Homily for Ash Wednesday Download PDF
I have come to love Harry Potter, how do I know this? I remember visiting one of the homes of our parish, and as I often am was invited to stay for a meal. During the meal the young people at the table began to talk about Harry Potter. Now at the time I was in the middle of the fifth book. The conversation clearly was going beyond where I was in the series. "I’m reading the series and I am only in the fifth book” I piped up. Now perhaps because they are young people, and perhaps because their priest was at the table that was an invitation to revealing even more of the content at which I maturely and promptly covered my ears.
I was thinking about Harry Potter this morning, I was thinking that I would like to watch the movies again, and then I thought about a "Harry Potter a thon” for the parish as that is how my mind works, but there was another reason.
Harry Potter is marked with a sign on his forehead. It is a small lightning bolt. The first book tells us that his parents were great wizards who fought Lord Voldermort. When Voldermort tried to kill Harry as a baby it backfired instead destroying Volermort. The little baby was left with a mark on his forehead to remember the attack. Well we learn in that first book and throughout that the Mark is a reminder of who he is. Potter though discovers this on a day by day experience by experience kind of way. But he is marked, there is a sign on his forehead that represents something important.
We are plunged into the Lenten season this evening. Pancake memories of fullness and abundance have been replaced by the stark wilderness and the smudge of ash.
This day has a long and complicated record for the Christian church. Celebrated in earnest it is an important spiritual contribution to the church, but used as an instrument of tyranny to impose guilt it is a disaster.
What do the scripture readings say to us this evening?
In the first reading this evening from the book of Joel we see a people expecting the day of the Lord to come. There was a plague of locusts and Joel who was probably a temple priest or public officer is calling the people to a full change of heart. The prophet invites them to return to the Lord with mourning, fasting, and weeping. The prophet speaks that the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. It is an invitation to relationship with the Lord, one that is redeemed and represents a clear heart and mind.
The Gospel readings always bothers Anglicans, particularly about the language of wearing robes for piety since we are a liturgical church and find meaning in the liturgy and the beauty of vestments and colors.
But the reading itself is about three ways to show devotion to God. Jesus speaks of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting and these are the invitations to observe a holy lent. But what about the piety you might say? Jesus warns the disciples about piety for pieties sake. If you are receiving the sign of ashes to show others how holy you are, you may want to think about that. But if you receive the ashes and in private strengthen your commitment and relationship with God and your neighbor then the signs are worth it and probably a good thing.
Well tonight we are invited to have a sign placed on our foreheads, a sign of ashes in fact. It is a custom that is designed to reflect both our repentence as well as an acknowledgement of our mortality.
I like to think that receiving the ashes makes us more human. It is hard not to remember that we all belong to God when you see the priest dip his fingers into the bowl of ashes and mark it on your foreheads.
I read this morning that Trinity Railway station has had Lutheran Pastors standing on the loading platform offering the sign of ashes to passengers. There is a sense that people are too busy for God, said one Pastor we thought we would bring God to the people. Offering ashes, the ancient sign of repentance, metanoia, turning to God, repenting and believing in the Gospel is happening all over the world today on what we call "Deus Cernum” or day of Ashes.
What does it mean to be a Christian heading into Lent? It seems to me this is one of the most important questions of the evening. Jesus went into the wilderness after being baptized for forty days where he was tempted. In the suffocating heat and dryness of the desert Jesus had time to think about what it meant to be "Jesus.” After emerging from the desert he did many things that the Gospels record. He ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners he saved a woman from being stoned to death, he drove out demons and healed the sick. It appears that for Jesus what began in the wilderness continues, and that is a step by step journey into a truer deeper knowledge of himself. That knowledge always led him deeper into a sense of the community of God’s people and how to love them.
Under our altar tonight Barbara Wyatt-Bond has outdone herself in her imagining of the wilderness. On one side we have the wilderness that scripture speaks of. It was dry and arid desert, very dangerous. On the other side we have the Canadian wilderness full of animals and trees and foliage. Both represent getting away from the everyday and entering into a closer imprint of God’s creation. They are both places to think and explore and grow closer to God. We are going to stick with the wilderness image all throughout the season of Lent and reflect on what the spiritual benefits are from spending time there in prayer and in scripture, in discernment and service.
So go there, take the invitation and let us follow Jesus into the wilderness for forty days to think about our relationship with God and others and to reflect on what we need to grow as followers of Christ.
Growing up in Nova Scotia Ash Wednesday was always an important day to go to church. The attendance was very high and I can remember walking into the church, an old wooden building designed as an upside down dorey which in Nova Scotia is common. The liturgy would begin from the back with the smell of candles. "Forty days and forty nights” would come over the Casavant organ and the floor would rumble with its sound. The procession would begin, crucifer, torch bearers, the priest in glowing purple on his way to the altar. I always rememberd that little table with a white linen sitting at the bottom of the chancel steps. It contained ashes, at first glance it could be any kind of ash really, It looked like the stuff left over from a campfire, but as we were told these were the ashes from burning the palm crosses from last year. After the sermon we were invited to come forward and receive the sign of ashes on our foreheads. "Remember but thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return”, the priest said. Pretty strange to think about mortality at ten years old in North America but maybe there is a reason for that. We live such a sanitized life, that a twelve year old being reminded that he is dust in Canada is not a reason for raising an eyebrow, where a twelve year old boy in Africa is cause for a pin to drop in the mournful silence.
But we are united by our humanity, all of us are children of God and when we think about being dust, it puts that into perspective. We are all created by God, who is still at work creating us today.
How can the solidarity we feel – our faith’s call to emulate the Lord’s compassion toward those engulfed become concrete in our Ash Wednesday fasting? Consider spending $2 or less on the meager meal you will eat, remembering how much of the world lives on $2 per day or less. Take the time to place a glass of water on the table, remembering millions that suffer disease, poverty and conflict, for they have no glass of water to drink. May the water remind us of our baptism, which calls us to be Christians not just in name, but by the actions we undertake for justice and peace.
Let your daily walk, used to dispel a sedentary lifestyle, become a fast from consumerism. Place in a grocery bag items you would take if you were going to be homeless, and carry them while you walk. Feel the solidarity by remembering those without shelter — what it is like to place all your belongings in one bag — and think about the earthly treasures we reverence.
As the day wanes, the ash cross on your forehead may be smudged from holding your head in prayerful reflection, creased by sweat from your brow, or withered by rain or sleet glancing your face. You will come to the door of your home, placing a key in the lock. Stepping inside, pause to reflect on all without a key tonight. Pray to God in private for the conversion of your heart to support those you remembered through your fasting today with a commitment to act for social justice.
If we say yes to the invitation then we walk in solidarity either in the wilderness of Sinai or the Canadian wilderness with the sign of ashes walking ever closer to God’s people and God’s creation. We will by virtue of this walk turn to God as well as recognize our own mortality and our need for God. The wilderness walk may afford us the opportunity to grow in our understanding of another’s experience and thus wear the mark of ashes together.
What is it that we look to grow in? It is the stature of Christ, to be more Christ-like then we were before. This is to let Jesus get closer to you then he has before. We all know that we bring security gates, we make Jesus pass through the security gate of an airplane to be close to us. We know we want him to make it, but we find things on his sandals, or on his cincture of his robe that set the alarm off. Tonight is an opportunity to take down some of our security measures as a discipline for Lent. What might happen if we do?
For on this journey of Lent, with endurance, patience, and kindness, we are called to display a steadfast spirit and to open our lips for systemic change — to move beyond condescending charity to a solidarity which empowers those in our midst and around the world.
Giving up Lent for Lent meant giving up guilt. The journey to Easter is not a mournful denial of our humanity. Rather, Lent embraces our humanity - our deepest fears, our doubts, our mistakes and sins, our grief, and our pain. Lent is also about joy, self-discovery, connecting with others, and doing justice.
Lent is not morbid This Ash Wednesday, I’m letting go of everything that keeps me from rejoicing in the passing beauty of the earth. Yes, we are dust, but we are earthly dust, springing forth from a multi-billion-year holy adventure. Dust is good, after all; it is the place of fecundity, of moist dark soil, and perhaps we are "star-dust,” as Rex Hunt suggests, emerging from God’s intergalactic creativity. We are frail, but we are also part of a holy adventure reflecting God’s love over billions of years and in billions of galaxies. It is about being fully human and knowing God's presence in the crosshairs of blessing and bane. And it is about waiting, waiting in those crosshairs, for resurrection.
These 40 days ask only one thing of us: to find our truest selves on a journey toward God.
So Harry Potter is marked with a sign of a lightning bolt to demonstrate something important, we are marked with ashes on this day to show our shared humanity, our solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters in the ashes of life. Let’s give up guilt for Lent and put on a coat of prayer, and reflection, and almsgiving, and discernment into who we are, and how God is at work in us. Let us lessen the security we have in place that keeps Jesus at arms length, and let us turn toward God with all of the other smudged foreheads. Amen.