2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
Ash Wednesday – 2023 – 2 Corinthians 5:20b – 6:10
There is a 1973 motion picture titled Ash Wednesday.
- It stars Elizabeth Taylor.
- Taylor plays an aging woman who wants to return to the heights of her beauty.
- In pursuit of this obsession…she boards a plane to Switzerland…
- Where she undergoes extensive plastic surgery.
- The doctors promise her that afterwards she will look twenty years younger.
Following the surgery…with her bruised face wrapped in bandages…
- Taylor dons dark sun glasses and decides to go for a walk.
- Slowly…in great pain…she strolls the streets of Geneva.
Seeking a place to stop for rest…she enters an old stone church.
- Hidden in the back row of the sanctuary…
- She is like a cocooned caterpillar waiting to emerge from a gauze chrysalis.
That is…until she is approached by an elderly priest making his way through the congregation.
- It is Ash Wednesday.
- And carrying his bowl of ashes he pauses in front of Taylor and intones the ancient litany:
- “Remember you are dust…and to dust you shall return.”
Now there is a reality check for you!
- Seeking to look a few years younger.
- And the ancient liturgy reminds you that any improvement…no matter how striking…is but temporary.
This is how Lent begins…with a reminder of our mortality.
- “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes.”
- For forty days leading up to Easter we assess our lives.
- Forty days because that is how long Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.
- During this time we ask ourselves what is really important in our lives.
Religious people are often accused of indulging in escapism.
- Nothing could be further from the truth.
- We are people who deal with the really important things in life.
- And that is what Lent is all about.
- And it begins with Ash Wednesday.
- Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality…that someday we will come to the end of our line.
In the Garden of Eden…after Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…God says to them:
- “Dust thou art…and to dust thou shall return.”
- That’s part of the symbolism of the ashes which we shall place on our foreheads this day.
- It is a reminder of our mortality.
- We like to fancy that we shall live forever.
- Some day we shall.
- But not in this world.
- This world is but a fleeting image of the world that is yet to come.
- Ash Wednesday puts it all into perspective.
Of course…the subject of our mortality is not a popular one.
- A friend of mine knew it was a difficult subject to bring before his aged mother.
- But he felt that he must.
“Mom” he said “you are no longer a spring chicken and you do need to think ahead of what will happen in the future.
- Let’s make arrangements about when…you know…when…you pass on.”
- His mother did not say anything.
- She just sat there staring ahead.
- “I mean…Mom” he continued… “like…how do you want to finally go?
- Do you want to be buried?
- Cremated?”
There was yet another long pause.
- Then the mother looked up and said:
- “Son…why don’t you surprise me?”
Death is a difficult subject.
- We would prefer to disguise it…ignore it…pretend it does not exist.
- And never do we want to admit that it can happen to us.
“There’s nothing wrong with me”
can be a dangerous thing to say.
- Spiritually…it is probably the worst thing a person could possibly say.
- For a person to stand before God and say:
- “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
- It is incompatible with being a disciple of Jesus and unacceptable to God.
We place the ashes on our foreheads as a reminder that we are mortal creatures.
- That we are flawed creatures.
St. Paul writes in our Epistle for this day:
- “We implore you on Christ’s behalf…
- Be reconciled to God.
- God made him who had no sin to be sin for us…
- So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
If you were telling someone how to make a cross…you might say:
- “Draw an ‘I’ and then cross it out.”
As we make the sign of the cross…we first draw a vertical stroke…
- As if to say to God:
- “Lord…here am I.”
Then we cancel it with a horizontal stroke…
- As if to say: “Help me…Lord…to abandon my self-centeredness and self-will.
- Make Yourself the center of my life instead.
- Fix my attention and my desire on You…Lord.
- That I may forget myself…cancel myself…abandon myself completely to Your love and service.”
We are the only religion in the world whose God gets hurt.
- Whose God gets stabbed.
- Who writhes in pain on a cross.
- Who gets whipped.
- Who has five wounds in his body.
- Who shouts his pain during his suffering.
- “My God…my God…why have you forsaken me?”
That is the Good News of Ash Wednesday.
- We wear the ashes to remind us of our mortality and of our many flaws.
- But we also wear them to remind us that because of what God has done on our behalf through the death of His Son…
- We have been redeemed.