Ash Wednesday Sermon

Before retiring, my dad was PE teacher. He was always active and healthy. He rode his bike to work. He walked regularly in the hills around our house. But every year, in the weeks leading up to his first backpacking trip of the summer, he’d load up his backpack with canned goods and walk up and down our street with it.

I was mortified. I couldn’t fathom how anyone could be as unselfconscious as my dad was. He didn’t care. He was getting ready – building up whatever muscles he’d need to carry that pack down the trails.

He was always active, but in those days, he was more active.

It reminds me of Lent.

The goals of Lent are no different than the goals of our life of faith throughout the year. But during Lent, they’re just a little more intense – a little more focused, a little more intentional. But the desire’s the same: We want to be closer to God. Or, to say it with more precision, we want to know ourselves as closer to God. God’s closeness to us, I suspect, never changes.

And, for me, as the years go by (apart from any particular Lenten practices) the best way I know to foster this kind of closeness – this kind of knowing God’s closeness – is to do the surprisingly difficult work of learning to be honest with myself: with where I am in my life, with who I believe myself to be, with my fears, with my hopes, with my joys; and then to pair this honest vulnerability with a longing for God.

It is to ask, “God, will you meet me here?”

So much of our life is a striving, and certainly our faith has seemed so. Certainly Lent (!) has seemed so. We see the goal of what we want – so far on the horizon, and what toil it is to get there – to be holy, to be good, to be like Jesus. So much striving to reach God and to know God’s favor. Or (if we’re honest) to have earned God’s favor, to be worthy of God’s affection.

But this deeper faith, I’m finding – this deeper work of faith – is less striving for righteousness, less striding to the goal; and more standing in one place, stripping myself of pretense, and asking, “God, will you meet me here?” in what feels like such unholy ground: “Here” in this life, this body, this handful years that are mine… before this life, this body, this handful of years has reached its end.

It’s hard work to be this honest – to cleave through all the layers we’ve built up around ourselves: of who we think we should be, of what society has told us to be, what the church has told us to be, what our families have told us to be… and what we’ve told ourselves to be.

It’s hard work to cleave through the layers of shame we feel for all our inadequacies – our inadequacies as parents, as children, as spouses, as lovers; our inadequacies as citizens, as employees, as home owners and car owners and pet owners; our inadequacies as men, as women; our inadequacies as Christians.

And it’s hard work to cleave through the layers of deceptions and schemes we’ve devised to conceal that shame – to convince our family, our neighbors, our boss, ourselves, our God – that we’re okay; we’ve got it pulled together. Or (our go-to strategy): “Hey, look how messed up he is.”

It’s easier to stride, than it is to strip.

It’s easier to be disciplined, than it is to be naked in the garden…or in the wasteland: “Here I am, God.”

A couple years ago, I was lying down on the couch in the middle of the day, settling into that comfortable space between being awake and falling asleep, and I had this sense of a presence, right above my right shoulder, right beyond where – if I’d opened my eyes – I could see with my peripheral vision. Whether it was God or an angel or simply my mind drifting into dreams, I don’t know.

But what was most memorable about that moment was – not the assurance of God’s presence near me – but the desire it awakened in me that God would reveal himself to be so close without my beckoning, without my striving. For in that moment, the prayer that emerged in me was this honest (!) sentiment, “God, I am tired of always feeling that knowing you is all my responsibility – that I am the one who is always having to reach out my hand in the dark to find you – with my faith, my prayers, my disciplines. I want you to be like a dad who’s stretching out his hand to grasp hold of mine.”

And then I stopped myself – to correct myself – to preach to myself all the right theology about how God is always there, always loving me, whether I see it or not.

And then I stopped myself again, hoping in the moment that the better place to be was not the “right place” of right theology, but the “honest place” of where I actually was. “God, I am tired of feeling like knowing you is all my responsibility…. Will you meet me here?”

It may sound petulant. But it wasn’t. For me, in that moment, it was actually the harder choice: being honest instead of being good.

I once had a teacher whose advice was always the same: “You just need to disrupt the system.” And what he meant by that was our human nature always wants things to stay the same. We like stasis. We know what to do when everything stays in the same place, when everyone keeps to their same roles. We feel safe because we know what to expect – even if what we can expect is the same old mess as before. We’ve survived it once; we’ll survive it again.

But if you want something better – if you want change – “Eric,” he’d say, “you need to disrupt the system.” We can’t control the outcome. There’s no knowing the ramifications of our one little change to the whole system. And – guaranteed – it will be scary for us and resisted by everyone because everyone wants things to stay the same. All change is threat.

And…there’s no growth without change. Something must give to make space for what is new. Learning to be honest – with ourselves, with God, with one another – will always disrupt the system.

And that same wisdom can help us to perceive why we do what we do during the season of Lent. We’re choosing to disrupt the system. We’re choosing to try some new way of being or behaving or tending – knowing it might be uncomfortable, knowing we might be no good at it – but hoping to see, within the disruption, a change.

And, ultimately, the change we’re looking for is one layer more removed of whatever falsehoods lie between us and God – that when we ask, “God, will you meet me here?” we’ll hear less faintly, “Yes.”

We’ve only got this handful of years that make up our lives. We hope for the life to come, certainly, but what we know is this life. And because this life comes from God, this life itself must be good. It must have worth. It must have dignity. It must be worth tending with as much love and honesty that we can find. It must be worth finding that who we are, in our essence, is one in union with God. And such a union, should it be truly known, must be one of much compassion, grace, and peace.

There’s a kind of stark morbidity to this day, this crossing of our bared heads with ashes: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But behind this charge lies the implicit plea … to live!

We’ve only got this one life to live. Let it be a good one, an honest one – one that is worthy of its inherent dignity, simply by virtue of its existence. How much more likely that you didn’t exist at all, but you do! Because God called you into existence. You are here. You are a glory. You are God’s handiwork, God’s beloved.

Yes, remember you are dust. But not yet!

Today is still yours…to live.