Tag Archives: Ash Wednesday

Holding on to Joy in Lent…

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

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Photo credit:  Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly; reuse only with permission

Last night I had one of the most fun Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras celebrations I have ever had.  We had a great crowd, there was a spirit of joy and celebration, the Kensington School hosted an awesome kids’ corner with fun activities, and best of all was the Hickory Neck Talent Show.  I have not laughed so hard and smiled so much in a long time.  I even woke up this morning with an uplifted spirit, the smile still lingering on my face.

While I am so grateful for that blessing, as a priest, it does make entering into Ash Wednesday a bit tricky.  Here I am still coming down from the high of last night, and now I need to enter into a worship service where I tell people to fast, to repent, and to remember their mortality.  It almost feels like emotional or spiritual whip-lash, and I have been struggling this morning to know how to help others with that same abrupt shift.

Where I have landed is that I think the best way to enter into Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent is with that same lingering sense of celebration.  You see, when you have experienced the highs of life, talking about the “lows” of life seems a bit more bearable.  Yes, we are mortal, and yes, we will return to the dust.  But while we are still mortal, we can make this life here on earth one of great joy and love – one of laughter, of community, of togetherness.

I wonder if this might be a way to enter Lent in a healthier way.  Instead of lamenting our sinful nature (and believe me, we do need to lament our sins), perhaps our Ashes today might remind of us the earthy nature of being humans and encourage us to strive for the ways we might live that earthy life in a more holy way.  I plan to do that today by entering into a season of kindness.  I am taking the joy from my community of faith last night and channeling it into forty days of kindness – where my repentance becomes a practice of demonstrating my identity – of living more faithfully the virtue of kindness.  What Lenten discipline are you taking up?  What might be a way for you to joyfully grasp onto this fleeting life and make it a witness to Christ’s light and love?  I can’t wait to hear all about it!!

On Remembering You Are Dust…

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

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As a priest, I find Ash Wednesday to be the most difficult celebration of the Church.  One might think funerals are harder; but by the time we get to a funeral, the loss has already happened, and the people are gathered for a celebration of life and resurrection.  But Ash Wednesday is much more challenging.  The liturgy is the most honest, vulnerable, and sobering of our liturgies.  We gather in community, stripping away all appearances of success, faithfulness, and achievement, and we confess our deepest failures and separation from God – as if standing naked before our Lord.  And then, a priest rubs gritty ash upon our foreheads, and tells us, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

As someone who has experienced the worship from the pews, I know how powerful the liturgy is.  It’s as if the Church says to us, “I know everyone out there thinks you have it all together.  But we both know the truth – that you have a long way to go before you have it all together.  They see your strength and power; I see your weakness and vulnerability.”  The intimacy of the liturgy, experienced within a community of people going through the same exposure, can be both unnerving and deeply comforting.  Out in the world, we are alone, trying to prove ourselves.  Inside the church walls, we are together, admitting we cannot prove ourselves.

As a priest, I have the privilege of guiding people through that powerful experience.  It is so powerful, that I sometimes struggle to perform the actions the liturgy.  As I say those words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” I know that I am saying those words to a preschooler, who does not fully understand death; to a woman who has battled breast cancer and is in remission; to an elderly man who may be closer to death than we want to admit; to a widow or widower who lost their spouse earlier in life than they should have.  The weight of that pronouncement is palpable every single time I say it – and it makes my own mortality that much more real.

If you have not yet received ashes today, I encourage you find a church or Ashes-to-Go station.  It is a tremendous gift to be seen as you truly are, and to kneel alongside others who are trying to be faithful to the charge God has given us.  And if you cannot make it today, know that the entire season of Lent is available to you to continue the journey of remembering you are dust, and finding purpose before you return to that dust.

Sermon – Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YC, February 10, 2016

12 Friday Feb 2016

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One of the dangers of being a faithful Episcopalian is getting lured in by the liturgy.  The liturgy is certainly what reeled me into the Episcopal Church.  Having been raised as a United Methodist, I had seen a variety of styles and orders of worship.  On any given Sunday, you never knew what text the preacher would use.  And since Eucharist only happened 2-4 times a year, liturgy was not synonymous with rhythm.  But not so in the Episcopal Church.  Once you figure out the kneeling, sitting, and standing patterns, the liturgy becomes gloriously expected.  You get so used to the patterns that your body almost does the movements without thinking.  You love being able to be anywhere in the country and know that the liturgy will be familiar and the lessons predetermined.  When seasonal changes, like Advent or Epiphany, happen, you expect and appreciate the subtle differences more.  Since most people I know do not really like change, the Episcopal Church is like a little slice of predictable heaven.

The trouble with that sense of comfort is we can miss when something really powerful happens.  Ash Wednesday is one of those kinds of days.  Growing up in the south, I never really had an experience of Ash Wednesday.  College was my first exposure to seeing others with ashes while being invited to don them myself.  I remember thinking how exposed having ashes on one’s forehead must be.  Ash Wednesday seemed like a big deal.  But, I am an Episcopalian now, and like many other things in liturgy, the shock of Ash Wednesday has softened.

That is why I love having a young child around.  The first time my oldest really understood what the ashes were all about she exclaimed, “Ew, what is that on your head?!?”  Try explaining to a three year old what being dust means and why I needed to remember I would return to dust.  Watch the child’s face as they process what mortality means.  Wait for the heavy feeling in your chest when they ask if they can have ashes too – knowing that you will have to say, “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” to her precious, innocent face.

Today the Church invites us into a holy Lent.  The Prayer Book says this is a time of prayer, fasting, and self-denial.  Matthew’s Gospel talks about the disciplines of giving alms, prayer, and fasting.  Some of us will take up these specific disciplines.  Others of us will commit to reading scripture or a devotional book, giving up chocolate, or playing Lent Madness.  The Church tells us these practices or disciplines are to help us walk with Jesus in repentance.  The challenge with taking on a spiritual discipline in Lent is making sure the practice is not rote – much like our participation in liturgies can be rote.  The Church is not inviting us into the practice of disciplines out of habit.  The Church is trying to help breathe life into our faith – and one of the ways that we do that is to do something out of the ordinary to shake up our comfortable, unchanging practices.

Matthew’s gospel is pretty strict about the way those disciplines happen.  Jesus says that we are to be private about our alms giving, prayer, and fasting so as not to seem like hypocrites, boasting about our giving, piety, or suffering.  But who among us has not slipped on the slippery slope of hypocrisy?  Those of us who give charitably often find ourselves claiming that giving on our taxes.  Those of us who have ever attended a prayer breakfast or have told a friend that we will pray for them surely were being a little showy about our prayers.  And let’s face it, I cannot imagine fasting without complaining at least a little bit.  The question then becomes, “How can a text that implores private acts of righteousness be read on the day one receives the imposition of ashes, a very visible and public act of piety?”[i]

But Jesus is not looking to trick us.  He is checking our intentions – our authenticity.  The trouble with anything rote, whether liturgies or disciplines, is that we risk losing why we are doing them in the first place.  When I am busy complaining about fasting, I do not have space in my thoughts to remember those who go without food daily.  When I am busy talking about my prayer life, I am filling up the silence through which God most likes to speak to me.  When I am weeding through giving materials trying to decide who to support financially, I lose sight of the gratitude from which my giving originates.  The issue is not really whether or not public and private acts are authentic or inauthentic.  The issue is being intentional about not only choosing our disciplines, but living into them.

I invite you today to use the tool of liturgy to awaken your intentionality this Lent.  Listen to the prayers and psalms today.  Notice the discomfort of kneeling – whether you kneel physically or kneel in your heart.  Listen to and feel the gritty ashes being spread on your forehead, allowing the solemnity of the words wash over you.  Taste the bread and the sting of wine on your tongue.  As you allow the liturgy to be fresh today, take time in prayer to consider in what ways God is inviting you into deeper relationship, and what discipline you can realistically take on to get you closer to God.  The liturgy today is not about sending us out with pious reminders to others about our faith.  The liturgy today is about jolting our senses into understanding our humanity, sinfulness, and mortality.  Today, the Church uses the Church’s most familiar tool to create just enough discomfort to help us turn our hearts and minds to God – the God whose arms are wide enough to spread on a cross and wide enough to embrace us all.  Amen.

[i] Lori Brandt Hale, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 22.

Sermon – Mark 1.9-15, L1, YB, February 22, 2015

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

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Lent is a funny season.  Lent gives us all these seemingly horrible things and calls them gifts.  We kick things off with a bang on Ash Wednesday.  We gather in the church and kneel before God while someone tells us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  In other words, we come to church to be reminded that death is real, death is unavoidable, and death is coming.  With the exception of people facing severe illness or people beyond a certain age, death is not typically a part of our everyday conversations.  Rarely are you drinking a latte with a friend who casually says, “So you know we are going to die, right?  Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but we will both die.”  That is because death for us is one of those conversations that we do not really like to entertain because death brings down the mood and makes us feel sad.  And yet, that is how we kick off the season of Lent.  “Happy Lent!  We’re all going to die!”

And if that were not sobering enough, the Church takes the next forty days reminding us of our brokenness, of our sinfulness, and of our failures.  We kneel more, confess more intentionally, and pray to reconnect with God.  The season seems to gather us up, place us sackcloth, and then let us wallow in our own sense of unworthiness.  Why in the world would any of us make a commitment to come to Church in Lent with the promise of such guilt and sobriety?

Actually, I think most of us have a love-hate relationship with the wilderness we find in Lent.  We do not want to do the hard work that Lent requires, and yet we also desperately long for a place that acknowledges the reality of all that is hidden behind our perfectly constructed masks, and invites us to just be still and present with our LORD.  In a world that Photoshops, creates whole lines of anti-aging products, and fights death tooth and nail, the church creates a season where we look at ourselves without enhancements and work towards contentment, peace, and even joy.  Lent is a season of honesty, “when the church reminds us of what our culture denies – that our days are limited, and that we’ve made a mess of things.”[i]

Of course, the church did not really invent Lent per se.  The people of God have been experiencing the same concept for years, most frequently in the wilderness.  We know the stories well:  Noah completing his forty days on a ship, floating in his own, albeit probably very loud, watery wilderness; the people of Israel wandering the desert wilderness for forty years; and, as we hear on this first Sunday in Lent, Jesus, led out to the wilderness by the Spirit for forty days immediately after his life-changing baptism.  Each of those experiences are full of Lenten themes:  being taken out of the comforts of life; wondering whether there will be relief from suffering, whether there is dry land, food in the desert, or Satan himself; and glimpses of hope, whether from an olive branch, manna from heaven, or tending angels.  These wilderness experiences, or Lenten-type journeys, pave the way for renewal and reinvention.

This winter, one of our Movies with Margaret features was called The Way.  In the film, a father and his adult son have become somewhat estranged.  The son decided to travel the world to find himself, and the father scoffs.  Months into his son’s travels, the father gets a call.  His son had decided to walk the Camino – the pilgrim’s path in France and Spain that pilgrims have been walking since the ninth century.  Unfortunately the son died while walking the Camino, and the father now needed to pick up the body.  While going through his son’s hiking pack, the father replays their last conversation – about how his Dad is too rigid and never travels anymore since his wife died.  Untrained and unprepared, the father straps on his son’s pack and begins to walk.  He confesses he has no idea why he is walking, but he walks anyway.

The movie goes on to document what might be described as the father’s own wilderness journey.  He deals with getting lost, trying to sleep in noisy hostels, not being able to get rid of talkative fellow pilgrims, losing his bag briefly in a river, getting arrested, and later having his bag stolen by a gypsy.  When he gets to the end of the journey, he takes his documents to the pilgrimage office to have the paperwork authorized and get a certificate of completion.  Before the official will sign his paperwork, he asks a question that stumps the father.  “What is your reason for walking the Way?”  The father stammers.  He cannot put into words why he grabbed his son’s bag and started walking.  Recalling the last fight he had with his son, the best he can come up with is, “I thought I needed to travel more.”

Mark does not give us many details about Jesus’ journey in the wilderness.  Unlike the other gospels, we do not hear the details of his encounter with Satan.  We do not really understand what happens with those wild beasts – whether they were friends of foes.  We hear about some angels at the end, but we do not know how much they are present.  All we really know is that Jesus is in a wilderness for forty days and that those days happen after he is baptized and proclaimed the beloved and before he can begin his earthly ministry.

We too start a wilderness experience today.  At the beginning of our liturgy we confessed many things.  We confessed blindness of heart, pride, vainglory, hypocrisy, envy, hatred, and malice.  We confessed our inordinate and sinful affections and our fear of dying suddenly and unprepared.  We confessed our loneliness, our suffering, and our ignorance.  And we prayed for our enemies.  The ashes from Ash Wednesday and their message of the inevitability of death still linger in our subconscious.  Like the father in The Way, we put all of those confessions and acknowledgments in a pack, put the pack on our back, and we begin to walk.  None of us knows what will happen on this forty-day journey.  We do not know how our Lenten disciplines will shape us, or what external factors will impact our lives.  But we begin the Lenten journey anyway.

The promise for us is refreshment at the end of the journey.  For me, that refreshment is the Easter Vigil.  At Easter Vigil, I put down my pack full of my forty days’ worth of experiences.  I hear the piercing words of the Exultet and the old stories of our salvation told in the darkness.  I watch candles flicker as we sing hymns.  And then I watch the church explode with light and the sound of bells.  We say the forbidden “A-word” after a forty-day hiatus.  We feast on the Eucharistic meal after fasting from that meal since Maundy Thursday.  And we rejoice in our risen Lord.

In the movie, The Way, the father reaches the end of the pilgrimage and has a sacred moment in the church at the Pilgrim’s mass.  He decides to keep journeying further to spread his son’s ashes into the sea.  And at the end of the film, we see him traveling to other places – finally taking up his son’s challenge to see more of the world.  That’s the funny thing about journeys.  They are not the end of the story.  Our Lenten journey will be a true pilgrim’s journey.  But our journey will not end at the Vigil.  Just like Jesus’ journey did not end with angels tending to him.  As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Even after he left the wilderness, [Jesus] carried [the wilderness] inside him, and far from fleeing [the wilderness] later in his life he sought [the wilderness] out.  Without the wilderness he might not have been the same person.  Because of the wilderness he was not afraid of anything.”[ii]  We all need the wilderness to shape us and mold us.  Our Lenten pilgrimage will change us, both as individuals and as a community, because in the church, we do not journey alone.  Your fellow pilgrims are here in the pews beside you – perhaps to annoy you, or send you on a detour – but maybe also to bail you out of jail from time to time.  Together we are pilgrims on the way, being transformed for new life beyond Lent.  Amen.

[i] Dan Clendenin, “To See Death Daily,” posted February 16, 2015 at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20150216JJ.shtml.

[ii] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Four Stops in the Wilderness,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 24, no. 2, Lent 2001, 4.

Sermon – Joel 2.1-2, 12-17, AW, YB, February 18, 2015

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

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For those of us who have been around the church for any amount of time, we have become quite accustomed to the season of Lent.  We dutifully find a Lenten discipline:  buying that book we are going to read, ridding the house of chocolate, or purchasing new athletic gear for the exercise we plan to take up.  Or if we are feeling particularly uninspired, we may ask our friends and family what they are giving up for Lent this year, in the hopes that something will inspire us too.  We do all these things because we feel obligated.  We take up a discipline because that is what we are supposed to do, not because we particularly want to take up the discipline.  Lenten disciplines have sort of become the second-chance for New Year’s Resolutions.  Whatever failed then might have more luck if we do the discipline in the name of Jesus.  Then we can feel doubly good because not only did we give up red meat for Jesus, but we also lost four pounds.  In that way, Lent is great!

The challenge with that kind of engagement with Lent is that our practices become more about giving up something for the sake of giving up something instead of giving up something because that sacrifice will drive us into the arms of God.  When we choose a Lenten discipline, we choose that discipline not out of habit, or out of peer pressure, or even in the hopes of the secondary benefits (like losing weight or finally getting through our pile of books).  To get to the true heart of Lent, we choose our Lenten disciplines out of a sense of urgency – out of a sense that something needs to change and something needs to change now.

That is what the prophet Joel was trying to say to the people of Israel in our Old Testament lesson today.  You see, “Tradition held that on the Day of the Lord, God would come to vindicate Israel, to judge the nations that had opposed and oppressed her, and to reverse the status quo in favor of the people of Jerusalem”[i] The Israelites had come to believe that the Day of the Lord would be a day of celebration and vindication.  Any sacrifices they made or disciplines they assumed were because they were anticipating a reward.  But Joel tells them that their very identity as the chosen people of God is what brings them up short.  Instead of favor, they will receive a harsher judgment than anyone.

As a parent, I tend to read a lot of parenting blogs and articles.  One of the on-going conversations is about whether children should receive compensation for their chores.  People make arguments that children should never be given money for chores, because paying children for chores teaches them that they should only participate in the life of the family if they will receive something in return.  Instead, many critics argue that chores should be presented as work that is simply expected of all capable members of the family.  In doing chores out of membership instead of reward, the critics argue that children learn a sense of pride and belonging.  Their argument is similar to Joel’s:  favor and belonging in God’s eyes comes with expectations, not prizes.

But Joel’s critique of Israel goes even deeper.  Joel reminds the people of God that not only do they need to repent, they also need to repent with their whole heart.  Joel says they are to rend their hearts, not their garments.  The rending of garments was a ritual practice of repentance.  But Joel insists that God does not simply want ritual repentance.  God wants the kind of repentance that is felt deep in one’s heart.  They are to “approach God in sincerity, rather than by ritual; to beseech God’s mercy through genuine mourning for sin, rather than by cultic rite.  Joel calls for true repentance, the complete turning away from destructive patterns, selfish, inclinations, and self-righteous expectations.  God wants the whole person, not some outward sign…”[ii]  To rend one’s heart was not simply an emotional response.  As one scholar suggests, “Since the heart was considered the seat of thinking and willing, [a commitment of the heart] implied total dedication.”[iii]

That is the kind of discipline we are invited to take up this Lent.  Disciplines that reflect on the ways that we have separated ourselves from God, the ways that we have become so wrapped up in ourselves that we have pushed God away, and the ways that we have simply neglected our relationship with God – those are the disciplines that will create meaning and substance.  When we think about rending our hearts, our disciplines will make space in our lives for us to stop in our tracks, to turn around on our current paths, and to journey back to God’s open arms.

The good news is that we do not do this work alone.  In fact, Joel insists that God not only wants the whole person, God wants “the whole people, the whole city of Jerusalem, indeed, the entire nation.  This is not a call to the pious, or to the willing, or to those who are expected to make offering to the Lord, but to all.”[iv]  When Joel says to gather the aged, the children, the infants, and the newlyweds, he means that even those who normally would not need to repent need to come into the fold.  God is interested not simply in a personal relationship with the people, but with a communal one.

This year, I invited the parish to join me in the solemn practice of playing Lent Madness.  Most of you have wondered why I invited us to play together, especially in something that seemed so silly.  Some of you complained that the process seemed too confusing, or just were not sure why we needed to do something as weird as a sports and saints hybrid.  Part of my motivation in getting us to do a discipline together is that I know how hard isolating Lenten disciplines can be.  When we set a goal of praying or reading scripture for an hour a day during Lent, no one should be surprised when we fail ten days into the practice.  Perhaps we fail because we are doing the practice out of a sense of obligation to be holy.  Perhaps we fail because we have not really done the hard work of rending our hearts – searching for the ways that we are deeply separated from God and need to return to God.  Or perhaps we fail because we were too prideful to repent in the context of community.

Now I am not insisting that you play Lent Madness.  I am simply suggesting that sometimes our piety is so about ourselves that we forget the community of saints sitting right beside us who long to rend their hearts too, but cannot seem to do the work alone.  Together we can do the hard work of rending our hearts.  We can do the hard work of repenting, of truly turning back to the God who longs to be in communion with us.  We can do the hard work of being a vulnerable, loving, supporting community.  Our encouragement in all this work comes from Joel too.  Joel affirms for us that for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.  Joel even conjectures, “Who knows whether God will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind.”  The expectations are high.  The work is hard.  The community works together.  Because our God is gracious and merciful.  And who knows whether God will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind?  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 3.

[ii] Lose, 5.

[iii] Dianne Bergant, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 5.

[iv] Lose, 5.

An invitation…

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

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In my line of work, I deal with death a lot.  The first two calls a family usually makes when a loved one dies are to the funeral home and to the priest.  I have done funerals for people I have known and loved, and for people who I have never met.  I have done funerals for people who were deeply involved with and committed to the Church, and for people who actively avoided the church.  I have done funerals for grandmothers, husbands, sisters, and children.  I have held the hand of a shallow-breathing senior who had lived a long life but was approaching the last hours, and have touched the tiny hand of a stillborn.  Death is ever present in my life, always a phone call away.

So you would think that Ash Wednesday would not be that jarring to me.  A day meant to remind us of the fragility of life, that we are dust and to dust we shall return, really should not be that extraordinary.  But every year it gets me.  Though I deal with death when it comes my way, Ash Wednesday is a little different.  Ash Wednesday involves reminding people who may be nowhere near death to ponder the shortness of life.  Each time I spread gritty ashes on a forehead, my whole being shutters.  I think of the many laughs I have shared with the person my age; I think of the illness someone in their 50s overcame and the fullness of life they have enjoyed since then; I think of the bounding energy of the six-year old and how much joy they bring; and I think of the quiet confidence and wisdom of the grandmother figure.  Every time I say, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” I feel like I am whispering a dark truth into each person’s ears.  There is nothing more sobering than those words, than those grainy ashes, than those shared moments of eye contact.  And no matter how well I clean up afterwards, a little black residue remains on my thumb, reminding me how close death lingers.

Though the reality of Ash Wednesday is sobering, and perhaps something one might want to avoid, I find that most people who come for ashes are relieved.  They are relieved for the gift of a church that will remind them of things of ultimate importance.  They are relieved for some perspective and levity in a world that tells them if they push more, do more, achieve more, they will somehow be happier.  They are relieved to be shaken out of the distractions or the fog of life and to be invited into a sense of clarity and purpose.  I certainly am relieved in that same way.  Because I am the solo priest at my parish, I usually have a parishioner also spread ashes on my forehead.  No matter who I end up asking, there is always a moment of shared humility and connection.  I am grateful to the church for the gift of Ash Wednesday and the invitation for a holy Lent.

On being dust…

06 Thursday Mar 2014

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One of the gifts of being a clergy person is the moments of insight, intimacy, and holiness.  That gift is probably one of the primary things that keep me going, especially in the midst of weeks when the vocation feels more full of challenge than full of blessing.  The cool thing about the gift is that it often catches me unawares – I am busy just doing my job when all of sudden, wham!, God brings me to my knees with the enormity and privilege that this vocation is.

It happened yesterday as our church celebrated Ash Wednesday.  As my mind was distracted with my sermon, the choreography of the liturgy, and the elements of the altar, I suddenly found myself at the part of the liturgy where I spread ashes on each person’s forehead.  I had forgotten how incredible that moment is.  There I am, rubbing dirty, gritty ash on person’s forehead, reminding them of their mortality.  The experience is a visceral, fleshy one.  Some foreheads are covered with hair, some are oily after a day of work or activity, and some are polished and made up.  Some foreheads are smooth and non-anxious and others are lined with the wrinkles of age or stress.

But even more profound than the tangible piece is the emotional piece of the experience.  There is the woman who just celebrated 91 years of life.  I find myself wondering how many more years we will share moments like this.  There is the parishioner with whom I have shared laughs and tears, who is the prime of their lives, and whose death I cannot fathom.  And of course there are the children.  There is something profound about reminding a five-year old that they will someday die, whether they fully understand what is happening in the liturgy or not.

After everyone had received ashes, I turned to our acolyte and asked her to give me ashes as well.  In this time of growing life inside of me – as I have frequently fretted about the viability of my child outside the womb – I was reminded that neither my coming child nor I are spared from returning to dust someday.  Though that sounds like a grim thought, where it ultimately left me was convinced that no matter what happens, God is the firm foundation that I stand firmly upon, grounding me, keeping me humble, and reminding me of what really matters.

That is the other beauty of being a clergy person.  As much as I hope liturgies are meaningful to others, I find them equally meaningful to me.  Sometimes it is harder than others to worship while leading worship.  But this Ash Wednesday, the power and wonder of the liturgy and our God did not escape me.  I am grateful today for the powerful reminder of my humanity, the collective recognition of the fragility and preciousness of this life, and the blessing of a community who always gives me a healthy dose of perspective.

Sermon – Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YA, March 5, 2014

06 Thursday Mar 2014

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As many of you know, Lent is my favorite season of the liturgical year.  I love the spiritual discipline Lent encourages, I love the liturgical uniqueness of Lent, and I love the ways that Lent encourages us as a community live life differently, even if only for a little while.  By Ash Wednesday every year, I usually have a set discipline in place, and I am eager to get going.  But this year, I find myself in a situation in which I have never been.  With the pending birth of our second child, I find myself hesitant to commit to any spiritual discipline this Lent.  I have no sense of how tired I will be, or how upended my home routine and family life will be; I have no idea whether I will be too exhausted to stay connected digitally to the world, or whether technology will be my way of escape when everything else is disjointed; and besides the desperate prayers of an exhausted, weary mother, I have no idea how to tend to my spiritual life once I step away briefly from my churchly life.

I confess this sense of being lost about Lent because I imagine some of you may be feeling that same sense of being lost as well.  We have been buried in an awful winter, longing more for spring and the joys of Easter, than preparing for burrowing deeper into the depths of penitence and discipline.  Our news feed is full of local and global disaster, making even the normal joy of international events like the Olympics feel a bit hollow.  And we have a growing itch to be more settled here at Church – as we trip over one another trying to find adequate space for normal activities while our undercroft is under construction, as our Vestry makes changes to better equip us for ministry, and as our Rector steps away for a time, making us all have to assume responsibilities that burden our already full plates and sparking concern about how we can thrive without our leader at the helm.  Who has time for figuring out a Lenten discipline when we feel like we are just barely managing our lives?

Into this sense of discombobulation, Jesus comes at us in the gospel lesson today with a scathing critique of our spiritual lives.  Jesus wants us to give alms, but to do so with such secrecy that even our own selves are unaware of our sacrifices.  Jesus wants to take our prayer to our private rooms, so we are not tempted to bring attention to ourselves in public.  Jesus wants us to gussy ourselves up daily so that no one notices the longing and discomfort our fasts are creating for us.  To be honest, his words are a bit confusing and seem contradictory to Jesus’ other messages.  This is the same Jesus who later in Matthew says, “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”[i]  So which are we supposed to do?  Are we to keep our faith humbly hidden so as not to be seen as braggadocios, or are we to shout about our God on the mountaintop, or at least in the local diner, so that others might see the goodness of what God has done for us, and want to join us in that joy?

Perhaps a better place for us to begin is to imagine Jesus offering this teaching with a bit of sarcastic humor.  This past stewardship season we showed a video about the ways in which people give to church with muddled intentions.  The video has a series of clips with people doing things like using their generous giving to garner the decisions they want made in church or dramatically holding up their pledge envelopes before dropping them in the plate.  Imagine the person who would rather put coins in the offering plate for the noise they make than put in bills which silently but strongly support ministry, and you have the idea.  This is the kind of ribbing Jesus is doing when he describes the showy alms giver.

In high school, I was friends with a girl whose father was an evangelical pastor.  I remember going out to dinner with her family once, and being mortified before our meal began.  Once our plates of food arrived, her father stood up in the middle of the dining area, and very loudly began a prayer that, I promise, was easily five minutes long.  My cheeks began to redden as he went on and on.  I could feel the shifting of people near us as they became equally uncomfortable.  As I peeked mid-way through his prayer, I could see a waitress approach our table for drink refills and the recoil back to her station.  I was so relieved the next week at school when my friend apologized for her dad and made a joke about how much she actually hates eating in restaurants because her food is always cold by the time the prayer is over.  This is the kind of prayer Jesus jokes about too when he sends us to our rooms to pray.

And we all know examples of that complainer who has taken up fasting or whatever form of denial they have chosen for Lent.  They regale you with stories of how they almost fainted, or how they had to avoid their favorite activities in order to stay faithful.  You almost want to give them a handkerchief so that they can more dramatically tell their tale of woe as the lift their hand dramatically to their heads.  These are those whom Jesus teases when he says to put some oil on your face – so that even if you cannot keep your mouth quiet with complaints, at least you will look good.

The challenge with us in Lent is not that our spiritual disciplines need to be so rigidly hidden away.  The danger comes when our disciplines become more about ourselves than about our relationship with God and one another.  Jesus is not telling us not to exercise our piety.  Jesus is trying to jokingly help us to see the ways in which our piety can become a stumbling block to others seeing the goodness of God.[ii]  Think of the person who gives generously, who prays prayers that always seem to touch you, or who shares with you what fasting has done for them in a way that inspires you.  Jesus is telling us to be more like them:  not to dramatically hide away our almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, but to do that almsgiving, prayer, and fasting with a genuine humility that invites others to want to know more.  And at the end of the day, Jesus is also telling us to chill out – to enjoy whatever discipline you have chosen and not to worry so much about performing that discipline, but humbling trying that discipline within a community of people who can laugh at themselves as they try to do the same.

This Lent, as I begin this journey with you, my discipline is going to be about giving myself a break, and not taking myself so seriously.  I am trusting that by not pushing myself to take on some discipline that will only make me feel like a failure by week two of newborn sleep deprivation, that God will be present, revealing God’s self to me and showing me that God can work in spite of me and in spite of what promises to be a very unique Lent in the life of a priest.  I am trusting that God, the faith of this community, and my intentional letting go this Lent will work in harmony to make this time a time of holy connection to God.  Jesus invites you into the same trusting release this Lent.  No matter what discipline you assume, or what battles you face in the coming forty days, God will give you moments of insight and blessing, and even a bit of humor to keep you going.  Amen.

[i] Mt. 10.27

[ii] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 25.

Sermon – Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YC, February 13, 2013

14 Thursday Feb 2013

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I have been thinking about death a lot lately.  We lost one of our beloved parishioners yesterday, and another parishioner is sick enough that we have been talking about death.  The journeys with those parishioners have made death much more present for me.  Then, last week I was listening to an interview with Oscar-nominee Bradley Cooper who talked about how he nursed his father through to death.  Cooper explained how the death of his father dramatically changed Cooper’s perspective on life – how that last gasp of air by his father was the very moment that Cooper’s entire worldview shifted.  Then, just this weekend I watched a film called 50/50, a dramatic comedy that chronicles the way a 27 year-old deals with a cancer diagnosis that gives him only a fifty percent chance of survival.  At every turn, death seems to be whispering to me.

Part of my job as a priest is to bring a certain sobriety about death as death approaches.  That is not to say that I am a party pooper, but my role is to name the truth that is approaching – earthly death and reunion with our Lord in eternal life.  In fact, the Church is one of the few places left in the world that openly and regularly talks about death.  In a world that encourages anti-aging treatments, who has desensitized us to death as we have moved away from an agricultural lifestyle, and whose medical advances have extended life much longer than before, we learn that death can be conquered and should be fought at all costs.

Pushing against this secular understanding of death, the Church gives us Ash Wednesday.  The Church looks at our flailing efforts to preserve life and as we are humbly kneeling at the altar rail, rubs gritty ash on our heads and says, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  There is no, “Don’t worry about death; you’ll be fine!”  Instead those grave words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,” echo in our heads, haunting our thoughts.  Every year the Church reminds us of the finite amount of time we have on this earth.

This is why I love Lent so much.  The Church dedicates forty days to a time where we cut to the chase and honestly assess our relationship with God.  We take a sobering look at our lives, a sobering look that could be reserved only for the time of death, and we discern what manifestation of sinfulness has pulled us away from God.  Our Prayer Book defines sin as “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.”[i]  Lent is the season when we focus on repentance from our sin – not just a feeling guilty about our sinfulness, but eagerly seeking ways to amend those relationships and turn back toward resurrection living.  What most people get only at the time of death, we are given every year at the time of Lent:  a time of sobering realignment.

This is why we get Matthew’s gospel lesson on Ash Wednesday.  As we begin our sobering Lenten journey, the gospel lesson names disciplines and practices that can help us along the way.  Jesus names those ancient practices that have brought people back to God for ages – giving alms, praying, and fasting.  Each one of these practices has ways of bringing us closer to God by shaking up our normal routines.  Of course, any Lenten practice can have the same effect.  Giving up caffeine, taking on a new fitness regiment, or reconnecting with nature are equally valid ways to shake up our routines enough to notice the ways in which we have become more self-centered than God-centered.  Although Jesus names the disciplines of alms giving, prayer, and fasting, the actual discipline itself is not the issue for Jesus.  The issue is our intentions in our practice.

This is why we hear Jesus labeling so many people as hypocrites in our gospel lesson today.  Jesus is less concerned about what disciplines we assume and is more concerned about the authenticity behind those disciplines.  Jesus is not arguing that private acts are authentic and public ones are inauthentic by nature.  What matters is the desire and motivation behind these practices.  We have all seen this in action.  One of my favorite comediennes jokes about this very behavior in one of her shows.  She talks about how people sometimes use prayer requests as a means of gossip.  In one of her jokes, she has the gossiper of the church inviting people into a prayer circle so that they can pray for someone in the church who just got pregnant, even though the news was supposed to be private.  We all know the kind of hypocritical behavior Jesus is addressing.  This kind of behavior will never get us to the sobriety we need to right our relationship with God and others.

Of course, any kind of practice we take up this Lent can be corrupted.  The giving up of a particular kind of food can be more for weight loss than a connection to God.  The taking up of a volunteer activity can be to fulfill a requirement for something else.  Whatever we do this Lent, that deprivation or incorporation is meant to help us restore our relationship with God, other people, and all creation.  So when we give up a food, instead of glorying in the fact that we lost a few pounds, we can instead see how that food has become an emotional crutch that keeps us from leaning on God and others.  When we take on a new prayer routine, we slowly begin to see how little time we give to God in our daily lives.  Whatever our practice, Jesus is concerned that authenticity be at the heart, so that we can more readily prepare for Good Friday and Easter.[ii]

And so, in order to shake us out of our self-centered, sinful, distant ways, Ash Wednesday gives us death.  Ash Wednesday grittily, messily, publicly reminds us of our death, and then leaves us marked so that we can humbly enter into a Lenten reconnection with God.  Ash Wednesday throws death in our faces so that we can wake up in a world that would have us keep striving for longevity of earthly life instead of striving for intimacy with God here and now.  This Ash Wednesday, our ashes are the outward reminder of the sobering journey we now begin, because only when we consider our own death can we begin to see the resurrection glory that awaits us at Easter.  My prayer is that our journey this Lent is not one of painful guilt, but instead one of glorious reconnection with our creator, redeemer, and sustainer.  Amen.

[i] BCP, 848.

[ii] Lori Brandt Hale, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 24.