In a few minutes, many of you will come forward for what our prayerbook calls "the imposition of ashes". I will mark a cross on your forehead using the ashes left last night when we burned our old palms.
So here’s a bible factoid and a thought.
In Genesis, after Cain killed his brother Abel, he was punished. God exiled him from his father’s farmland and from the Lord’s face. Imagine hearing, "Get out of my sight." That’s a real punishment.
Now, remember the "mark of Cain"? Banished, Cain is afraid he will be killed. He has no allies. He is doomed to wander. His story will be known—and he fears that whoever finds him will slay him. But God says no. And marks Cain. That mark, maybe even a tattoo, was visible to all. And, here’s the interesting thing—it was to protect him. In the very midst, of his punishment, there is God’s grace and mercy and providence. No one was to slay Cain. To do so was to risk God’s wrath.
The "mark of Cain" shows God’s goodness and love toward him.
What about us? Is it possible that the ashes we receive today/tonight are also a sign of God’s grace, mercy and love? Is it possible that they are a mark that we are given safe passage?
When I was a child, my grandfather brought up ashes from the big old furnace in the basement where he made root beer and built birdhouses and started his tomato plants. He sprinkled those ashes on the steps, walks and driveway around the house so that we could walk more safely on icy, winter days.
Can the ashes of Ash Wednesday do the same for us today? If we accept them, can they keep our feet on the path of holiness and in the way of the Cross of Christ?
As a reminder of our mortality, they let us know that time is precious and that today is the day to seek and serve God. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow may never come, today—now is all the time we are given to commit our selves to God.
Many of you also grew up in homes that were heated by coal, so you will know the truth of what I say next. Because our homes where heated by coal, spring cleaning was a big event. The whole house had to be attacked with dust mops, scrub brushes and rug beaters.
That is not the common experience today. Most of us heat our homes by oil, electricity or gas. So our homes don’t need that concentrated attention in the Spring.
But there is still work to do.
If you don’t clean up a family room it gets so dirty and dust, so cluttered with all kinds of things—old magazines, newspapers, out of date TV guides, sneaker and slippers under the coffee table, mittens lost behind the pillows—where they call out to the lost remote control…
[Don’t ask me why I can describe this room in such great detail.
Just remember, the preacher is always preaching to the preacher.]
If you don’t clean up a room before the dust bunnies grow into jack rabbits…life in that room becomes almost impossible.
Have any of you seen the "reality" TV show called "How dirty is your house?"? It’s incredible. Two British women come in and take over and from top to bottom—attic to basement—everything is tuned out, sorted and either thrown out or polished and set back in place.
The whole show is possible because we’ve cocooned in our homes long enough now that clutter and mess have become a reality for many, many people—even people who live beyond the Lehigh Valley.
Thomas Merton, who wrote many books on the spiritual life, got permission in 1964 to leave his monastery at Gethsemane in Kentucky and to live alone in a hermitage. At that time, he was already famous. Many people had read his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, which described his call to the life of a solitary monk.
He’d been raised comfortably. He went to Columbia University where he enjoyed hearing jazz at area clubs and attending opening nights for the exhibits of modern artists. He declared his love on a July night to Constance Bennett while vacationing on Natuckett Island. She turned him down and he turned his attention to other young women from Vassar and Bryn Mywr.
For awhile, he thought his particular call was to be a Communist and he traveled to Europe to test this notion. What became clear to him was that he was called to the spiritual life then and now, in 1964, to a solitary life. This meant he had to move.
We all know that moving is an ordeal. Few people like to move. We collect and hoard and treasure stuff that makes moving almost impossible.
Merton describes in his diary how he prepared for this new life of solitude he had been seeking for so long. He began by cleaning his room!
His life had gotten cluttered under piles of things. And though it was sometimes difficult to decide whether to throw certain items out, he filled wastebasket after wastebasket. Now, remember, he was a m- o- n- k. He lived in a m- o- n- k’s c- e- l- l. This was a relatively small space to have gotten so cluttered. Think about your own place and space.
With each trash can that left his room, with every load he carried, he felt lighter. He felt liberation. He saw that most of his discards could be burned. After that day of housecleaning, he left for his hermitage feeling free. He wrote that he left his past behind in the ashes and could start anew.
How about you?
Can you leave your past behind in the ashes of Ash Wednesday?
Are you ready for a new start, new growth?
Today/tonight we use ashes to remind ourselves of our creation and our mortality. And, we pray, they may also give us a spirit of purification which frees us to start anew.
Our lives mirror Merton’s experience…
We need times and seasons for a good old fashioned spring housecleaning.
We need to get rid of the toxin in our bodies, heaped there because of our hurried lifestyles, so we can be healthy.
We need to straighten out our unhealthy relations with others so we don’t remain embittered or spiteful and cease to grow spiritually and emotional and intellectually. These negatives mean slow death. They have to be cleared up, thrown out, or changed.
That is the opportunity and invitation of Lent.
Use these 40 days well and faithfully. Then come to Easter- the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ- renewed and enlivened.
AMEN.
