Sermon: Ash Wednesday Eucharist

Preacher:

Date:

Wednesday 18th February 2015

Service:

Ash Wednesday Eucharist

Readings:

Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17

Matthew 6: 1-6 and 16-21

'Do not be afraid'

It's a striking statement in bold lettering facing all who come to the cathedral this Lent.

Is it an invitation, a message of consolation, an imperative or a challenge?

The artist Catherine Clancy took this phrase as the basis of her exhibition because the poet Seamus Heaney poignantly uttered those words to his wife as he died: a last gift; an offer of reassurance.  It was a phrase marking the beginning of a journey: a transition into the sorrow, memories and disruption of widowhood; a transition from life, through death into the hope of new life.

Clancy interprets this in paintings which are steeped in prayer. Hers is a spiritual journey.  facing the cries of our hearts; the dark nights of our souls; the storms that batter us physically and emotionally. Perhaps some of those paintings will resonate with our fears, our losses, our isolation and our frailty. 

The prophet Joel also speaks of darkness and disruption: a trumpet sounds, the land trembles, think blackness and clouds overwhelm the land. The people gather - the newly weds and nursing babes are caught up in the pleading to God; crying out that they might be spared.

We hear words of mourning and the hope of mercy; we hear the call to repentance is announced; hearts turn in response to God's steadfast love.   The people are gathered; a time of fasting is sanctified; they are recalled to holiness that they may witness to God's grace and mercy.   Woven into Clancy's paintings  too is a luminous thread of renewal.  There's the movement of the wind and the breaking in of light.  Our longing for safety, clarity and peace, for renewed hope and awakened love are met in a dazzling brightness that overwhelms us as we journey along the south aisle.   The Holy Spirit is at work in all this: in stillness, in safe harbours, in the wind and the light - in the whisper or the roar of 'do not be afraid.'

We will be pondering that single phrase 'do not be afraid' during the course of our Lent lectures: thinking about faith and courage, renewed vision and love, our need for rest and longing for hope. But tonight we are confronted with a deep fear: the inescapable reality of our mortality. Whereas once society had euphemisms for the taboo of sex, now death becomes passing, slipping away, sleeping, crossing over as if it was something we could outwit; as if we were merely making a polite excite from life's party. 

Tonight we cannot side step that reality: remember oh woman, oh man, oh young and old, oh newly wed and busy employee... you are dust. And to dust you shall return. This is a moment of truth and of liberation. As we hear the words said over and over again, as we feel the mark of ash being traced on our foreheads, we are reminded of our beginning and our end. Denise Inge in her book "Tour of Bones" describes this day as an annual open invitation to get in touch with reality... to gather to be quiet, to reflect, to get into the queue with everyone else. It doesn't just make our frailty real, as she puts it the physical nature of this event - queuing, waiting letting dirt be smeared on your skin, resisting the urge to rub it off - takes the idea of humility and makes it real. 

Learning humility is at the heart of responding to the call to discipleship. Confronting our mortality forces us to make decisions about how we live.  Dying well, as Denise often writes in her book, means living well.  Perhaps learning to live more lightly and more intensely; knowing when to let go and knowing what to put centre stage; knowing that where our treasure is, our heart will be also. Lent is an invitation to see our earthly reality through the lens of our ultimate hope.  Do not be afraid.  

The pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the sense of losing oneself as following Jesus as fixing our gaze on him as he walks before us, rather than looking at ourselves and fretting about our own goodness.  Following by responding to what we have received; turning our lives around and redirecting our desires.  Twitter and Facebook are full today of comments or announcements about what people have 'given up' for Lent.  Sometimes in can feel like a high stakes game - I'll take your coffee and chocolate and raise you meat and alcohol. One Tweeter wearily posted: I'm giving up for Lent.

Bonhoeffer also wrote that the genuine deed of love is always a deed hidden to myself. Jesus is teaching his followers to live in that way - to pray, fast and give without recognition or acclaim.  We do this, because we are looking to Jesus himself. The one who embodies the Father's love for us, who draws us back to the Father's heart by challenging, accepting and forgiving us; by equipping us and sustaining us in the power of the Spirit as we seek to be free of the habits that tempt us.

We know within ourselves the things that pull us away from his way from our first love of God; we instead endeavour to secure our survival by what we can possess or find ourselves unable to live without. Prayer is our starting point - grounding ourselves in deep attention to God's love and purposes; fasting is not to lose a few pounds or to despise our embodiment; rather it as a joyful liberation of discovering what we can live without and the gifts that enrich our lives.  Prayer and fasting enables us to refocus amidst the storms, fears and all that threatens to overwhelm; those disciplines cultivate in us the capacity to give out of the abundance that we have.

Tonight as we are signed with the cross in ash, we are reminded not just of our mortality but of our identity in Christ. In him we are a new creation; brought out of death into life; drawn from darkness and storm clouds the dazzling brightness.  Denise Inge saw invitations to humility in the majesty of nature - reflected in Catherine's waves; she nudges us to see such invitations in the presence of others - reflected in those with whom we reflect and wait and queue tonight.  Yet she says, humility by its very nature is a tricky thing; the moment you sense it with you it is gone. Dynamic rather than static, it visits like a breeze

Humility visits like a breeze; it visits as Spirit - brooding over us, refining us, rushing through us and drawing us on.  Do not be afraid.  Face the frailty of our human nature; in our mortality respond to an invitation to turn, to follow to set our Christ, setting our eyes on him.  Do not be afraid.  Learning to die well, learning to let go, extends our horizon so that we might live well.  Living out of god's steadfast love and mercy.

I end with a passage from Denise's book, a passage all the more poignant as these are words written as she let go of life. They are her life-enriching invitation to live without being afraid. She writes:

Are the broken parts of your deep self being healed? Get rid of the bitterness. Mend the bridges. Seek and receive forgiveness. Let yourself be loved.

Have you found a lasting hope? Anchor yourself in the eternal abiding (for me this is God). Feed yourself with something stronger than optimism. You are in a constant state of growth and transition, so let change transform you.

What are the things for which you will be remembered? Cut the crap in your life. Do things that matter. Find and exercise your gifts.

Are you on a path of true humility? Submit to a truth that is bigger than yourself. Become part of it. Let it be your story. What I have been surprised to discover, as these questions chase and wash over me, is that preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing.