February 6, 2008

Ash Wednesday

TREASURE MAP

It's the season of polls in an election year, but this one isn't political. A while back the Gallup Poll published the results of a survey about people at the end of life, and one of the questions asked was who people would turn to in their final days. A column in USA Today made quite a deal of the fact that only 31% would turn to their clergy. Now, I'm not surprised by that; I think most people want their family or closest friends with them as they approach death. What did surprise me was what the "experts" said. They said, the reason pastors aren't sought out by terminally-ill people is that "religion is too dogmatic, churches don't talk about death, and clergy don't know what to say." [1]

Well, I don't know what pastors and churches those experts - or reporters - have been visiting, and I wonder if they've even ever been around at Christmas-time or Holy Week or in-between. Again on Christmas Eve this year I explained what it means that Christ was born "in the days when Herod was king." Holy Week - if you anything about it at all - is suffused with death. And even if "churches don't talk about death" on Christmas and Easter and "clergy don't know what to say" about it any other time, at least once each year - tonight - the language is explicit and the point is clear. "You are dust and to dust you shall return."

Across the East River from Manhattan, Lutheran pastor Richard Miller scooped up the layer of ash coating his deck in late September 2001. "Sacred ash," he called it, a mixture of cremated concrete, steel, and human flesh. He used the dust to mark the cross on the brows of worshipers the following Ash Wednesday. One of those who stepped forward in his church was the mother of a woman who died on the 98th floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings on September 11. That mother and the rest of us, that night and now, marked with the sign of sorrow and the sign of hope.

Once a year at least, so vividly, this somber, stark reminder that we are mortal and we will die, probably not at a time of our own choosing, either. Yet we are baptized and we shall live. The mark of our mortality is placed precisely where the mark of the cross was placed in holy baptism, and in that cross is our hope.

You may have noticed that some of us who lead worship often dip our fingers in this bowl when we arrive up here and when we leave. Gradually more and more of you are doing this as you approach this Family Table. I teach it to youngsters every chance I get - how to make the sign and what it means. Our little ones, held in their daddy's arms in this Communion line, youngsters standing on their own, toddlers hand-in-hand with parents in line, are marked. The waters of life in a world of death. Tonight, ashes, and hope life-long.

Recently, whenever I lead worship by preaching on Ash Wednesday, almost every year lately I've been saying, "Two things are going on at once tonight." I know I repeat myself, perhaps too often, but I think Ash Wednesday is one of those times that the contradictions of Christian faith and daily life are so striking. Sometimes I've pointed you out these windows to the ceaseless traffic whizzing by outside, oblivious to what we're doing inside this church. Or while we're here, nothing's really different elsewhere - televisions on, stores open, fitness centers humming, the usual homework, laundry, and bedtime routines.

Isn't that the sober reality of faith? In a busy world, tonight we pause to consider that someday it will stop for us. In the midst of life we know we are in death. Each day as we go about our business, someone somewhere is being snatched away. Yes. But remember, too, the promises of God. In the words of Martin Luther, "In the midst of death we are in life."

There have always been two (or more!) things going on at once, and you'd expect that Jesus would have encouraged a public display of religious faith as a good way to get the attention of all that traffic out there, plunging headlong over the edge of the cliff. In fact, only thirty-some verses earlier, Jesus does call for us to "Let our light shine before others, that they may see our good works..." [Matthew 5:16] Tonight he says, though, as you practice faith, be secretive. What gives? Why publicly one time but privately another? It's the difference between integrity and fraud, and honesty always starts in the secret places of the heart.

"Hypocrite" is our English word for a person who is counterfeit. Originally it's a Greek word for an on-stage actor. When Mr. & Mrs. Demetrius went to the theater in Athens or Thebes, the usher handed them a program that listed the "hypocrites" for the evening, the professionals who played the role of someone else on stage for others to watch, applaud, and (through the cost of the ticket) pay for the performance. [2]

Politicians may have good reasons to display their religious faith; they work every day in the public sphere and they may assume that what's personal for them is also public. Celebrities might be so accustomed to being in the public eye that they may think it's only natural for everyone to notice their religion. Preachers and prophets might be called to very public voice. You and I often don't know enough to judge accurately who is or who is not authentic or a fraud. Any anyway, the point tonight is not who is or isn't but who are we?

The place where the integrity of faith begins is here, inside. For most of us, the most important things with the greatest impact start between ourselves and God where no one else can horn in on the important conversation going on inside our heart and soul where we learn what difference that can make. We're not usually called into the very public eye. I suspect, though, that most of us aren't doing much privately, either, as Matthew's gospel calls it, "in secret." Well, Lent is the time to start or it's the time to go deeper than before.

Prayer, financial giving, and doing without (fasting, as it's called) - since Bible days 'till now those have been three primary ways to grow yourself spiritually. Prayer, charity, and fasting. Well, now is the right time; "Behold, now is the day of salvation."

"Pray. Pray for this sad world; pray for lands torn by war, including our own land. Pray for whole continents ravaged by epidemic diseases, including North America, ravaged by economic illness. Pray for tribes and nations suffering the result of old prejudices - and pray for our own people unable to get much beyond racism, gender-bias and any other stubbornness, and the unseemly pride of our American culture - and see if those consistent private prayers begin to change something within.

"'Live simply so that others may simply live.' Doing without. Fasting. Sharing more and spending less, a simpler diet, decisions to live more modestly, to bring eating, drinking, working, and recreation more into balance. Choices and changes, also in our financial lives. You know, we make those decisions in homes and in neighborhoods which are part of a globe where humanity still can't feed itself, still can't live in peace, can't find a way for everyone to live." [3] Quietly, privately, even secretively at first, regular attention to the heart and soul grows faith and its results have effect around the world. "The world is poor," writer Calvin Miller says, "because her fortune is buried in the sky - and all our treasure maps are of the earth." Lent is a map which guides us to the sky; it leads us home. The road from this moment and this place through Holy Week is along the pathways of this earth, and we often think we can find what we are looking for by merging into the flow of traffic and following where everyone and everything is headed. But Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be as well." And he promises a fortune.

Nate Castens
Chanhassen, Minnesota

[1] USA Today, "Few would turn to clergy for help if they were dying," by Marily Elias, December 6, 1997

[2] Foster McCurley, Emphasis, January/February 1999

[3] These two paragraphs adapted from "Preparing for Lent," Sundays and Seasons Year A 2008