Ash Wednesday - February 14, 2024

Ash Wednesday Year B
Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20 b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103 
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
Justin E. Smith
14 February 2024

Create, in us new and contrite hearts, that we may obtain of you, all mercy, perfect remission, and forgiveness.
(In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.)

Today, the Church celebrates Ash Wednesday. Why is this day is so popular? What is it about our practices that attract so many people, who otherwise may not come to church on a regular basis; yet, they appear at our doors on this occasion? Is it the token of ashes smudged on our foreheads, the mysterious and striking rituals that speak to our guilty human consciences, or is it something more?

 Christians have been mindful of their mortality and their need for repentance since the earliest of times. Ashes were used in ancient times to express grief. The gesture of sprinkling ashes was commonly used to express sorrow for sins and faults. Ashes are symbolic of our sinful selves, dying and returning to the dust. In Job, he repents by saying "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." The prophet Daniel pled to God saying: "I turned to the Lord God, pleading in earnest prayer, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes". Prior to the New Testament, the Maccabees prepared for their battle using ashes: "they fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their clothes". Christians have continued the practice of using ashes as an external sign of repentance for generations.

Tertullian, said that the confession of sin should be accompanied by lying in sackcloth and ashes. The historian Eusebius recounts how a repentant apostate covered himself with ashes when begging Pope Zephyrinus to be readmitted to Holy communion. In the 19th century, The Episcopal Church observed Ash Wednesday in the Book of Common Prayer: "as a day of fasting and humiliation, wherein they publicly confessed sins, meekly to implore God's mercy and forgiveness, and humbly to intercede for the continuance of his favor". In the 20th century, the revised Book of Common Prayer provides prayers for the imposition of ashes.

In the apocalyptic poetry of Joel, which was the alternate old testament reading for today, the Lord says “...return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. As human beings we are on a never-ending quest for answers about our purpose in life and what it means to exist. We ponder our mortality and what happens in the afterlife. Furthermore, Christians are on a quest to understand what it means to be in relationship with God and those around them. For many, Ash Wednesday is steeped in powerful traditions, that move their hearts to action. On this day we feel compelled to contemplate the mysteries of God, our human nature and tendency to sin. This day in particular, people make sacrifices and solemn vows to return to the Lord in ways they may not have on other days of the year. It is assumed then that the practice of imposing ashes still has something to offer the church and her people in this age.

Today, we have heard in the readings a call to return to the Lord and repent of our sins, while being mindful of our fleeting mortality and the need for spiritual preparation.

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, we hear him speaking to the Israelite’s by saying, “you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers..., you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

Zechariah indicates that Israel fasted on the fifth and seventh months for seventy years, following the destruction of Jerusalem. (Perhaps coincidentally, this is where we get the pre-Lenten season of Gesima-tide which marks the countdown of 70 days of preparation before Easter.)

In this context, Israel complains that God has deprived them of justice. God responds to this by demanding Israel to stop depriving those around them of justice and righteousness. Even though Israel has been attentive to the ritual ordinances of the Law, they have completely neglected the ethical demands of it. The people believe they are the victims, when in fact they are the victimizers.

Isaiah goes on to say, “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

God in this moment, is chastising them for their sins of selfishness and judgment of others. Their arrogance and haughtiness have consumed them and they have made idols out of their superficial spiritual acts, through heartless prayer and a lack of love for those people around them.

Similarly, in the narrative of Matthew we encounter the sin of prideful vanity. The people are warned of practicing their piety before others in order to be seen by them. The people of this time were overly concerned with their outward piety and how seemingly righteous they were before the Lord in visual ways. They practiced grand gestures, (we certainly don’t do that here at St. Mary’s, right?) but instead had very little internal reverence towards Gods covenant. Their hearts were puffed up with appearance seeking, attention and arrogance, so much so that their pious acts became empty and meaningless to God.

The problem with pride or vanity, is that one sees them self as higher and more important than others.

Vanity or vainglory in many religions, is considered a pernicious form of self-idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of one's own image, and thereby becomes divorced from the graces of God through their own accord.

Pride, not to be confused with the sense of self- worth, is the sin of haughtiness and arrogance, which St. Augustine defines as "the love of one's own excellence". The negative connotation of pride here, refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one's personal value, status or accomplishments. Pride is called the root of all evil because it is known to be sadistic and contemptuous.

When one is filled with thoughts of them self in a disproportionate way, they place an obstacle between them and God. He tells us that we are all the same in His creation. When we fall into sin, we are worshiping idols, something other than God and His will, and we damage our relationships. We turn away from God, His divine nature and towards those things that prevent us from perfectly loving Him and our neighbors.

Pride, like all sin, is considered deadly. The word sin comes from the Greek word “Amarita” which means to “miss the mark”. As Christians, the mark for which we aim is a Christ-like life. One that is lived to the best of our ability in line with the teachings, precepts and commandments of God. When we fail to hit this mark, we sin.

While taking into account addictions and other disorders that prevent a person from making right decisions, let’s take an example into consideration to help us better understand what this means. One would not consider listening to pop music on the radio as something deadly, right? However, a person who spends all of their time listening to this music, to a point of ignoring others, isolating themselves from people and other activities, and subsequently becomes controlled by their desire to listen to this music; to the exclusion of important aspects of life, can find themselves in a deadly, sinful condition. Music in and of itself is not a sin; becoming obsessed with it, and ignoring aspects of their life, and loving relationships with others, on the other hand, is what is sinful.

When we look at our consciences and sin, we should be evaluating the questions. Are my actions, thoughts, attitudes, and material goods controlling me, or am I in control of them? These things cannot control us, unless of course we allow them to. The television does not turn itself on and hold us captive for hours, while ignoring the needs of our family, friends and neighbors, all on its own. We make a choice to sin.

Sin is destructive and holds us in slavery and bondage, it imprisons us to the point of anger and bitterness. These internal dispositions can be detrimental to our spiritual, mental and physical health, effecting our relationship with others, quenching the spirit from within us, and we end up listening to the wrong voices. Sin prevents us from effectively witnessing to others, blocks our spiritual growth, and the blessings God tries to bestow upon us.

It is for this reason that the Lord says whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, whenever you pray, go into your room, and shut the door to pray in secret, whenever you fast, do not look dismal. Even our well-seeming acts of piety can be done in a sinful manner.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord is not necessarily speaking about our external gestures, but rather to the disposition of our hearts and intents behind our acts of piety and the sacrifices we make. To say it more plainly, He is telling us that with our external spiritual practices, we should find our hearts, our souls and our being as well.
Additionally, the Lord tells us not to store up for ourselves treasures here on earth, where moth and rust consume, but instead store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, where nothing dies. He says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  In this passage, when the Lord speaks of storing up our treasures in heaven, He is speaking about our mortality and preparing us for a fate we all must face one day.

He is calling us to live a life that reflects our eternal home in the next, by preparing our hearts to enter into a place of all-encompassing love. When the Lord asks us to do things like fast, it is for self-denial, when we are asked to give alms, we are offering a sacrifice of our earthly treasure back to Him. Along with prayer and repentance, the Lord is moving us outside of ourselves, using our sacrifices and preparing us in a way to receive the heavenly graces restored to us by Christs own sacrifice on the Cross.

It might surprise many of you that smudging crosses on our heads on Ash Wednesday hasn’t always been practiced, yet, using the cross says something powerful to the world. The cross we use today is not imposed in a vainglorious or prideful way, but instead is symbolically marked upon us as an image of Christs sacrificial love for all of us. These crosses are visible to others, as an acknowledgment of compassion and mercy to those whom we encounter in our day. In the psalm today, we hear that “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us. As a Father cares for his children, so does the Lord care for those who fear him.”

 Continuing on it also says that “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.” The crosses on our heads are comprised of ashes. These serve as a sobering reminder that we were not created for this world, but rather, for something greater. Our mortal bodies will one day return to the earth, but our souls, having been properly prepared, will live on in the next. The symbol of the cross is the powerful visual, that the lord has won salvation for us and lives victoriously over sin and the grave. St. Paul tells us that, we are dying, yet are alive; punished, and not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet rich. While ultimately having nothing, yet possessing everything. Paul is saying that we possess something far greater than this earthly life. We are marked as Christ’s own forever.

When we sin, we lose the consciousness of the forgiveness we’ve been given through the cross, as well as our peace with God. While we are always complete in Christ’s redemption, we are also in a real relationship with Him. By analogy, this can be seen in our human relationships.

The relationships we have with family are permanent, yet if one of my family members sin against me or I against them, our relationship becomes strained and needs to be restored. Our covenant with the triune God works in the same way. When we seek repentance, we come to the father, admitting that we have failed through our behavior that is not in line with God’s will, assuming the responsibility for our actions, with true contrition. When we turn to God for healing we are reapplying what Christ has already done for us, reviving our security in him and the confident assurance of our salvation.

            So, on the contrary, perhaps Ash Wednesday is not popular because of our external rituals and tokens of ashes, or even the mindful, fear-inducing renderings about sin, death, and punishment from God, but rather, because in returning to the Lord, we are reminded that he is gracious and merciful and full of compassion to all whom he loves. God is here to help us in our lives when we fail to live up to our potential. He wants nothing more than to be in relationship with us. He wants to be in relationship with you.

Over the years there has been one consistent prayer that I say to myself almost on a daily basis, and multiple times a day. That prayer is short but significant. It is ‘Lord have mercy on me a sinner.” As much of a sinner as I am, and believe me I sin a lot, I am extremely grateful that we have a God of Love and Mercy. There is nothing that myself, you, or anyone can do, that will prevent God from loving us. I am always reminded that I need a savior by my own wretchedness and failure to hit the mark I’m called to. In our readings today, against the juxtaposition of the warnings of sin, we are also reminded of the compassion of God. That His merciful goodness endures forever on those who show reverence towards him. He is slow to anger, and his righteousness is on the generations before us and the ones to come.

The truth is that we all must face mortality. Statisticians have crunched the numbers and the results are indeed clear, there is 100% chance you and I will die. This transition is not something to fear, but because of the reality of it, we should be in mindful preparation. We know, as Christians, that our supernatural lives do not end with our last breath. Christ is both the Alpha and the Omega, the source of all light and eternal life. By fostering our relationship with God through word, prayer and sacrament; partaking of His body and blood, confessing our sins, fasting and praying, we are healed of our human imperfections, strengthened in our bonds, made new, made whole, and are assured in joyful hope of the resurrection. We stand here awaiting the day of His coming, in a continued, revelatory journey of spiritual growth, with our everlasting creator.

So, as we enter Lent dear friends, let us fast and pray alongside Jesus, over these next 40 days, as He did in the desert, resisting the temptation to sin, loving God and our neighbors as ourselves, and striving to live a life in accordance with His will.  Amen