If Snow Were Ashes

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

Marks of Discipleship: TELL Others

Mark 15:33-39

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three o’clock in the afternoon. At three o’clock, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi! Eloi! Lema sabbacthani!,’ 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.’ Someone went and got a large sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink saying, ‘Wait. Let us see whether Elijah will come and take him down.’

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in 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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As you know, I have the unique and holy opportunity to walk with people – many of you people – through some pretty sacred places, one of which is in our time of dying. And it happened not long ago that I was called to a nursing home to the bedside of a dying man who hadn’t been dying just days – or even hours – before I was invited to visit. I hadn’t met him before, or his son, who was also there when I showed up that evening.

But it seemed clear that Tom was, in fact, close to death. He didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on around him. His breaths were labored… and rattling… and growing fewer and farther between, even in just the hour or so that I was with him.

And I’m a pretty firm believer in the notion that many people need or want or respond to permission to die, if we can give it to them. I will never say I’m certain of it, but I know of more than a few occasions when dying men and women have held on to life in this world through all sorts of sickness and struggle and hardship, only to finally let go and rest easy and breathe their last, shortly after someone they love – or even some knucklehead of a pastor – gives them permission to stop fighting.

I’m not sure if that’s what happened recently with Tom. And it’s only part of what I want to share with you.

See, if I ever give such permission or pray such a prayer for a dying person, I’m sure to ask their permission – or to ask the permission of someone who loves them most – before I do. So, I asked Tom’s son if they’d had a conversation, yet – if he or his dad was ready, I mean. His son said, “Ready to …?”

“…die.” I had to fill in the blank, because he wasn’t expecting that question and he wasn’t quite ready to say it out loud, even if he knew what I was getting at. And he was ready, he thought, to give him that permission, even if he seemed to hesitate, understandably, just the same.

Tom’s son acknowledged that he was a believer. I don’t remember exactly what he said about that. But he went on to talk a little about Tom, saying he used to go to church, that he practiced his faith in the past, but that he wasn’t sure about where his dad was with all of that lately.

The insinuation was – as it so often is with too many people, if you ask me – that Tom’s son wasn’t certain his dad had “gotten right with God” enough in recent days or months or years, in order to feel good about where he might end up whenever the dying might come. Would he make it to heaven?, he meant. Would he be “saved”?, as they say. Which I find to be a heartbreaking thing for anyone to have to wonder or worry about. 

But it also led to the most useful and faithful and obviously helpful moment I’ve felt in my role as “Pastor” in recent days.

Because that night in the nursing home, with my hand on Tom’s son’s shoulder as he held his dying father’s hand, we gave Tom permission to die and his son permission to let him go and both of them permission to hope and expect and to trust that God was already surrounding us in that room and that God was already waiting for Tom on the other side of eternity, too, with open arms and an abiding mercy and all the fullness of love and grace hope the universe can hold, even in the face of death. And I believe that’s just exactly where Tom landed when he breathed his last, just a few hours later that evening.

And that’s the big picture of what it means to “TELL others about the God we worship…” and learn about, and serve, as believers in this place.

Because I’m here to tell you… I’m afraid there are more people than not who are still under the impression that God can’t or won’t do what God has already done in Jesus. I mean there are still too many people who are afraid they haven’t worshiped enough, or learned enough, or served, enough, or repented or been faithful or forgiven enough. There are still too many people who are afraid that they – or we – or someone they care about – hasn’t checked all the boxes of righteousness and faithfulness and discipleship to have secured their place in God’s heaven.

And when we think that way – when we live that way – we forget about the kind of king we’re dealing with in Jesus.

Jesus is not the kind of king who lays down the law so that we will obey and be saved. Jesus is not the kind of king who demands fealty from his subjects in return for good fortune. Jesus is not the kind of king who exacts our allegiance for the assurance of our salvation.

Jesus is the kind of king who lays down his life… who suffers and dies… not just so that we can rest in peace when the time comes. Jesus does all of this so that we will live differently – here and now – because of that hope.

That’s why this good news isn’t just for crosses and Calvary or for nursing homes and death beds. The Good News of God we’re called to TELL is for the living – on this side of the grave, too – because it can change everything. Because in light of God’s good news, we can give ourselves and each other permission to die, not just to life as we know it when the time comes.

But we can give ourselves and each other permission to die – every day – to the things that keep us from experiencing the fullness of life in Christ, which God intends. We can give ourselves and each other permission to die to our greed so that we can be more generous. We can give ourselves and each other permission to die to our grudges so that we can offer – and receive – forgiveness, instead. We can give ourselves and each other permission to die to our pride so that we can live with humility, and trust in God’s power more than our own.

Now, we don’t know what the Centurion from this morning’s Gospel did next. But I can’t imagine his life was the same after he looked into the crucified, lifeless face of Jesus and recognized him for who he was. I like to imagine that he dropped his sword or his shield or whatever he was carrying and that he went home broken by the weight of it all and transformed even more-so, on the third day, when he started to hear rumors of the resurrection.

And I imagine he told someone he loved about it all. He must have said something to someone about a God who would take such a beating, who would make such a sacrifice, who would give such a gift. And I hope he knew God did it, even for him. And I hope that his life – and his little part of the world – was better because he shared it.

And I hope each of us knows the same. And that we’ll tell someone about it, too. And that we’ll live differently because of it, in some way.

This good news is too good to keep to ourselves, because its promises for life on the other side of the grave can change lives and transform the world on this side of the grave, whenever we tell others and live differently because of what we know about God’s everlasting love in Jesus Christ, our king.

Amen