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Ash
Wednesday 2007 |
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Ash
Wednesday 2007 |
Every Ash Wednesday we
read from the book of Joel. However,
for all the years I’ve sat with this reading, this is the first year that the
context in which Joel wrote has leapt out at me.
I now see that it could be said here that context is everything.
The book begins accounting a horrible attack on God’s land and people
by millions of locusts. Joel Chapter
1 describes the attack:
“What
the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten,
What the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.”
This passage is a
reminder from the Bible that while we may not be surprised when bad things
happen to people like Cain, the brother of Able, or Pharaoh who wouldn’t let
the people go, it is also true that sometimes bad things happen to God’s
special chosen ones like the people of Judah. (Proc. 2006, 154)
Joel uses intense
language to describe what was happening in
“The
earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble.
The sun and the moon are darkened; the stars withdraw their shining.
Terrible indeed! Who can endure it?”
After such striking words
the good news really sounds good: “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me
with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning… for God is
gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” It
seems Joel is trying to balance the horror of the locusts with the magnitude of
God’s gracious, merciful, abounding love.
As devastating as the locusts were, they could not outmatch God’s mercy
and love.
It is not clear in the
text what caused the locust attack. Trying
to figure out the cause is not the point. If
it were, it would have been made clearer. Trying
to figure out why bad things happen to anybody is not the point. It
is not the source of our comfort. Most
often, trying to figure out why is neither possible nor a useful way into the
future.
Joel doesn’t focus on
“why,” but on “who” and “how”. Who
are we? And, how do we find hope? From
his context of calamity, Joel doesn’t ask why, but says: “Blow the trumpet;
call a solemn assembly; gather the people; sanctify the congregation; assemble
the aged; gather the children, even nursing infants.”
Call the bridegroom and bride, even.
Tell them to put their honeymoon on pause and come.
Sometimes life is
overwhelming. And if we think we can
make it alone through times when it seems “the stars have withdrawn their
shining,” then we haven’t experienced those times yet.
If we think we can make it through the overwhelmings of life without
community; without rituals that speak the truth about life; without knowing
ourselves as a part of something larger than just us, we will wake up someday
and find ourselves wanting. We are
not islands unto ourselves.
Trappist monk Thomas
Merton writes in his book No Man is an
Island, that, “Nothing at all makes sense, unless we admit, with John
Donne, that: “No man is an island entire of itself, every one is a piece of
the continent, a part of the main.” John
Donne himself realized this one day when he heard a bell tolling for another who
had just died. Donne knew in that
moment that a part of him self had died. He knew that every other person is a
piece of his self – every Christian a part of his own body, as we are members
of Christ.
What I do affects them.
What they do affects me – though I am fully responsible for my share,
as they are for theirs.
During Holy Week a
labyrinth will be laid out on the floor of our Parish Hall.
A labyrinth is a pattern on which we walk as a tool for prayer.
One of the things I enjoy about walking the labyrinth is that while we
walk it by ourselves – on our own two feet, we also walk it with everyone else
on the labyrinth at that time – and with everyone who has ever walked it or
ever will. The labyrinth holds this
knowing that John Donne speaks of. We
are all connected. We are all a part
of the main.
To live a centered life
is to recognize this. It is to
recognize that I am not just an independent me – though I am a responsible me.
My life is a gift I didn’t give to myself.
It was given to me from outside of me.
And when I die I will not die to myself.
In living, we belong. In
dying, we belong. Who we are in life
and in death has to do with whose we are. We
belong to the one who lovingly created us, and still more wonderfully made us
whole in spite of ourselves – in life and in death.
To live a centered life
is to know this. It is to know that
our very breath comes from beyond us, and to know that when our breath ends, we
go to the Giver from whom we came. We
are never left alone. We belong.
We always belong – to God and to each other.
We are all part of the main. To
know this is to have hope. It is to
have hope, even when destroying locusts eat the last bit of our reason to hope.
On this night we receive
the smudge of an ashen cross on our foreheads and we hear the words “Remember
you are dust and to dust you shall return.” This is not a condemnation.
It is a remembrance of our baptism. In
Christ we die to ourselves and are raised up to a new, redeemed life in Christ
– a life that never ends.
It’s not about us
securing our future. It is not about
our making ourselves immortal somehow. It
is not about making ourselves free from failure and accidents and crazy choices.
We cannot do that. We are
vulnerable. That’s part of being
human. We are dust and to dust we
shall return.
But this dust on our
foreheads forms a cross. It is an
empty cross. Jesus no longer hangs
on the cross. He is risen.
The centered life trusts this. It
lives in daily remembrance that as Christ is risen, so are we –not only in
death, but also in life. We are
risen up from the overwhelmings; from the swarming locusts; the cutting locusts;
the destroying locusts – whatever shape they take on in our lives.
We are risen up to make a
difference by remembering we are not islands, but are a part of the main.
We need each other, just as we affect each other.
We are made for our neighbor and our neighbor for us.
The centered life holds us accountable to this.
The opposite of the
centered life is not a distracted life. We
all get distracted. I am distracted
by the puppies in the morning; by the chickens when they announce they have laid
an egg. I am distracted by grief;
mine and others so much more acute than mine.
I am distracted by war; by the thought of those in harms way.
I am distracted by homelessness and hunger; by global warming and its
threat to all creatures. And I
won’t believe you if you tell me you do not know distraction.
But even in the midst of
distraction we can be centered if we know who we are and to whom we belong. The
opposite of the centered life is an alienated life.
To entrust our alienated selves to God – even in the face of
distraction – is the beginning of the centered life.
May we support one another in the journey of discovering the gift of
living with Christ as our center!
Tonight the ashes attest,
we belong to Christ. No matter how
powerful the locusts are in our lives, they cannot overpower God who is
gracious, merciful and abounding in steadfast love.
Amen.
+Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson,
to the glory of God
Faith