Ash Wednesday Thresholds

Mark 15:33-39

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land - until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’

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This Lenten season, some of you have heard, we’re inviting each other to “do Lent” a little differently, by learning about and engaging some ancient, Celtic Christian practices as part of our journey to Good Friday and to Easter’s empty tomb – which is what these Lenten days are all about. All of this was inspired by a conversation I had with Pastor Teri Ditslear, from Roots of Life, our friends up in Noblesville, when she and I got together to brainstorm about ways we might walk this Lenten walk in a new way this time around.

In a nutshell, my hope and intention are that we will learn something new about these ancient traditions and disciplines and that we’ll find ways to engage some timeless faith practices in active, hands-on kinds of ways from one week to the next so that this Lenten season of faith, sacrifice, redemption, hope – and more – will be front and center for our hearts and minds in a deliberate, meaningful way.

All of it is inspired by a book called The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred, which you won’t need to have in order to play along, but which some of you might want to have if you’d like to go a little deeper with all of this. The book also teaches about 12 of these practices, all of which we can’t cover in our handful of midweek services. If that’s the case, sign up for a book on the table with the devotionals out there, in the entry, and we should have a book for you by Sunday morning, thanks to the ancient Celtic discipline known as Amazon Prime. They cost $15.00 each.

Okay, enough with the pre-amble. The first Celtic practice that made me think about Ash Wednesday and all that brings us here this evening is what is called “The Practice of Thresholds.”

According to Christine Valters Paintner, the author of the book, thresholds were important to the ancient Irish monks who begat these practices we’ll learn about in the weeks to come. Thresholds are just what you think, I believe. They are the point of crossing over from one place to the next; from one room to the next; from one space to another. A threshold is the space between one time and another, a place of transition. “The Celts describe thresholds as ‘thin times or places’ where heaven and earth are closer together and the veil between worlds is thin.”

In other words, a threshold can be tangible and worldly – like a turnstile at the train station, or the bank of glass doors at your school or office; like the double doors to our sanctuary, or the door from your garage to the kitchen or laundry room of your house.

A threshold can also be an intangible, spiritual thing – like the moment between dusk and nightfall, or dawn and daylight; like a move from illness to healing, or health to illness; like the change of seasons. A threshold can be the transition from one phase of life to another – graduation, marriage, divorce, retirement. Or a threshold might be that thin, mysterious, holy moment between life and death – living and dying – which is where these ashes call our attention to be this evening.

So the value in “the practice of thresholds” – as the ancient, Christian Celts understood it – was to be aware of just how thin these times and places and seasons of transition in our lives can be. And to live differently because of that thinness.

I read an article in The Christian Century magazine last year about a smart phone app that changed a man’s life. I’m not talking about Facebook or Twitter; SnapChat, What’s App, or Words with Friends. This app is called “We Croak.” It’s icon looks like this, though it has nothing to do with frogs.

The app does daily – 5 times a day, actually – what these ashes mean to do for us, once every year, at the beginning of Lent. The app notifies you five times every day, that you are going to die – nothing more and nothing less. From what I can tell, the app has evolved since I first heard about it. Whereas the notifications used to say, simply and repeatedly, 5 times a day, “Don’t forget, you’re going to die,” nowadays, you are invited to open the app when the notification hits your phone for a short, sweet quotation about death from a poet, philosopher, theologian, or other notable thinker.

The inspiration for the app is a Bhutanese folk saying that suggests, in order for a person to be happy, one must contemplate death five times daily. So, these are just some of kinds of reminders that have hit my phone since I downloaded the app a month or so ago:

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.” (W.H. Auden)

“Despite the sound’s alarming roughness, it’s unlikely that the death rattle is painful.” (Sara Manning Peskin, M.D.)

“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” (Doris Lessing)

“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.” (Alice Walker)

And, just to bring us back to this notion of “thresholds,”:

“How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.” (Jane Hirshfield)

This 21st Century app, these ashes on our foreheads, and now, I hope, this ancient practice of thresholds at the beginning of another Lenten journey all serve the same purpose if we choose to embrace them:

To remind us of just how thin the veil is between life and death; how easily crossed the threshold; how swift and surprising, sometimes, it comes, no matter how sure and certain for each of us – we know – it will one day be.

“Don’t forget, you’re going to die.”

“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

As followers of the way. As believers in Jesus. As disciples of Christ, we are invited to remember, to not forget the truth of our impending death, because we need not fear the threshold between this life and the next – for ourselves or for those we love.

Because of Jesus, the curtain has been torn in two; the veil has been lifted; the threshold between this life and the next is a thin one; the kingdom of God has broken into our midst so that light and life shine into the darkness and death that pretend to threaten us on this side of the grave.

In Jesus, the love and grace and mercy of God conquers this death, wipes away these ashes, bridges that gap, crosses over the threshold that pretends to mark a distance between sin and forgiveness; judgement and redemption; anger and love; despair and hope; death and new life.

So, our sacred Celtic practice for the week to come, if you choose to play along, is to take notice of the worldly, earthly thresholds in your daily life – work, home, school, church, your neighborhood as you walk, the city limits or the county line as you drive, whatever. And to take notice of the spiritual, less tangible thresholds of your daily life, too – dawn and daylight; dusk and darkness; sleep and wakefulness; work and rest, whatever.

Download the “WeCroak App” if you dare – the author of that article I mentioned suggests there’s something as charming as there is challenging about all of that. Or pick up one of the “threshold stones” as the ancient Celts called them, that I’ve left on the table out front, and leave one or two at the threshold of some place that’s meaningful for you – your home, your office, your school. Let that stone be a reminder for you – and a strange curiosity, I would imagine for anyone who sees it – a reminder of what matters about your life, in that place, on this side of the grave.

And I hope all of this will help us recognize that we are invited to be mindful that we live with one foot in both worlds… in this kingdom and the next… on earth as it is in heaven, if you will. And let us not be afraid of this truth – that we are dust and to dust we will return – and let us rest assured in the promise of God, that nothing – no threshold is deep or wide or strong enough – not even the threshold of death – can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen

Crumbling Buildings, Commitment Sunday

Mark 13:1-8 (NRSV)

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

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Pastor Aaron warned us all last week we had a doozy of a Gospel on deck for our Building Fund’s Commitment Sunday this morning – with this talk from Jesus about temples and stones and buildings and more all being “thrown down.” “Not one stone will be left upon another,” Jesus promises. It sounds like bad news for a building program – like Jesus is suggesting what a waste of time and energy, money and resources all of those large stones and great buildings represent.

As your pastor in this place – as a Pastor in the world these days, frankly – it makes me feel like I have to defend what we’re up to around here when it comes to Building Funds and mortgage payments and Commitment Sundays. Why bother? What a waste? If all of these “earthly things” will soon be nothing but dust under the feet of the almighty, what’s the point of it, anyway?

And those are good questions. Great, faithful questions, really. Enough to make any one of us think twice, I hope, about what we’re up to. So with this morning’s Gospel and those questions spinning around in my head, I was tempted today to defend and to justify what we’re up to and why.

I was tempted to explain that, yes, it costs money – sometimes a lot of money – to make a church go, but that I think we do that pretty modestly and responsibly around here; that, just for some perspective, there are single family homes in this community that have mortgages equal to or not far from the mortgage we carry on this facility, for this family of faith.

I was tempted to preach – on yet another Building Fund Commitment Sunday – about how we’re simply called and commanded to give our money and our stuff away.

I was tempted to remind you all that our mortgage payment isn’t just about paying a bill, but that it’s about teaching us to do that – to give our money away, to be generous, to do with less – something most of us – something most people, myself included – need a little encouragement and loving accountability in order to accomplish in this culture of greed where we live.

I was tempted to remind you – and myself – that Jesus taught and talked more about giving away money than he did about anything else, because he knew it could become an idol in our lives.

I thought maybe we could use a reminder that this is an issue of faith for people like us – people with money to spare, compared to most of the rest of the world, I mean. That this is one of the easier ways, frankly – writing checks and giving money – that we can live out our faith. That making financial commitments that are faithful and generous and sacrificial – and honoring them – is a spiritual exercise that blesses us and others.

And I was tempted to simply remind whoever showed up today that our mortgage payments don’t just go to any old bank. But that they go to the Mission Investment Fund of the ELCA – an institution of the Church – which helps to build and grow other communities of faith around our country and out there in the world, too.

And I thought it might be worthwhile to remind us all that we tithe our Building Fund, remember: 5% of it is building homes in Fondwa, Haiti, and 5% of it is helping to build a faith community at Roots of Life, right up the road in Noblesville.

I guess I was tempted to justify and defend all of this by reminding you that our Building Fund is about so much more than the large stones, the large buildings and the bricks and mortar so many see or think about when they consider the Church in the world.

All of that was tempting. But I decided against it. (See what I did there?) Instead, I decided to see Jesus’ words and warnings to his disciples about the temple crumbling to dust as all the encouragement and justification I need for what we’re up to around here – as God’s Church in this place – day in and day out.

Because before the Church – and long before this church crumbles to dust, I hope – there will be wars and rumors of wars. And we don’t need Jesus to tell us that, do we? And that means someone needs to pray about and fight for and work toward peace on the planet. That means there will be soldiers who suffer and plenty of people and places who need repairing and restoring and rescue, too.

And there will be earthquakes, Jesus promises, and hurricanes and tsunamis, droughts, red tides and wildfires, too. And that means someone needs to offer prayers and hands and resources to bind up the brokenhearted, to support rescue efforts, to mourn the dead, to rebuild what is destroyed – and to do what we can to prevent it all in the first place.

There will be famines, too, we’re told. And there already are. And the Church can send food and money and people to deliver it to those who are hungry. And we can support our own food pantries and we can show up like we did last weekend, with youth groups and volunteers, to lend a hand to people who are hungry in our own city. We can sell and shop for and support fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate, too, just for good measure.

And Jesus says we will be tempted to be led astray – that others will come in his name, preaching and teaching something contrary to the Gospel of grace and love and hope he proclaimed for all people. And this is what I think we do best around here, when we get it right. It is not a stretch to say that we – at Cross of Grace and as part of the ELCA (where people of color and women and our LGBTQ brothers and sisters are affirmed and ordained) – we have a uniquely wide, welcome word of grace and acceptance and love and justice to speak into and to practice in our little neck of the woods.

And that’s just the big stuff. Many of the ways we’re called to be the Church are much closer to home, aren’t they? There will be strokes and melanomas. There will be heart attacks and cancers. There will be bullies and suicides; dementia and nursing homes; lost babies, broken relationships, addictions, layoffs and more.

And all of it is why the Church is meant to be in and for the sake of the world. See, we don’t stake our faith or our lives or our hope on buildings – on earthly things like bricks and mortar. But that doesn’t mean we stop using them as the tools – the means to the ends – for which they were designed. And the Church – whether we’re talking about the building or the institution – is nothing more and nothing less than a tool, used for the work of God in the world as we know it.

So we give and we build and we grow. And we do it in ways that are generous and sacrificial and that seem crazy to the world around us – and even to ourselves some of the time. And we do it precisely because all of this will be thrown down one day – not one stone or brick or wall – will be left upon another.

And we will be left with nothing but the abundance of God’s love for us and for the world. We will be left – not with our money or our things or our stuff – but we’ll be left with God’s mercy and forgiveness. We’ll be left with God’s hope, realized. We’ll be left with God’s kind of life everlasting, which is already ours… and already enough… and worth giving to and sharing with each other and the world in Jesus’ name.

Amen