Journey's Weekly Homilies

Ash Wednesday 
March 5, 2003                                                            
Homily:  Nancy                                                                

Joel 2:12-18
2 Cor. 5:20-6:2
Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21 

“Blow the trumpet in Zion,” the prophet Joel told us.  “Blow the trumpet…sanctify a fast;  call a solemn assembly;  gather the people….” 

And on this night our “Zion” is the corner of 22^nd and Lovejoy, in a building built of living stones, a place where healing and justice are practiced and lived.  Here we accept the sound of Bob’s trumpet as a clarion call.  Here we set outselves open to a season that sanctifies, that makes “holy” our fast.  We have called a solemn assembly to hear the Word of our God.  We have “gathered the people” as the scripture says, to hear our instructions about how to live our lives. 

Here in this gathering we have the saving and life-giving possibility of knowing our most basic truth, and embracing it.  Today we can decide to accept the sign of the cross, to welcome the ashes on our foreheads, to do as our God as asked us to do:   “Yet even now,” says the Lord, “return to me with all your heart.” 

Today we begin the Lenten season .  We remember that we are dust, and that the season is given to us so that we CAN turn.  We hear the Word tonight and it reminds us we are people of a God who is “gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”  We can begin now, in THIS moment, in THIS hour, in these weeks of Lent, to hear that Word and to return to the love of our God with all our hearts.  “Behold, now is the acceptable time,” Paul told the Corinthians.  Behold, now is also the acceptable time for all of us! 

On this night the covenant story is retold.  The word of God – God’s truth, God’s will, God’s dominion – comes into our community life, freeing us from all the baggage that we ordinarily carry. The word comes and sets us free from what we may have been carrying when we entered the building, enterd this gathering of God’s people.  The Word of God comes, calling us and freeing us from our ideologies and our statuses:  our parties, our customs, our habits, all the structures of our status quo.  The Word of God calls us to a life based on love.  In that world we are no longer black or white, male or female, straight or gay, beautiful or plain, limited our whole.  The Word of God comes and we can no longer fall back on any thing we have “made up” about ourselves to explain and excuse and rationalize our choices.  The Word of God comes and tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven…

For where our treasure is, there will our hearts be also.  Here in community, together for common prayer, with the Bible, the Cross, and some powerful ashes, we can face the Holy One with that kind of intentionality. 

Here, together, we can create a scene that makes change possible, enables a change of posture for every one of us.  This is the point of the holy, the sacred, the profound mystery of our joining together on this journey.  It is in THIS holiness, this sacred body, that we can actually make that change… I can’t know what change is needed in your life, only you can decide that.  But we do know some change-needs that arise among us…it’s not easy to speak the words, but we can name them if we dare: ...a change from being the one in control, the one in charge, to being a worshipper;  a change from being the user and exploiter to being the reverencer and lover;  a change from being the one who has all the answers to being the one who is comfortable with mystery and questions;  a change from being the master to being the seeker.  It is at this deep level where the true holiness we seek is found.  This is our Lenten task. 

It is in this place that God’s call is heard and every unique soul among us can find it’s truth.  Here we become people with a cross smudged on our faces, a people in quest of the holy.  Here we can try to leave behind our roles of self-sufficiency, self-centeredness, and control, to assume the posture of worshiping people.  We can become people who reach for that which is beyond our grasp, beyond the stars.  We can become seekers for the meaning that is the foundation of all created things.  No human art or power is adequate to THIS kind of reaching, and so (since we are truly human) nothing will do but our very best efforts and talents.  This is a truth. 

With this truth flashing like lightening before us, we can begin these 40 days…which brings us to Easter, to the passion, death, and resurrection of the God who was one of us.   On this night we can rise again from ashes, and join hands to journey toward our God who cannot be captured or possessed, who invites and draws us on a pilgrim struggle.  Our God calls us on  a journey that requires us to be dying and rising all the time.  

On this night we can strip ourselves willingly to the bare essentials of the love of God and of each other…

…to begin to know at last who we are.