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Ash WednesdayJonahFebruary 17, 2010 |
AshWednesday2010 The Sign of Jonah – from Death to Life February 17, 2010
In a new guide for Lent, Ben Stewart writes, “Among the many things Ash Wednesday accomplishes is a small-scale, ritualized, near-death experience.” (18) I don’t know if any of you have had a near-death experience. I haven’t, but spiritually, that is what Lent brings. We enact this ritual of placing ashes on waiting foreheads not because it’s pretty, but because it’s true.
Romano Guardini writes, (30)
“Everything turns to ashes, everything whatever. This house I live in, these clothes I am wearing, my household stuff, my money, my fields, meadows, woods, the dog that follows me, the clock in the hall, this hand I am writing with, these eyes that read what I write, all the rest of my body, people I have loved, people I have hated, or been afraid of, whatever was great in my eyes upon earth, whatever small and contemptible, all without exception will fall back into dust.”
But we have courage to come to this night’s “small-scale, ritualized, near-death experience” because we know it also speaks of life, real life, the kind of integrated life that raises us to new selves – given by the grace and mercy of God. Pope Leo of the fourth century wrote: “Now is the time when generous Christians forgive offenses, pay no heed to insults, and wipe out the memory of past injuries.” (28)
Really? What an optimist he was! It is so hard to “pay no heed to insults” and to “wipe out the memory of past injuries.” And I’m not sure wiping out memory is what’s needed. What’s needed is to see we are all human – humus – made of earth and ever so capable of acting like it.
Ashes are drawn equally on all, even if we choose not to have them drawn. We still get the point that we all are caught in the human predicament where sin and death threaten to undo us. And on some days they do undo us. And that is why we are here.
Sin gets the better of us and left to ourselves we would be without hope. But we are not left to ourselves. We are not left to our inability to forgive offenses – our own and those of others. We are not left alone, but are marked with the cross. The cross shape rises up out of the ash. It’s not a smudge on our foreheads – though it may look like it when drawn by these un-artistic hands. But despite what it looks like, the form of a cross has been drawn.
This cross-shaped smudge is good news. The message is that Lent isn’t so much about us and the running away from God we do. It’s about a God who loves us and has such a claim on our lives that in one form or another big fish will be put in our tracks to catch us up. God so loved that God came in Jesus the Christ. His death is our resurrection, our entry into real integrated life where we are risen from ash into being children of God. Lent does not promise us to be rid of our humus nature, but it puts that humus nature into glorious perspective.
The story of Jonah – with his encounter with the big fish – is a story of a near-death experience. Without the big fish, being thrown over-board as Jonah was would have meant he’d be lost forever. As the story goes, the frightened mariners threw Jonah over-board at Jonah’s insistence. The ship was going down and Jonah didn’t want to be blamed for the whole crew dying because he was running from God. “Throw me over-board,” he pleaded, assuming it would mean death for him, but hopefully life for the rest of them.
But God had something else in mind. The story tells us that God sent a big fish to catch Jonah and hold him for three days in that watery tomb (or womb as the Hebrew word suggests.) The big fish is, for Christians, a metaphor of resurrection – of being brought from death to new life – not by our strength, but by God’s rescue and gift.
About metaphor, Gerard Sloyan writes, the “great truths about new life are so great that ordinary language is not equal to them. Only metaphor can handle them.” (169) As we prayed earlier this evening, “O God of deliverance, you saved Jonah through the waters of death, and after three days you brought him to new life. Speak to us by this sign, and call us to repentance, that we may heed the voice of your risen Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior.” (169)
Artist Gayle Palys and a number of our youth have blessed us with this visual reminder on our wall that, like Jonah, we too have been drawn from death to life. We have been saved from ourselves by God’s attention to detail. God knew where Jonah was, how far he’d been thrown and how much he needed saving. In this sign we recognize that had we been left to our own we too would drown in our inability to get ourselves or anyone else out of sin.
Like Jonah, we daily throw ourselves or others into harmful waters or are thrown by others’ sin against us. But God doesn’t abandon us to this reality of humus, of limitations, of panic and fear and jealousy and distractedness. God meets us where we or others have participated in throwing us – and meets us there with grace far greater than any sin – our own or anyone else’s. Nothing is so broken or evil that it throws us outside of the range of God’s saving power. Jonah is a metaphor for that good news.
What are our offenses? We have confessed a number of possibilities in tonight’s confession: “lack of love, shut ears, envy or apathy, exploitation of others, negligence in worship and prayer, indifference to injustice, false judgments and uncharitable thoughts, waste of God’s creation.” There’s something in there for everyone. No one gets off free of sin. But neither is anyone left out of the profound words with which the confession ends: “Accomplish in us, O God, the work of your salvation, that we may show forth your glory in the world.”
The real work done on this holy day is the work God does accomplishing in us the work of salvation. It is God’s doing – like God sending the fish for poor Jonah. Jonah could not have saved himself. Neither can we! We plunge ourselves and are plunged by the brokenness around us into dark cold depths over our heads. Sin is a scary thing. It’s not pretty. It harms relationships and communities. It keeps us from being and doing who and what God created us to be and do. But it does no good to throw our hands up in frustration or despair at the power of sin. It not only does no good, it is not necessary because God has taken care of it for us.
In baptism we are thrown out to sea to die to the power of sin and to let God raise us up to new and purposeful life. “Accomplish in us the work of your salvation, that we may show forth your glory in the world.” We are here for a purpose and sin is no excuse for not getting around to it. Jonah ran away from God, but God found him and set him on dry ground for God’s purposes.
Ash Wednesday is a night of joy. Psalm 51 with which we began says it well, “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Do not cast me away from your presence. Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”
Ash Wednesday begins the five week journey of Lent that leads to Holy Week and the great Three Days that culminate with Easter’s seven weeks and the 50th Day of Easter – Pentecost. The rituals we share through these weeks are practices intended to get us in touch with the incredible reality that we have been moved from death to life – not by our doing, but by God’s.
If we think we can live without dying to ourselves, to our demanding egos and fears, we will never fully live. Really living involves recognizing how we get ourselves thrown over-board like Jonah only to be caught by grace. Don’t fight being caught in sin because that is also where grace abounds all the more. Being caught is sometimes the only way we wake up to our death-dealing brokenness. God loves us too much to not keep finding us wherever sin has thrown us.
God came for Jonah in the shape of a big fish. God might come for us in the Psalms we will sing in worship throughout this season, or through the visuals of art on the wall, or the Wednesday Midweek Vespers and Faith Stories, or our turn at cooking dinner for a homeless person or in efforts to have difficult but compassionate conversations. God is always working to accomplish in us salvation – God’s intentions and purposes.
Lent reminds us that left to ourselves our intentions and purposes fall short. But Lent also assures us that God is at hand and has already set things right. There is nothing for us to do but embrace that gift and live it to the hilt. The world is waiting for the church to model – not beating ourselves and each other up for the ways we sin – but grabbing hold of each other with our ashen foreheads and celebrating that sin no longer holds us. Grace has found us. Lent invites us to wade deeply into its signs and symbols, metaphors and meanings. May this Lent find us attentive to how God is restoring us to the joy of our salvation and for service in God’s world!
Welcome to Lent! Amen
+Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA
Augsburg Fortress, Worship Guidebook for Lent and the Three Days, 2009.