Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

If snow were ashes…

That’s been my working title for this sermon, since Indiana and so much of our country started to receive warning upon warning that ‘winter was coming’ over the last week or so. And that it was going to show up all at once… winter… in Indiana at least. Piles and piles of snow we hadn’t seen yet, this year, until the middle of February when it all showed up at once. And that it would hit places like Texas, too, where they aren’t so used to or prepared or able to handle what came with such weight and depth and cold.

If snow were ashes…

But that working title really hit home for me yesterday, when the first wave of all that snow had arrived, as predicted, and I did my annual dusting off of the snow blower. You know that machine that gets packed away in the Spring, parked in the far reaches of the mini-barn, until Fall rolls around and I make space for it in the garage where it sits and waits for winter and cold and snow high and heavy enough to earn its keep.

Along with the annual dusting off of the snow blower comes the annual testing of my patience when the thing doesn’t start as it should. And the annual frustration I feel as I check the oil and wonder about the spark plug and pull that rope until I break a sweat. And then the shame … oh the shame is real … for knowing, every year … every God-blessed year … that I should have started the thing a time or two or twelve since last time I used it … and probably changed the oil … and apparently used different, better gas, according to the guy at the hardware store.

If snow were ashes…

Then comes the crow I eat (whatever that means) as I recruit my boys to help me shovel – back-breaking work this time around – and as I hear the sounds of happy snow blowers, starting up without fail, in garages and driveways all around me, over the clear, driven snow. And as I watch those driveways get cleared with efficiency and ease – just as it should be when one owns such a piece of snow blowing equipment. Oh, and the mix of shame and deep gratitude for the kind neighbor who comes to our aid by snow-blowing out the biggest, heaviest piles of it all just after the city plow does a drive-by in the middle of our work and blocks the end of our driveway again.

If snow were ashes…

I say that because I think a lot of us – me included – treat the sin and death these ashes represent for us with about as much respect, regard and preparation as I treat my snow blower and the prospect of snow. I mean, I think we avoid and dodge and deny the inevitability of our sin, our shame, and our ultimate demise to the point that it catches us off-guard and finds us unprepared and leaves us frustrated and ashamed and afraid, even, too much of the time.

Which is so much of what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are meant to be for us: a reckoning for our brokenness and sin; a reminder that the winter of our dying will, indeed, come; and an invitation to do something – to live differently – because of it; and with hope that someone – God, in Jesus, to be specific – has and will get us out of this mess, to redeem all of it for our sake and for the sake of the world.

So what would we, could we, should we do, if snow were ashes?

Let’s stop denying that death will come – and indeed is on the way – for every one of us. Let’s stop denying the Sin that besets us as individuals and as disciples and as a people… as God’s Church in the world.

We’ve had enough, too many, reminders of that death and our Sins since our last Ash Wednesday worship a year ago have we not?

When we last shared and received our ashes in 2020, the pandemic wasn’t being called a pandemic yet. We thought it might be something like the flu and we tried to convince ourselves of that for quite a while. Too long, probably. 485,000+ deaths in the U.S. and almost 2 million more deaths worldwide later, this death is impossible to deny. (If snow were ashes…)

Last Ash Wednesday we’d never heard of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery; we didn’t know who Rayshard Brooks or Daniel Prude or Casey Goodson were, either. Too many of us still keep the truth and the ugliness of the deadly racism that infects our country hidden away in the back of the mini-barn until it rears its ugly head, like it did on the steps of the US Capitol, for instance. (If snow were ashes…)

Last Ash Wednesday, cancer and chemotherapy and radiation were things I wondered and worried and prayed about for all of you and for so many others. But it all moved into my house this summer, fast and furious, like a blizzard you might say, and things have changed for our family because of it. And, I know, the same is true for so many … some disease, some diagnosis, some treatment – or worse – find us all, eventually… (If snow were ashes…)

And this is how Sin and death come together so much of the time for us – like something we know is there; like something that could happen; like something that will, eventually happen; like something we can choose to put off or deny or pretend away. But something that looms, nonetheless. And lingers for those of us who are left behind.

So what to do? – if snow were ashes or ashes were snow, or whatever – dumped so predictably, yet by surprise in so many ways.

These ashes we wear on our foreheads and these words we hear from Jesus and the promises we read in Scripture remind us that we need not fear the sin and death that send us running and reeling, dodging and denying so much of the time.

Instead, in the midst of it all, we’re called to tend our faith. We practice our piety, faithfully and quietly – not before others, in order to be seen by them. We give our offering without expecting applause or accolades for being generous. We pray, we fast, we worship, we learn, we serve.

And there’s more. We love our enemies and we pray for those who persecute us. We love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. And we love our neighbors as ourselves, too – which means even more than blowing snow for the knucklehead next door, truth be told. It means recognizing that our enemies are our neighbors a lot of the time. And that Jesus died and was raised for the whole lot of us.

And we do all of this, not because we have to but because we get to. And we do all of this imperfectly, tending to our faith, I mean, like the broken, sinful, dying children that we are. But we do it with gratitude, with gusto, and with as much faith as we can find – even if that faith is too small to see or to be seen some days.

And we live this way, with hope, in spite of these ashes and all they represent, because it is by way of ashes … dust … and even death that God does God’s best work, remember.

God looks forward to repairing what is so broken in our lives and in this world.

God has plans to redeem the ashes and the soot of our sinfulness.

God promises to breathe life into the dust and dirt of our dying.

Because if snow were ashes or ashes were snow, today reminds us that none of that lasts forever. It will all melt away, in the end, thanks to the grace we know in Jesus. And Spring will come, in God’s sweet time.

Amen

Matthew 25:31-46

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all his angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people, one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This is a hard one, this parable about separating the sheep from the goats. It’s popular because it speaks for itself when Jesus says, “whenever you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me,” that stuff makes for a great inspirational calendar, or bumper sticker, or coffee mug, or whatever. But the rest of it is a different story – that stuff about separating the sheep from the goats, I mean. There was a thread about it on the ELCA clergy page this week with no less than 100 comments from pastors and preachers going back and forth about it what to do with it – again – on this Christ the King Sunday.

That “sheep and goats” stuff, can trigger the fear factor of our faith and makes us wonder about which side of God’s heaven we’ll find ourselves on when the time comes. And wondering about that, we become like kids on the theological playground, wanting to make sure we get picked – sooner rather than later – and that we end up getting picked for the right team. As far as the story goes, that means we want to get picked to play for the Sheep, not left out and left behind, like the Goats.

So, too much of the time this bit from Jesus moves us to worry too much – if not exclusively – about ourselves, about our own souls, about our own eternity, about our own status in the eyes of God. None of us wants to spend eternity as a goat – on the outs – and sent into everlasting punishment, am I right?

But I’m convinced, Jesus means to accomplish just exactly the opposite when he tells us this story. Because he’s Jesus … Christ the King … I’m convinced he means to get us thinking about anyone and everyone ELSE in God’s kingdom, rather than the one staring back at us in the mirror. I don’t think we’re supposed to worry as much about our own eternity as we are called to worry about the suffering of the world around us, right here and right now.

Which reminded me of a song … and a video … by Van Halen … that came out when I was a senior in high school – “way back in the 1900’s,” as my kids like to say. 1992 to be exact. Fair warning, I may not have chosen to show this on the wall in the sanctuary during a regular Sunday morning service, because some of it may seem inappropriate for some folks. But, since we’re online and in our homes, it seems doable. If not, I hope you’ll forgive me.

It’s called “Right Now.” [So much of it seems still applies, as you’ll see. And little bits of it seem even more strangely apropos, if you know/remember that Eddie Van Halen just died in early October.] Anyway, here it is:

(For the record if you ask me, the most controversial, offensive part of that video is the assertion that God kills dogs and grandmothers. I don’t think that’s even remotely true. But that’s another sermon.)

What I remembered – and still like – about that video is the way it makes you think about what’s going on in the world we live in, but that we don’t always notice. Stuff that’s easy to miss, ignore, deny, or pretend away. People, even, that are easy to miss, ignore, deny, or pretend away. And, again, I think that’s the same thing Jesus is calling our attention to in this morning’s Gospel:

“Whenever you did it to one of the least of these – you did it to me.” “Whenever you feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick or the imprisoned you do it to me.” Or not.

This isn’t just about our prospects for eternal life. This is about our potential to be God’s people, right now.

Instead of imagining who’s in and who’s out of the Kingdom when the end of time comes, I think Jesus is inviting us to imagine who’s being included and who’s being left out of the kingdom right here, right now.

Who is it that’s hungry and thirsty? Who is it that feels like a stranger in your town, in your neighborhood, in your classroom, in your congregation? Who is it that’s naked or sick or in prison and needs to be clothed with something like the love of God, the welcome of friend, the hope of salvation, the forgiveness of sins?

I don’t think Jesus is saying “we’d better get to work, or else.” I think Jesus is trying to change our perspective so that we’ll get to work because there’s a new kind of kingdom afoot.

Jesus showed up to jump-start the coming of God’s kingdom in a way that had yet to be seen. Jesus showed up – to die and to be raised – as a sign that God’s forgiveness and love and mercy and new life were for all of creation in a way that creation so easily forgets, too much of the time. Jesus showed up – this Christ, the King – to inaugurate a new era, a new, better way of being, to give us a glimpse of what has already come and to invite us to get in on it – and to get on with it: A kingdom where love rules, right now. Where justice would, could, should prevail, right now. Where hunger and thirst, poverty and nakedness, sinfulness and shame already … right now … don’t belong.

Jesus showed up to open our eyes to what’s going on in the world around us, right now, so that we would get to work doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly, loving one another – even, and especially, the goats! – showing mercy, welcoming the stranger, caring for to the least among us, and more.

Because, when we do, it could change everything – for us, for others, and for the world – right now. And the kingdom will come among us – right now. And Christ, the King, will rule our hearts and our minds and our lives for the sake of the world, right now, when we – and so many others – need it most.

Amen