Ash Wednesday: With all that you are

A sermon based on 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10

This morning, I distributed “ashes to go” outside the church during the Waters school morning drop off.  I mixed the ashes just as I always had before, but after marking the first sign of the cross with a q-tip on someone’s head, it dawned on me that, without the oil of my skin and the flat surface of my finger, the ashes were too crumbly and dry for the q-tip. They were not sticking to the forehead of the person before me.  Fortunately, the first person that I distributed ashes to was a church member here and he was pretty understanding and as I gripped the q-tip and kind of aggressively smudged his head with it.  I quickly realized what I needed to do to make the ashes stick: I needed to add more holy oil to the mixture.  Then, they started sticking.

We bring out the ashes once a year on Ash Wednesday.  But the Holy Oil… that comes out a bit more often.  We pull it out to anoint people, sometimes we anoint folks during a time of prayer or during a time of foot-washing.  Sometimes, we anoint someone when they’re near death like Mary did when she poured that costly nard on Jesus’ feet. Almost always, we bring it out when we baptize someone. In all these moments, we make a sign with oil usually on a person’s forehead and we tell them, you are a beloved, precious child of God.  

That’s the oil part. The ash part of the mixture, however, always downshifts my pace and makes me catch my breath. “Remember you are dust,” we will say, “and to dust you shall return.” It makes me look square in the face of mortality.   It’s like receiving that phone call:  That the doctor has to do a biopsy, or a loved one is sick. Or, it’s like seeing the smoldering ashes of a forest--a great lung of the earth that has been burned. Or getting a text about a shooting.  Or seeing footage of a Ukrainian family taking refuge in a bomb shelter halfway around the world.   Reckoning with these ashes reminds us that we’re mortal and all we have is this moment right here, right now. We do not have an infinite number of moments to love and be loved.
 
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In the 1st Corinthians reading, Paul’s ashes are showing.  He talks about imprisonment, beatings, sleepless nights and hunger. Paul’s suffering is deep.  He wears his ashes out loud.  The fragility and brokenness of what it means to be human is on honest display.  

Ash Wednesday is like real talk.  We sit in this space today as our most authentic selves. Here, we are honest about the cinders and ash blowing through in our tortured world. There’s the ash of daily pressure, anxiety and stress that we feel. The ash of climate change, The ash of hurting family members. The ash a nation that feels deep pain and even hatred for itself. The ash of all the mess of covid. The ash of legislation that denies people their full humanity. Ash of war. The ash of greed.

We come to this place by being willing to be honest with ourselves about who we are, our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with God. But the honesty can be really hard to sit with. In fact, to stare it in the face can be frightening.  I don’t know about you, but when I stare the ash of this world in the face there are fears I cannot totally shake at the moment, fear for our kids, for our nation, for the planet.

And this is where the holy oil comes in.  

It was not lost on me this year, that I needed to mix a little extra holy oil with the ashes.  Yes, this was initially for practical reasons, but it is also important because, just as we trace that ashen cross on our foreheads, we trace it together with the oil of our belovedness.  And this year, I think we could use a reminder of our belovedness. Last Sunday, we heard the story of Jesus at the transfiguration where he was transformed into brilliant glory on that mountain top.  As he descended from the mountain with the disciples, he knew the troubles that lay before him, he knew the dry cinders of Ash Wednesday that would mark the heartbreaking path of the via dolorosa (the way of sorrow) that lay ahead.  He barely made it to the bottom of that mountain when an ashen father, frightened for his sick child, fell at his feet beseeching him for help.  And Jesus helped him. As Jesus walked down that mountain into the ashen valley, he held that fundamental knowledge that he is God’s beloved child. 

Today, we intentionally acknowledge the ash of our tortured world and the ash of the pain of life that is smudged on us.  And as that the oil mixed into that cross that glistens on our forehead, we remember that all is not lost in this deeply troubled world.

If you’ve ever gone through a 12 step program or an IOP program, or even good old fashioned therapy for any old issue, you know that we all have to start with some version of “things are not okay” in order to be able to grow.  

James Baldwin taught us that, “not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  

We sit here tonight and we face it, together. And as we face it, We acknowledge that honesty can heal wounds when we open our hearts. We remember that the preferred building blocks of the holy spirit are ash and dust. And, marked with our belovedness, the holy spirit promises to make a new thing in us. Below the surface, seeds are stirring and stretching out. God builds beauty from ashes. when the wind blows fiercely, God strengthens our muscles to be able to walk into it.

Story after story in our biblical history show us how people grow into a new creation. During Lent, we take on spiritual practices, in order to help us dig into new ground. Our brokenness is the beginning And, in fact, our faith has to break open in order for us to dig into new ground.

Dear ones, you are God’s beloved.  Marked with the cross of Christ forever.
Thanks be to God.