Pastor Doug's Ash Wednesday Sermon 2018

Isaiah 58:1-12

One of my “beefs” about the season of Lent, is how often we get it wrong.   Without fail I hear the same Lenten conversations year after year.  Maybe you’ve heard them too.

“this year for Lent, I’m giving up…”

Or, “this year for Lent, I’m taking on…”

For years, we have gotten Lent wrong because of this emphasis on “me”.  Certainly, each of us are personally invited to enter into the season of Lent and into its disciplines: “Self-Examination, repentance, prayer, fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love.”  And that is all good and that is how it should be.

Truly each of us in this season of Lent are exhorted to enter more deeply into the promise of Christ’s embrace as he passes over from death to life with each of us.

But all too often, “self-examination” ends there in the personal space called “me.”  All too often, our Lenten story becomes an autobiography about Jesus and me neglecting the public reality of Jesus and community.

Now don’t get me wrong:  I admire each and every one of you for being here this evening when clearly you could be home reading a good book, watching the Olympics, or binge watching on Netflix.  But here you are in this place beginning yet again on a journey, marked not by ease and self-fulfillment, but by a cross and selfless servanthood.

Here you are tonight standing face to face with the harsh reality that each of us is broken – publicly confessing our sin – confessing that we have not loved God with our whole heart or our neighbor as ourselves.

Here you are tonight standing face to face with the harsh reality that each of us “are dust and to dust we shall return” as dirty, dusty ashes anoint our foreheads; acknowledging the fragility of life.  If we don’t believe we are dust, just look at the latest mass shooting that claimed at least 17 victims in a South Florida high school today.

And yet, for all that we do here tonight, this evening’s Ash Wednesday liturgy is not simply about us.  It is not simply about Jesus with us.  It is more than that:  Much, much more than that.  If the prophet Isaiah has anything to say about our service this evening, he would tell us that unless love and care for the poor and vulnerable emerges from tonight’s service, then our time together this night has simply been a waste of time.

 

Tonight, we catch Isaiah at his prophetic best, as he confronts a society that is content with not only neglecting the poor and needy, but literally oppressing them, living by the mantra of “make Jerusalem great again.” 

Who after all has time to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, or to share their bread with the hungry?  Not us, we’re too busy building walls to protect us from change and to preserve the way things used to be in the good old days.

But if scripture is clear on nothing else:  It is that God’s very heart is with the widow and the orphan.  God’s very heart is poured out in love for all on the hardwood of a cross.

In this season of Lent as we journey from this night to the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter morning, may we do so not alone isolated from the world around us.  But with Christ – God’s heart.  And on this life changing journey may we walk with God’s heart; may we be God’s heart in this place and in all the world.

Amen.