Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
February 6, 2008
Ash Wednesday, Year A
The Reverend Elizabeth G. Maxwell
Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

   

     Let us pray.  O God, you have made us for yourself, and against your longing there is no defense.  Mark us with your love, and release in us a passion for your justice in our disfigured world: that we may turn from our guilt and face you, our hearts’ desire.    Amen.

     This collect by the English liturgist Janet Morley has shaped my prayer this Ash Wednesday, and I would like to spend a bit of time this evening meditating on it with you as we consider what this day means, and more, what it invites us to as we begin our Lenten journey.

     “O God,” she begins, “you have made us for yourself.”  This line follows Saint Augustine, of course, and his next line is: “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  So much restlessness, so many false directions, so many other attempts at satisfaction and comfort and safety, so many clamoring voices from our culture telling us that if we only buy something else, or have one more experience, or do something a little differently, we will be at peace.

     “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” but what is it to rest in God?  That is part of the invitation of Ash Wednesday, that rest.  Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.”  Where are our hearts invested this evening?

     Morley, however, does not follow Augustine, but says something different as a second line of her collect.  “Against your longing,” she writes, “there is no defense.”

     Really?

     As I think about this, I am aware of how often I feel defended, distracted, numb, shut down.  What ample evidence there is in our world of defense against God!  And yet surely the deepest hope of our faith is that God will not leave us in that defended, barricaded, invulnerable place.  Surely we hope, as Christians, that God has not left us in that place – that God’s persistence in seeking us in love, God’s breaking through our defenses, goes on and on until we turn and see.

     Surely the message of the incarnation is that God is with us in all that it means to be human, in all that we do to each other and ourselves, in all that we suffer, in all our joys and all our struggles.  And even more, the promise of Easter is that love, God’s love, is stronger than evil, stronger even than death, stronger than all the defenses we erect against it.

     God has made us for communion with God’s self, made us out of desire, made us out of longing to love and to be loved by and with us.  We are made for that relationship of love, and God yearns for us even when we do not know that the restlessness in out hearts is a like yearning for God.  And so, says the poet, ultimately against that longing there is no defense.

     I would venture to say that those of us who are here today have had at least some of our defenses breached, else we would not be in church on Ash Wednesday, this day that brings us to our knees.  Actually, as I was writing this reflection yesterday, I had an unconscious slip, and I wrote: “brings us to our needs,” and it does that too.  It brings us to our need of God.  I experience that need often as grief, grief for myself, for those I love, and for the world.  It is also a need to be forgiven, to be healed, to find meaning and purpose, to connect with something larger than ourselves.

     The prayer goes on: “Mark us with your love.”  That is a reminder, surely, of our baptism, in which we are sealed with the oil of chrism and marked as Christ’s own forever.  Oil is a kind of a joyful sealing, but today we are marked in a different way.  We are marked with ashes and the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  The marking of Ash Wednesday reminds us our mortality, reminds us of our limits as creatures, that we are not self-made beings, no matter how much our culture may preach otherwise.  We are marked with the vulnerability that we have as human beings, the vulnerability of all that we hold dear, marked with the preciousness and fragility of life.

     As we are reminded that we are dust, we are marked also with the sign of our interdependence with the earth and all who live on it.  Our origins are in the dust as in spirit; we are interdependent with other humans, dependent on God.  And when we accept the mark of the ashes, that is a sign of our repentance, our turning, our belief that there is a new possibility even for us.

     Maybe most of all, the ashes are a mark of truth-telling, of the truth that breaks through all our defenses against love.  Truth about sin and about grace, about need and interdependence and responsibility, about brokenness, and about the possibility of a different kind of wholeness – not the wholeness that is all pristine and innocent, but wholeness broken open, to be given away in love for the world.

     “Release in us a passion for your justice in our disfigured world.”  We go from the mark of ashes to the scars and wounds caused by human sin.  The wounds of war, hemorrhaging money, even as human lives are wasted and lost.  The wounds of neglect and exploitation of the poor, the violation of the earth.   In the Litany of Penitence on this day, we name our complicity, our apathy, our self-indulgence and greed, our responsibility for all that destroys and diminishes God’s creation.  And in that very specific prayer, which we use only on this day, we may become aware as well, of our own more personal, particular sins.

     I notice that Morley prays “release in us a passion for your justice,” asking not that something may be forced out by dint of will, but rather for an unbinding, an opening of what has been blocked.  I wonder, blocked by what?  Maybe by despair, weariness because the injustice in the world seems so big and the problems so intractable and complex.  Blocked also by pain so great that we feel numb, blocked by the business and absorption of our lives, by our fear.  And yet, here is the suggestion that God’s passion for justice, God’s desire for healing, God’s love for the world, are available to us, and that participation in what Isaiah calls, “the fast God’s chooses,” and Paul calls, “the ministry of reconciliation,” is our birthright as people of faith.  It’s what we’re made for, and it is what makes us in turn “like a watered garden.”

     The passion for God’s justice is not always a feeling, we know that.  But it is a commitment to trust in God, to pray, and to do the next right thing together, to share our witness, our struggles, our hope.

     “That we may turn from our guilt and face You.”  So often, we think of Ash Wednesday as being about facing our guilt, our sin, and that is part of it, but it’s really the smallest part.  Ash Wednesday is about awakening to what is, is it about naming the ways we have fallen short, acknowledging how we missed the mark.  But then it is about repenting, it is about turning, not wallowing- turning to face God who is our hearts’ desire.  I think that’s scarier and far bigger than facing guilt.  “Now,” says Paul, “now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.  Now is the time of turning, now is the moment to face the one who made us and loves us and against whose longing there is no more defense.  Now is the time when change can be made.  Now is the place where God is present.  Now is the moment in which we are invited to face our hearts’ desire.”

     And what is that desire?

     Surely, it is the longing to love and be loved, deeply, wholeheartedly, and without reservation.  Also, the longing to participate in the good work of healing the world, reconciliation, greening, justice and peacemaking, exploring the mysteries of creation.  The longing to give the gift that is in us and that is ours to give for the good of the whole, longing to receive with gratitude the gifts of others.  In the face of profound brokenness, of the realization of mortality and vulnerability, my heart’s desire is to experience grace in the beauty and blessing and love of life.

     And so we journey towards Easter through Lent, we journey towards a wholeness that can incorporate all that has been lost.  The disciplines and devotions of this season are not about cleaning up our lives and making them nice and pretty and neat.  Rather, they are the devotions and disciplines to teach us how to love.  As one writer has said, “Love, which is the motive and aim of life, is not about cleanliness, but about spontaneity and risk.  True life is not about being clean, but about being real.”  (Marv Hiles)

     The journey into the Paschal mystery requires the courage to face and follow our heart’s deep desire for God, whatever the cost.  It is the journey of being lured by the God who loves us and the journey to become better lovers ourselves.

     And so, at the end as at the beginning we pray:  O God, you have made us for yourself, and against your longing there is no defense.  Mark us with your love, and release in us a passion for your justice in our disfigured world, that we may turn from our guilt and face you, our hearts’ desire.

     Amen.