Ash Wednesday Sermon, 3/5/2025: REFLECT, REPENT, TRANSFORM
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Forgive me, and help me do better.
Dear brothers and sisters -
Fellow pilgrims on the dark and difficult road of faithfulness and charity!
We gather today, to be marked with the ashes of our mortality, to claim our humanity as touched by divinity, on this uniquely holy day of reflection, repentance, and possibility.
And we are so blessed to be here!
Not just to gather as friends and kindred in the nurturing fellowship of the saints -
But to mark this day - to set aside this hour - to call upon this moment - as a touchstone to the great reforming, redeeming, and restorative work God has embarked upon in the world - as we renew our calling and determination to follow that Carpenter from Nazareth - to continue the greatest rehab project the world has ever known!
For The Christian religion is one of universal scope and unfailing hope!
We are a people of purpose of possibility, that humanity can overcome its primitive urges and selfish persuasions, and work side by side with our better angels, co-laboring to bring to Earth that heavenly vision of the prophets, martyrs, and Saints, that 'thy kingdom come, they will be done - on Earth as it is in heaven!'
This grand and glorious vision of God that originated in the heavens, comes to pass through earthly means - something, of which, you, in your self-less-ness and generosity, are very familiar!
It calls each one of us to task this day - in the intimacy of our hearts - in the still, small, place of conviction and commitment - to make the way, clear the path, pave the road, and set the scene - to play our parts in this oh-so-serious task of ushering in this blessed Kingdom.
And so we come to hear the clarion call of Mother Church - to observe a Holy Lent - on this day of reflection, repentance, and possibility.
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Our first task, then, is to reflect: To take a clear and sobering look at who we are, where we are, and the work that lies ahead.
For we know that outside these doors lurks a dark and deafening jungle; a tangle of looming threats, debilitating possibilities, and unknown perils.
Ours is a topsy turvy world of moral confusion, where up has become down, right has become wrong, our moral compass has broken, and has perhaps fatally scrambled our priorities.
And we are shaped by this world - influenced by its greed and fear - and, too often, fall victims to the temptation to control, isolate, and turn a blind eye toward human need. We must admit we are not the charitable, forgiving, and accepting person we wish we were - to our detriment and to those with whom we share our journey.
However, our reflection must also take us to the sober evaluation of our brighter side.
We are the people of God, called and crowned with a Divine purpose, salt to season, light to illuminate, divinely selected ambassadors, appointed and anointed to represent the interests of that heavenly country, in and upon this earthly sphere.
Let us not believe, for one second, that we are any less than who God has called us to be - and to do what God has called us to do!
You are a person with authority, moral authority, gifted to you on the day of your baptism - to speak up, and speak out, to a hurting and helpless world! And that voice sorely needs to be heard today!
Yes, you already do this well, in your generosity to the poor, your heart for the homeless, and your stubborn determination to bring relief to the hurting and oppressed.
For we serve a God who hears the cries of the Israelites in slavery, the multitude of the hungry in the desert, and the disciples, Peter and Paul, behind locked, Roman bars.
We serve a God of liberation, provision, and purpose - who is not dead and whose plans are very much alive!
A sober reflection on who we are means noting how shaped and stained we are by the dark forces around us - yet realizing anew that we are God's chosen and equipped, called to "up" our game in our blessed struggle to redeem a deeply wounded and deeply beloved world.
Let us move, then, from reflection to repentance.
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It's been said that Lenten repentance embodies life's 5 difficult truths.
Perhaps that is why the foundation of our repentance can be found in the lies and disbelief we engage in trying to avoid those truths.
The first truth is that: Life is hard.
Oh! How we routinely deny this as we prioritize our own personal convenience, comfort, safety, and popularity as ways to buffer, mollify, and medicate against that brutal reality of life's difficulty!
Our inward focus on personal comforts to deflect and avoid difficulty - deprives and depletes resources better spent on the plight and problems of those whose suffering far outpaces our own.
We must come to grips with the reality that our selfish priorities to make things more comfortable for ourselves, can force us to rob from the poor - and turn a blind eye towards the far greater suffering of others.
For we were created to share one another's burdens, not off-load ours upon the weary backs of the weak and meek, in an effort to avoid this simple truth.
The second is like it: You are unimportant. This addresses our struggle for significance - a hardship that has left untold trauma and tragedy in its wake.
The root of decline for most civilizations can be traced to our fitful rebellions against insignificance.
From the pyramids to the Parthenon, to the palaces built by the royalty and the rich, we trip over litanies of deprivation in the rubble of time.
Yes, there's been wholesale robbery! The theft of necessities from the masses!
A near-absolute absence of justice for the oppressed!
All to pay too high a price, just to be noticed.
Which takes us to that third difficult truth,
3. Life is not about you. This fuels the widespread, and deeply debilitating falsehood that our happiness lies in acquisition and ownership, and not in sharing and self-less-ness.
Our Me-First mentality, anti-thetical to the Gospel, is the seed of decline in our personal happiness and corporate well-being - because it grows *not into a communal forest of mutuality - but a sparse desert of individuality.
We hoard to our own detriment, as we feed into the illusion that we are in control.
Which is number 4:
You are not in control. I had a therapist once remark, "Show me a scared person, and I'll show you a controlling person."
Yes, we must repent of our controlling, hovering, and safeguarding fears - which, we know, comes from our lack of faith in a God who promises to care for us, to abide with us, to give us purpose, and to lead us humbly along the way.
Fear, as a nation, leads to isolation, punishment, and penalty - challenging and provoking behavior rooted in that desire to control -
- as we look for scapegoats for our sins, refusing, time and again, to replace our fears with faith - Faith that good triumphs over evil, God's Spirit can lick the devil's spirit, and that our God is king of kings and Lord of lords.
We must *never forget that ours is a God who brings manna from the sky, water from stones, and life to the dead,
We do not hold the world in our hands - but we serve a God who does!
The fifth and final difficult truth is that You are going to die. This is humanity's inescapable destiny that casts a looming shadow on too much of what we think, say, and do.
Our fear of death, instead of faithful relinquishment to the inevitable, too often makes us irritated and angry, frustrated and flustered, allowing our fear to hold sway over our faith.
Our repentance, then, becomes both personal and corporate, as we hang sorrowful heads for fashioning communities and nations that: pay too little attention to the poor; too much attention to the rich; can sleep soundly as others gasp for breath; and that gets swept up in its own pride and too comfortable in its own complacency.
We all know that a sober, inward-looking evaluation is the necessary "first step" to corrective action. This is why the church gives us Ash Wednesday.
And let us never forget, this is also why the church gives us Easter.
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For deeply embedded in the foundation of this blessed day Is that glimmer of hope, of transformation, of possibility.
As we kneel at the threshold of this holy season of soul-searching and course-correcting, we look with hope at the possibility of transformation.
This is our hope dear saints!
We ask ourselves, what burdens do we carry that weigh us down? What chains of habit bind us, preventing us from walking in the light of God's love?
We know the seductive power of those old, familiar habits. The whispers that tell us, "It’s just one more time. It’s always been this way."
Those habits that dim the flame of our spirit, that erode our integrity, that separate us from our brothers and sisters.
They are habits of anger, of prejudice, of indifference, of self-centeredness.
These are the walls we must tear down!
Out of this rubble Our God will build something grand!
Some will say, "It’s too hard. The mountain is too steep." Some will say, "Change is impossible. I’m too weak."
But I stand here today, in the spirit of our ancestors, and declare, we have the power from above and from within, to change!
We have the power, because we are children of a God who is the God of second chances, of third chances, of countless chances!
A God who sees not our failures, but our potential.
A God who calls and equips us to be more than we are, to rise above our limitations.
Therefore my friend, this Lent, let us not merely give up chocolate or social media.
Let us give up the habits that hold us back from our God-given potential!
Let us cultivate new habits that reflect the love and justice of Christ.
* Let us replace the habit of judgment with the habit of understanding. Let us see the humanity in those who are different from us, those who have wronged us. Let us build bridges of empathy, not walls of division.
* Let us replace the habit of apathy with the habit of action. Let us not stand idly by while injustice rages around us. Let us be the loud and clear voices of justice for the voiceless, the helping hand that lift up the fallen.
* Let us replace the habit of despair with the habit of hope. Even in the darkest of these times, let us cling to the promise and power of ressurection - that nulla impossible per Deo - Nothing is impossible with God.
* And finally, let us replace the habit of self-absorption with the habit of service. Let us look beyond our own needs and desires, casting aside complacency, reaching out to the suffering as the hands and feet of Christ in the world - firmly grabbing hold of that Open Secret: that when we help others, we are helping ourselves because it feels good to do good.
This Lent, let us commit ourselves to this transformative work!
For in these dire and desperate times we see the light - we sense the solution - we have the power and purpose to bring right to wrong, hope to hopelessness, love to callousness!
Let us be a people who are not afraid to confront our weaknesses, who are not afraid to change. Let us be a people who are filled with the spirit of love and justice, a people who are determined to build a more just and compassionate world.
Let the ashes on our foreheads be a reminder of our mortality'
Let the fire in our hearts be a testament to our unwavering hope.
And let us rise from the ashes of our missteps and mishaps, proudly marching into the light of God's new day. Amen.