Ash Wednesday 2022

On this day, there is a container ship out on the ocean full of luxury cars and it is on fire.  Some of them cost more than a house.  Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also.”  All that luxury, prestige, and power is becoming ashes in the ocean.

Today we stand here in ashes.  A powerful country is attacking one less powerful .  Families are fleeing for their lives.  People are defending their homes and cities.  The world is watching, some sanctions are imposed, but mostly we feel helpless to do anything.  We stand here in ashes.

Today we stand here in ashes.  We recognize that the things we define ourselves by will someday cease to exist, our bodies deteriorate, our good intentions are about as useful as a handful of ashes.  Today we humble ourselves and admit that we have only ashes to offer—the ashes of our failures, all the things we invested in that don’t last.  All of it is ashes.

Today we stand here in ashes.  We want to believe that during Lent we can pray and give and serve our way out of this mess, that we can walk this journey close to Jesus enough that he will save us.  During Lent, we may be headed to the cross with Jesus, but when we get there, we shout for his crucifixion.  We are saying we want to repent and turn away from our sinful ways, and we find ourselves attacking the one who loves us.

Today we stand here in ashes.  God took the ashes and dust of earth and formed humankind in God’s image and breathed life and Holy Spirit into the earth creature.  God formed every animal out of the ashes and dust and soil of the earth.  And God called them good.  We start from ashes, from dust and earth from the very beginning.  Ashes are the raw materials that God works with to form us.  Ashes and earth and dust hold us close in relationship to the earth and the animals which we are interrelated with and that we depend on. 

Today we stand here in ashes.  Ashes are good.  Ashes are useful.  Ashes connect us in relationship.  God can take ashes and form us and reform us as individuals, as people, as communities.  Ashes break down, deteriorate, crack.  But ashes can be brought back together and reworked and live again in a new way.  That is the Easter promise.

Today we stand here in ashes.  We have only ourselves to offer.  God is making something of our community and neighborhood and world.  During this time of Lenten reflection, let us let go of saving ourselves by prayer and alms giving and good works.  Instead, let us put God at the center through these actions.  Let us take ourselves and our powers and our priorities and our attempts to impress other people or God with our piety, let us take our going through the motions and our hypocrisy out of the picture and put God at the center.  Let us stretch out our hands, our necks, our hearts in ashes and let us emerge, utterly destroyed, a pile of ashes, but malleable clay for God to shape in service to our neighbor in need.  This Lenten Season, let us make the treasure of our hearts Jesus and the powerless ones he accompanies.