22 February 2012

Ash Wednesday
“Weeping between the vestibule and the altar”
Joel 2:17 / Isaiah 58:1-12
22 February 2012


Stephen King … yes, that Stephen King … the author of ”Carrie” and “Christine,” “Pet Sematary” and “Cujo” … Stephen King may seem like an unlikely source for an Ash Wednesday sermon.
Ah, but then there’s “The Green Mile” … and the character King creates known as John Coffey … the larger than life miracle-working death row inmate. In the 1999 film version of King’s novel … Coffey utters some words, as he prepares to go to the electric chair for a crime he didn’t commit … words which are most appropriate for us, gathered here today:

I'm tired boss. I'm tired of being on the road lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I'm tired of never having a buddy to be with to tell me where we's going to, coming from or why. Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time.

If ever there was a day to be tired of people being ugly to each other … tired of the pain in the world every day … it would be today, Ash Wednesday, this day which begins our introspective season of Lent, this one day in the Christian year when we are called upon by the Word and the Lord of the Word to stop, and take stock, of ourselves, the world, all our shortcomings and failures, commissions and omissions, all that separates us from God and from each other.
Though for much, most of the world, those words are a call to folly and futility … look around you, pay attention to what’s going on all around us here, gathered away and apart as we are for this hour today (tonight). Does the world notice, does the world, indeed, care what we’re doing here, marking a time of repentance, marking ash crosses on our foreheads as signs of shame and sorrow?
Of course not. Life goes on, pretty much unabated, today as it does every day.
And that’s probably because, having a “day of repentance and atonement” is seen as a pointless enterprise. We live in the age of the “non-apology apology” … surely you’ve heard these before … “Oh, I’m sorry that you feel that way.” What a self-centered, self-serving utterance of pure garbage. You’re sorry that I feel insulted … hurt … embarrassed … separated from you, because of your behavior. You’re not sorry for your behavior … far from it … you may well be proud of it … you’re just sorry that I can’t join you in the joy of your self-indulgence.
What a different picture we have painted for us in the words of the Prophet Joel.
Certainly this Old Testament prophet was familiar with the Hebrew traditions surrounding Yom Kippur … the yearly observance of a Day of Atonement, prescribed by God in the book of Leviticus, and still marked today by observant Jews, their most solemn day of the year.
Joel’s words in this second chapter echo the actions called for on such a Day of Atonement … God calling his people to repentance and renewal.
Yet … here in Joel … there is a sense that some, one or more, individuals of the community bear a particular burden in this Atonement, this making at-one-ment between God and his people, for their sins, for their shortcomings …

Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery,
A byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?”

The priests. The tribal shamen. The professionally religious. They are the ones who take on the burden of their people.
Certainly in the Old Testament time, the time of the Priestly class in Israel, this was the case. A rabbi Kathleen and I knew in the Twin Cities painted a particularly poignant image of the work of the Priest in Israel’s history.

All week long, the priest would do his duties, offering animal sacrifices on the altar of God brought by the people as atonement for their sins. But even on his day off, the work wouldn’t cease. On his day off, the priest would take off his robes and finery, put on the ancient equivalent of an old pair of Levi’s and a worn hoodie, fill a bucket with warm water, throw in a rag, and then, he’d get down on his hands and knees in the Temple Holy of Holies and scrub up all that blood that had been thrown on the altar in the previous week, the blood of their sacrifice, the blood of their atonement . Even on his day off, he’d still be bearing the burdens of his people.

Of course, today the priestly class in Israel is long gone, the Temple destroyed two thousand years ago … but there’s still a sense that the professionally religious … priests and pastors … continue to bear the burden of the people, the community of faith in which they serve. Some, more than others … due to denomination or piety, theology of the office of pastor, high or low, and so on … but I know, I feel it. There have been … there are … and there will continue to be days when there’s much weeping between the vestibule and the altar … days when John Coffey’s words are most certainly my own:

Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time.”

We do hear about much pain and suffering. We read the news and watch the TV and the internet with a particular sensitivity to the pain and suffering of the world … “people being ugly to each other” … those words, those images, those enfleshed-stories, in the lives of people we know and care for and in the lives of those we don’t know at all … that’s what we in this inadequately-named “caring profession” do … we care.
Now in our Reformation-centered thinking, of course, we know in our heart of hearts that “caring” is no longer limited to the priest or the pastor, the professionally religious. We live in the church which is the “priesthood of all believers,” after all, everyone capable and called to go before Christ directly in prayer and in service without the intermediary of one of the Levite religious.
Many of us know, and do that, every day; we walk wet in our baptismal promise and heritage, which call to be Christ and bring Christ, through our thoughts and prayers, words and actions, to our neighbors.
And soon enough, once we start, we find that it hurts to care. It’s like pieces of glass in our heads all the time.
Why does it have to hurt so much to care?
For me, part of why it feels that way is because so many people choose not to care. Of those outside the circle we draw which we call “church” … well, perhaps their behavior can be excused as understandable, if not endorsed or approved. They don’t know God’s Word, God’s admonitions, God’s Law about how we are to treat “the least of these” … as the words of our other Old Testament reading for Ash Wednesday, from the prophet Isaiah, lay out so clearly:

To loose the bonds of injustice,
To undo the thongs of the yoke,
To let the oppressed go free,
And to break every yoke?
… To share your bread with the hungry,
And bring the homeless poor into your house;
When you see the naked, to cover them,
And not to hide yourself from your own kin?

But what about those inside that circle called “church?” Those who most certainly fly the flag of “Christian” over their lives? What of them?
My words here … not Jesus’, but mine … though I believe I have the mind of Christ in them.
There can be no excuse … none whatsoever … for those who call themselves “Christian” to treat others in such utterly reprehensible ways … to speak of them in such contemptible terms … to show no love, no care or compassion … indeed, in some cases, to show such total revulsion for those who, by their own work or will, are unable to rise above their life-station or situation. It’s not Christian. No matter how often you go to church, how many times you use Jesus’ name, how many crosses, how many TV cameras you stand in front of and proclaim it.
Those damned pieces of glass in my head, all the time. People being ugly to each other. The pain I hear and feel in the world every day.

Honestly, it’s not like God doesn’t give us plenty of chances … words of hope … and promises for us, if we turn around, repent, seek at-one-ment with God and each other.
Again, from Isaiah:

If you offer your food to the hungry
And satisfy the needs of the afflicted
Then your light shall rise in the darkness
And your gloom be like the noonday …
The Lord will guide you continually
And satisfy your needs in parched places
And make your bones strong.

Yes, there’s a Gospel word in this old, old Word from one of God’s prophets.
Granted, it’s conditional … “if-then.” If you do this … then I … God … will do this.
And maybe that’s the problem. Because much of the time it sure seems like those who don’t offer food to the hungry, those who ignore the needs of the afflicted, their light sure seems to shine bright in the darkness too; their gloom, it’s also a lot like the noonday.
There sure has to be more to repentance than this. Some doin’ it, some not, and all the while, people being ugly to each other … pain in the world … every day.
Yes, there is.
Martin Luther … he, another famous one who had pieces of glass in his head, all the time … he put it so well in the opening salvo of the Reformation, the Ninety Five Theses:

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent,” he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

In other words, it’s not the pieces of glass in our head, it’s not the pain we feel and hear in the world every day, that names and shapes us … but the waters of baptism … the bread and wine of the meal of Holy Communion … and those precious words which each contain …

…lovely child of God … beloved sister, beloved brother of mine … you who have heard my call to lay aside all that removes you from being what my Father creates and what I call you to be … you are forgiven … and freed from these chains, your bondage to sin and sorrow, pain and death … freed … to go, and live, and do for others in my name …

And thus, in everything we do ... all our words, all our actions, from the moment we rise to the moment we fall asleep at night … we receive every moment as a moment of, a moment for, God’s grace, at work in and through our lives … into the world.
The crosses drawn in water and oil on our foreheads and in our hearts, they take larger place, larger than the pieces of glass, larger than the pain we feel and hear … though we sin every day, though every day is filled with sorrow, every day is also an opportunity for repentance … and every repentance, a moment for at-one-ment with God and each other, because in Christ we are forgiven, again and again, and freed from the pain being in charge in and over our lives because Christ takes it on himself, for us.
And that’s the message of this day, this Ash Wednesday. Jesus, God taking on our finite humanity, becoming even ashes … even … nothing … so he could burn and purify out all the pain, the pieces of glass in our heads and on our hearts … change them, remake them ... where before there was despair, there’s now hope … where there was pain, there is joy … where there is death, life.
Make no mistake … those pieces of glass in our heads … the despair, the sadness, the pain we feel for others, and for ourselves … they’ll still be around … they will still be part of our lives and in the lives of these we care for, those we love.
For anyone with a heart, with compassion, with love, that is true.
BUT DO NOT FEAR.
They do not rule you. They are not the last Word for you.
These ashes are.
May this cross of ash you receive today remind you that in Jesus, all is being made new. The pain, the sorrow, the pieces of glass … and you, yourself … made new …
Made new, to go, and serve, and tell.
Tell others that, out of the depths, we shall rise.
Because of Jesus, and in his name.
Amen.