"Life-Giving Devastation of Lent" – Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

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."

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I’ve been dreading this Ash Wednesday worship service.

I knew it would be an emotionally-difficult one for me and for many of you in the congregation; primarily because its timing – on the heels of our brother, Chris Barrett, beginning hospice care and nearing death.

At this service, as you all come forward to receive an ashen cross on your forehead, I anticipated I would eventually reach out and touch the foreheads of Chris' family: Elise, Emma Ruth, Margaret, and Erikson. Would I trace the cross on the forehead of a wife whose husband had just died? Would I trace the cross on the foreheads of children whose father only have a few more days or hours of life? Or, would I not even have the opportunity to trace the cross on their foreheads because they remained home, in the presence of their own living reminder of mortality – ashes to ashes, dust to dust? Or maybe Chris would feel well enough to come to worship and would bend his head down so that I could put the black mark of mortality directly on his forehead?

I knew there would be others here tonight; others for whom I would have to muster a great deal of intestinal fortitude to speak the words “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” People like…

• Dave, still fiercely fighting aggressive prostate cancer;
• Stephanie, whose mother is nearing the end of life;
• Connie, whose newborn granddaughter is taking her last breaths;
• Denise, mourning the passing of her dear friend last month;
• Lindsey, who said goodbye to two grandparents in the past year;
• Steve, whose recent cancer diagnosis likely caused him to think about his mortality;
• Debbie, who tonight will go visit her aunt for perhaps the last time.

We all carry a story, a memory, a relationship, that is approaching death; and soon we will display a symbol of this death on our foreheads for all the world to see. If I think about it too much, it gets unnerving. For many of us, the very last thing we need right now is a reminder of our mortality. Death is already very much on our minds. We know all about ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

For many of us, the very last thing we need right now is a reminder that we are not in control. We’ve very aware of our inability to change our situation or the situation of someone we love. We know all about not having control.

For many of us, the very last thing we need right now is to be reminded of our sin. We’ve very aware of our inadequacy, our anger, our despair, and our constant inability to do our best or be our best. We know all about being unlovable.

And yet we gather here tonight to be reminded once more. All of that death and sin, that’s what our forehead crosses are made of.

Once we admit that, once we can look in the mirror and see our death and sin on display in all its ashen glory on our foreheads, only then are we ready to hear the good news:

The promise that death is not the end.

The promise that God is in control.

The promise that our sins do not define us.

A worship service like Ash Wednesday invites us into an inner journey into our heart of hearts to recognize our deepest fears and our greatest pain. It’s hard work to allow yourself to be completely submerged under the mysterious waters of honest self-reflection and total surrender. And yet, as people of faith, we trust that God is there in those deep dark waters. We trust that the promises of God can only be found in the midst of our deepest fears and our greatest pain.

It’s one thing for me to say this in front of you. And trust me, I’ve been plunged into the dark mysterious waters on several occasions; so this isn’t hypothetical for me. However, I thought it would be most important tonight for you to hear about the good news from our brother Chris.

I sat down with Chris last month and was able to record some of his memories and insights about living with a terminal illness. There was one part of our conversation where we ended up talking about this important message of faith in the midst of honest reflection. He used the phrase “life-giving devastation” to describe his journey with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Here’s a bit more, in his own words.

"One of the life-giving devastations of the process has been relinquishment after relinquishment after relinquishment. And part of that relinquishing the stories we’ve held fast, relinquishing the convictions that we’ve thought have made us who we were (and in large part have made us who we were) but the degree to which over the last four years we have had to relinquish the old has reminded me of a phrase that one of the theologians at Duke loved to say, 'Historians have it wrong. History is not narrated through cause and effect but by death and resurrection.' Throughout the whole process there have been death after death after death. Whether it’s the death of my pastoral identity; whether it is the death of the patterns and practices that Elise and I had shaped over our marriage that were not sustainable under these new circumstances and had to, in the midst of all the rest of it, we had to let go of those in order for something new to take shape.

"In the parlance of the bone marrow transplant world they call it the “new normal.” And for us there have been these new normal, new normal, new normal, and just when you think you’ve sort of got everything at an equilibrium, the whole thing tips again. The constancy of recalculation, it’s like all the GPS lady is saying is “recalculating, recalculating.” And yet, in the midst of that, what I guess you have to do is hold fast to the precious pieces.

"I’ve found that finding an interior space that is sufficient to hold all these imbalances, that’s been probably the key project and it’s involved all kinds of growth, all kinds of discoveries that were horrifying at the time. To know this was true about me or that was true about me; but to know it was to be able to receive that wound as a gift. To hobble around for a while and grow toward healing. The sense that the suffering has been a means of grace in a weird way. I’ve been kinda blown away by it. The things you thought were essential, aren’t necessarily. And the things you believed were constant identifiers no longer…they never even occur to me now."

At least for a few hours tonight, allow the reality of your suffering and death throw everything off equilibrium.

Because as long as those ashes remain on our foreheads, we don’t get to choose what identifies us. We are death and sin and lack of control. So too, we are life, forgiveness, and trust in the God who makes all things possible.

And for that we say, “Amen.”

"Damas y Madres" – Mark 7:24-37

Mark 7:24-37

From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

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I was a Spanish major in college. As part of my major work, I became enchanted with the country of Chile. My first introduction to Chile was a documentary featuring a group called las Madres de los Desaparecidos--the Mothers of the Disappeared. These women, these madres, were moms and wives whose loved ones had been disappeared during the military coup.

It was these madres who had the courage and fierce love to raise their voices in protest at the disappearance of their loved ones. They didn’t have any political standing or connections in high places, and they didn’t have a whole lot of financial resources, and the madres agonized over how to speak truthfully and forcefully the injustice of what had happened to their lost loved-ones. They finally settled on telling the story by using something they already knew how to do, and to do well. They created traditional tapestries like this one, called an arpillera. Usually, arpilleras depicted colorful scenes from daily life:

The arpilleras the madres made featured families at the dinner table with a conspicuously empty chair

scenes of soldiers seizing unarmed civilians,

and crowds of black-clad women holding a banner asking “Where are they?”

I was young, and I was idealistic, and it seemed to me that these madres were humble, righteous, and brave. And these madres became the heroic face of Chile.

I marveled at how they faced tragic circumstances with grace and grit. I admired them for their courage, and wanted to have the same hunger for justice they had.

Back then, if you had read me this passage from Mark, it would have been one of those madres that I imagined throwing herself before Jesus asking for healing for her daughter. And it would have broken my heart to hear Jesus insult her by comparing her and her afflicted daughter to unwelcome dogs.

Maybe you’ve had the same problem with this story. Here’s a woman who’s desperate, right? She’s scared to death about her loved one, and she’s come looking for help...and all Jesus does is sneer at her, call her a name, and deny her request. Could this really be something Jesus would say? Is this how the Son of God treats this humble, righteous, suffering woman?

Because of what I’d learned about Chile in college, I ended up studying there as an exchange student in 1994. When I got there, the women who offered us our orientation to the elite Catholic University we would be attending bore no resemblance at all to the madres whose heroism and courage I had admired from afar. These were proper ladies, damas as we called them in Spanish.

The grammar of the damas was as impeccable as their manicured nails. Their hairstyles were as in fashion as their tailored clothing. Both of the damas lived in Alto Las Condes, a super-wealthy district on the north side of the capital. When we as students asked the damas about the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and the deaths and disappearances that accompanied it, the damas laughed dismissively and said: You don’t understand. Pinochet was a hero. Our way of life would be completely impossible if he hadn’t made the difficult decisions that needed to be made. To our astonishment, the damas, in their fur coats and designer heels, were not the least bit sympathetic to the people who had been arrested, tortured, and executed. For the damas, the disappeared were irrelevant, and the grief of las madres was simply the collateral damage required to maintain the high standard of living to which the damas were accustomed.

So, Chile, it turns out, is a country with both madres, poor righteous women demanding justice, and damas, rich privileged women accustomed to getting their way.

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, whether the same was true in the Gentile territories Jesus is visiting in today’s story? Does it change our reading of today’s story if the woman who enters the home where Jesus is staying is more like one of the diva-like damas rather than one of the long-suffering madres? What if, for the sake of argument, this Greek syrophonecian woman is part of the social and financial elite? There are some clues in the text that would suggest this, including the fact that she is idenitifed as Greek, which the upper classes spoke, as well as the fact that her daughter is reclining on a bed, a real piece of furniture, rather than the mattresses that would have been the common sleeping surface.

If this is true, What if we imagine her striding into someone else’s home and advancing to the front of the line because that’s where she’s used to being? What if she doesn’t even have to assert her privilege? What if her privilege is so ingrained that it has become invisible to her? Just like at the market, people part to let her pass. Just like at the local restaurant, where every wait person in the place scrambles to find a place in their section for her to sit. Everyone knows who she is, and how many resources she has at her disposal. And it matters. To everybody in the room. And so when she enters and bows respectfully to Jesus and implores him to help her ailing child, no one can believe their eyes. Here’s a high-society dama, bowing to a traveling Jewish preacher! And the only one who isn’t impressed is Jesus.

“Sorry,” Jesus says, “Take a number. I’m sort of busy helping these people I care about, and low-lifes like you aren’t really at the top of my list.”

The whole place gasps. Does Jesus have any idea who he’s talking to? Does he not care that one word from this dama could undo his ministry in this whole county?

It’s a tense moment while she assesses the man who’s just insulted her. She collects herself, and says “yes, but even low-lifes get scraps from the soup kitchen!”

And suddenly, Jesus is moved. He’s seems genuinely impressed with her humility. And in that moment, a miraculous transformation occurs: in that blink of Jesus’ eye, the dama is transformed before everyone’s eyes into a madre! She has counted the cost and decided that the well-being of her daughter is worth the risk to her own reputation, that securing her daughter’s wholeness is more important than maintaining her social status. She has stepped down from her pedestal, stooped from her high place. She has acknowledged her need...for Jesus.

Now here’s what I suspect. I suspect that we’ve all got a little dama in us. We’ve all got streaks of vanity. We’ve all got some area or other where we enjoy a privilege that we’d just as soon not name out loud. Even we pastors aren’t immune. How many of us have gotten a discount on some good or service from somebody who just loves “taking care of the preacher?” Or gotten to sit at a place of honor at some important event because the prefix Reverend is attached to our name? And it’s not all just public privilege either--the stuff that’s obvious to everybody. What preacher hasn’t gone on vacation and attended a worship service only to walk smugly out of the service thinking: “At least I preach better than that guy?”

Y’all know, don’t you, that story about the Methodist preacher’s kid who went to the nearby Lutheran college? Turns out chapel was mandatory. And when he came back home for Christmas break, this preacher’s kid had all kinds of things to say about how the Methodist Church he been obliged to attend all his life didn’t measure up to the fine liturgical tradition he was being exposed to at college. His father listened patiently as the son noted how the Lutheran pastor crossed knelt to pray and made the sign of the cross afterward. And how the coffee served at the Lutheran coffee hour was fair-trade, Equal Exchange AND rainforest certified! It was the coffee Jesus himself must have drunk! And oh how he went on about how the Lutherans used real wine in their service instead of Welch’s grape juice. The poor Methodist preacher took about as much of his son’s wisdom as he could, until finally, at Christmas dinner, he couldn’t help himself. “Lord,” he prayed aloud over the family meal, “thank you for coming to us as a little child. Thank you for forgiving us. Thank you for the promise of heaven. And if you decide in your wisdom we Methodists are not fit for heaven, Lord, at least take us as far as the Lutheran college!”

No matter what we wear, no matter our salary or our social status, we can always identify someone who’s beneath us. Someone we can be thankful we’re not. And by the end ofthis story, at least as I’ve imagined it, no one in that house that day wants to trade places with this humbled, humiliated woman.

And that is precisely the moment that Jesus looks with compassion upon her at her and grants her request. Jesus says yes to the powerful woman who has bent low. He says yes to the mother whose love has triumphed over her ego. He says yes to the dama who, for love’s sake, has become a madre.

And isn’t that reassuring, for those of us who are damas to one degree or another?

I tell you one other thing I’ve become convinced of. Just like we all have a little dama in us, we’ve also all got some madre in us. And yes, guys, I’m talking to you, too. We’ve all got losses, wounds, sufferings. We’ve all endured injustice of one kind or another. And we’ve all cried out to God asking for things to be set right. For the tumor to shrink. For trust to be restored. For kindness to uproot cruelty. We all yearn for what is broken to be made whole.

And when we do, we look up and there is our merciful Judge, Jesus. Whose word, we are told, is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit...able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And even the crumbs from our Lord’s table are sufficient to restore us. Even the hem of his garment is enough to heal. How gloriously good it is that we have the honor of feasting as children--Sunday after Sunday, week after week, season after season! Come, then, beloved children of God. Come Damas! Come Madres! Feast at the table. Receive the broken body that promises wholeness to all!