the fun out of everything... And that's pretty much the way I have felt for sometime, until I started to read and study more about Ash Wednesday. I began to see some things I had not seen before. I started to feel differently about it, to see it in a new light... Ash Wednesday does come to remind us that life is a precious gift from God that we should cherish, and that we must one day give it up. We need to be reminded of that from time to time - that we come from dust and return to dust. But that is not the end of our story! Ash Wednesday also comes each year to remind us that Easter is coming! "Lent" itself means "Spring" or "lengthen," that is, that time of the year after a long winter when new life begins to burst forth everywhere. Why, I have been seeing robins already, have you? Ash Wednesday begins with gloom and doom, but it ends with a mighty, world-shaking BOOM! With Easter! There are six Sundays (six Easters in a sense) in Lent, not counted in the forty days, but there to remind us that above all else we are an Easter people! And that's great reason to laugh, to feel joy, even on Ash Wednesday! And Ash Wednesday comes along not just to remind us about our being miserable sinners in constant need of repentance, even though we are. It seeks to prepare us anew to receive in our hearts the wondrous grace and forgiveness of God offered in Christ. I remember helping my grandfather carry heavy buckets of water to his house from a spring. I would put a pole across a shoulders and a bucket on each end. The house was a good distance away and the first time I tried this, I just could not make it. The buckets were too heavy. And I'll never forget my grandfather coming out, taking the pole and placing it on his strong shoulders, then carrying them for me. It sure felt good to get rid of those heavy buckets. You see, Ash Wednesday and Lent come along to remind us to look at our shoulders for the heavy burdens we may be carrying there - guilt, sin, an unforgiving spirit...to see them and let Christ take them onto his shoulders. That's no reason to be gloomy, is it? I think it is interesting that the ministers tonight will first make a vertical line on our forehead. They will make an "I." That stands for us, the sinful self, that part of us that wants to rebel against God, that hurts our relationships with God and others. But that is not the only mark the ministers will make. They will then make across it a horizontal mark....they will make a cross! The sinful self is crossed out! The ashes made in the from of a cross remind us of the cross of Christ by which our sins and the sins of the whole world are canceled out! Is that not great reason for rejoicing! Ash Wednesday comes along reminding us that we belong to a world of death and sin, but we are not abandoned here. The very sign of the cross on our foreheads, though made with ashes to remind us of our sins, reminds us also of that same sign made in water on our foreheads when we are baptized. It is a sign of ownership. You pick up a book and see someone's name inside it, you know that belongs to that person. When we and others see the sign of the cross on our foreheads, it's reminder that we do not ultimately belong to a world of death and sin, but to a gracious and loving God. Is that not reason for great joy? So, after some thought, I think we had best tear up that petition to the Pope or not worry that the world will just see us being our gloomy selves on Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is here. It comes each year. I don't know about you, but I need it. I'm glad it's here. I think maybe it comes along just in time...