Ash Wednesday February 25, 2009

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10                                                 

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21                                                       

 

The weekday fasts and feasts that we celebrate here at Holy Cross always remind me of what a secularized world we live in, what a distance there is between the way the world sees things and the way we as members of the community of Christ are called to see them. Once upon a time, the calendar by which people ordered their everyday lives was studded with religious celebrations. Indeed, one of the forces behind the Reformation in England was the desire of the landowning class to cut down on the religious holidays so they could get more work out of their tenants.

 

Some of the major feasts of the calendar—All Saints’ Day, Epiphany, Ascension—have been officially moved to Sundays in some provinces of the Church. Congregations increasingly move them to Sundays anyway. Where they are still celebrated on weekdays, the gatherings are small, as we are tonight. And that’s to be regretted, for it is especially at celebrations like Ash Wednesday that we are reminded of the differences between the world and the Church—the Church being not some distant hierarchy, of course, but us.

 

Anne and I listened to the President’s address to Congress last night, as I’m sure many of you did. One of the things he mentioned several times, each time to strong bipartisan applause, was responsibility. We need to take responsibility, he said, and to hold each other accountable. That goes for bankers, who can no longer walk away with billions in bonuses as the institutions they have mismanaged become public charges. That goes for fathers, whose responsibility begins, not ends, at the conception of their children. That goes for all of us when it comes to be asked to pay the real costs for the energy we consume. It goes for all of us when it comes to managing our household finances and our health. A nation, a people, who cannot act responsibly are doomed to perish. History is littered with examples.

 

Ash Wednesday is about responsibility. One of the most moving church services I have ever attended was a corporate confession service one Holy Week at a huge Roman Catholic Church. This was some 20 years ago; the Vatican has since suppressed such services. Perhaps 700 people were at the service, of all ages, whole families with their children. There were half a dozen priests. After Scripture readings and songs, people were invited to come forward in lines to the priests to confess very briefly their sins—not a complete list, but just, as it were, highlights.

 

I suppose it was the absence of a complete list that bothered Rome. But as a powerful symbol, the service worked. Fathers and mothers went forward together, their little children holding their hands, their infants in their arms. What did they whisper in the priests’ ears? No doubt the things we all have on our consciences: not dramatic stuff for the most part, but the myriad of little selfishnesses, wastings of time and money, hurting of others, neglect of God, that build up as we follow the ways of the world instead of the ways of Christ. Not dramatic, but how powerful for children to witness their parents confessing their imperfections! How powerful for teenagers to witness each other doing this! How powerful for a whole faith community to be doing this publicly together!

 

If I were bolder—perhaps before I do at last retire!—I would build something of that corporate confession into the liturgy for tonight. But short of actually doing that, perhaps you can imagine doing it in your mind. For it is what is going on as we come forward, receiving the cross of ashes on our foreheads and hearing those words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We only have one life to live. We live that life under the judgment of God. God is merciful and forgiving, but (as President Obama said of himself) God is not a sap. We may fool ourselves about our responsibility; we cannot fool God.

 

These are solemn truths, and tonight is about taking them seriously. But tonight is also, and at the same time, about the Good News of Jesus Christ. I know that you know that failure to take responsibility for our lives does not lead to happiness. It’s like Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme: deceptions require more deceptions require more deceptions, until one day the whole thing comes crashing down.

 

The Good News is that Jesus offers us a very simple way out of this. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. We are human beings, who do foolish things and make mistakes. We are not gods. Sometimes we are not even grownups. But instead of having to pretend we are more than we are, instead of having to cover our human limitations with huge bonuses and overblown lifestyles, deception piled on deception, all we need to do is own up to the truth, take responsibility, and begin to take the steps necessary to change our lives. When we do that, we discover we are not alone. We are with Jesus, and we are with each other—closer in our humble imperfection than we ever were trying to be perfect. We can take that step of confession and amendment of life. Every one of us. For as God in his mercy gives us the gift of absolution, God also gives us the power to take responsibility.