I was reading on a news website the other day about a group that is travelling from city to city across the
That’s right, you have slightly more than two months to live. Of course, it depends a bit on who you talk to – some of the people, who are all followers of Family Radio Worldwide, say that May 21 will be the day of judgement, while others just say it will be the beginning of the day of judgement. I guess there is such a thing as hedging your bets on such an important topic.
But I don’t mean to sound flippant. The end of the world; the end of all time; the end of all flesh has long been a fascination of the Christian church, from the earliest church fathers to its latest messiahs. But I do have to wonder: what are the motivations of this group? They believe that only a small percentage of people will be saved from God’s wrath. A heartrending interview with a 8-year-old girl revealed that while she hoped she would be saved, she knew she wasn’t, “and was really afraid burning for eternity.”
And I ask myself: what good does that do? What comfort is there to believing that what God redeemed in love he will later destroy in wrath?
But no matter how we view the beliefs of other faith communities, when we as Lutherans embark upon the journey of Lent, when we repent and ask for God’s forgiveness, we are anticipating the same end of the world. We know it will come. And we ask God’s mercy.
But we do things a little differently. For the sign of the cross marked on your foreheads today with ashes – like the one at your baptism – isn’t put there in case you die. It’s in case you live; because it’s easy to die in the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ – but it’s something else entirely to aspire to live in it. You are marked with ashes today not just as a remembrance of your own mortality; but you are marked with the cross of Christ, through which you will gain everlasting life.
The Lenten season begins today and will last for more or less 40 days – though if you were to count, you’d find there are in fact more like 45 days until Easter. Sundays aren’t included in Lent, because they are always celebrations of the Resurrection. And just so you know, the word ‘lent’ originally meant ‘spring’.
And maybe lent has more in common with spring than we might think; spring is a time of newness, rebirth, and renewal out of the death of winter;
lent is a time to reflect on our baptism and its basis in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As we opened this evening in the litany: for if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. You may have recognized that from Paul’s letters. But maybe you recognized it for what it’s greater meaning to this worshipping community: the opening of our funeral liturgy.
As we reflect on the death of things past and things to come, lent becomes a time for rebirth and renewal in preparation for the celebration of Easter. Ash Wednesday is the lens through which we see ourselves in relationship to that crucified and risen Christ.
For lent, and today especially, is a time of reflection and penitence, and thinking about our own mortality and our own being. We become part of Christ through our baptism. We remember that God forgives and justifies us because of our faith in Jesus, who took our sin on himself. Ash Wednesday is for us to recognize the scandal of a God who chose to die so that his children could live.
About thirty years after the resurrection of Jesus, Paul wrote to the Corinthian community and begged them: we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. In effect: let Christ be your Saviour. Stop insisting that you are an agent in your own salvation. You are not.
On Ash Wednesday, we consider how we have been drawn into God’s dialogue with creation, how God in Christ took on our sin, bore the brunt of our unrighteousness in putting him to death, and still gave to us his own righteousness, the righteousness of the Passover lamb, the utter and complete forgiveness of all our sin.
Tonight, we reflect on how we can be the recipients of such awesome gifts, and still remain the sinful and self-worshipping creatures that we are. And we come to admit our fault, our guilt, our culpability in Christ’s death.
But we also rejoice in our new life in Christ.
And this is part of the great Christian mystery, a paradox at the heart of our Lutheran theological tradition – and mystery is something Lutherans do well. But Luther wasn’t original in his idea; Paul wrote to the Corinthian community about that same paradox, how he could have all things through Christ, but that still the reverse was true, as well:
…be treated as an imposter, and yet are true
…as unknown, and yet well known
…as dying, and behold, we live
…as punished, and yet not killed,
…as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing
…as poor, yet making many rich
…as having nothing, yet possessing everything.
And the scandal of the Christian life is that we are justified – we are made right with God solely through the actions of Jesus Christ – and yet, at the same time, we remain sinners. Because our treasure lies coated, stained, and wrapped in sin.
Our treasure should be the grace and mystery of God. But we find our treasure in what we can do for ourselves, be it for our salvation, or simply to crown our own selves the regent of our own lives. We are caught in that, as we confess so often that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.
We can’t change that treasure. We can repent, and turn from it, but we will return to it again; faith is not a straight line; it is a winding path that leads to the kingdom of heaven. But we do not give up hope.
And Jesus says, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It can be depressing that because there is nothing we can do – we can never work hard enough to make a sign to God that we believe – that we give up, and so consistently reject the presence of God in our lives,.
We can’t change our treasure. But God can change our hearts. And we find, that through our baptism, God does, in fact, do exactly that. Because when our hearts are buried with Christ through the waters of baptism, then it is God who changes our hearts, who creates them clean and new, speaks words of hope and healing, and gives us a treasure absolutely beyond compare.
This is the one day of the year when, if you don’t scrub your forehead immediately after the service, everyone will know you are Christian. You are serious enough about it to let someone smudge ashes onto your head. But consider this: when others talk about the need to repent, for the end of the world is near, you are marked with ashes today as a sign that the new world is near: that God’s kingdom is coming, and that you are created new each and every day.
Someone once asked Martin Luther if he thought that the end of the world was coming. Martin replied that certainly, the end of the world was coming. But, “even if I knew for certain that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.”
And your world might end tomorrow. It might end on May 21. But God will still keep planting the seeds of his kingdom in your heart, and watching it change and grow.
Because are worth more than dying for. You are worth living for. I don’t mark you with ashes because you should die. You are marked so that you may live.
So that the tree on which was hung the Saviour of the world might become for you a symbol of hope, of renewal, of resurrection. You are grafted onto that great tree of life; but dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
But God created the world out of dust. What more will God do with you?
Let the people of God say amen.
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