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JUXTAPOSITION
February 14, 2018
Ash Wednesday, Year B
by The Rev. Gregory L. Millikin
To God who hates nothing created, cleanses our hearts, and forgives our sins, through Christ our Lord, Amen.
Your ears did not deceive you. Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew just said, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.” Um…. aren’t we going to get ashes put on our foreheads in a few minutes?
Why, yes. Welcome to the paradox that is Ash Wednesday, nay, the Church worship life. Ash Wednesday is a strange brew of a call to action to mark our faces with a sign of our mortality but yet reflect on scriptural choices that condemn us to not be like the hypocrites who mark their faces. It’s matched only by the paradoxical day that is Palm Sunday on the other side of Lent, where the joy of the entrance into the Jerusalem, the shouts of Hosanna through the palm branches will give way to utter devastation at Calvary.
So it is, yin and yang, life and death, light and dark, on one of the most holy days in our church year. Our need to mark ourselves to remind ourselves of our mortality is so human, and has a purpose in this service. Then we will pray Psalm 51 where the Psalmist says God “takes not delight in burnt-offerings.” Up, down, left, right. And if you think the Holy Spirit doesn’t love a good juxtaposition every now and then, then I say look no further than calendar itself which commemorates Valentines Day. While we’re at, brace yourselves: Easter in on April 1st. No joke. So, some of us may worship at this service and simultaneously be planning a lovely dinner with a spouse or partner, perhaps even including a chocolate-laced dessert.
And really, what’s the problem with that? On Sunday we reflected on the fact that we cannot appreciate the sweet in life without the sour; granted, Ash Wednesday being on Valentine’s Day this year really takes that metaphor to a new extreme! God loves a good joke, I believe, and God loves a good juxtaposition to help us appreciate both sides of the same coin.
I’ll tell you another thing God loves. God loves that death and mortality do not have the last word. As Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Death, where is your sting?” As one who follows Christ, Paul assures us that in Christ, we know that God’s love has the last say; not death. Ash Wednesday is a remarkable day because it reminds us that mortality is reality, but it is leavened with a certain hope in God. It’s a remarkable day because it starts us on a path of remembering, reminding ourselves, that love will prevail - even over death. It’s a remarkable day because the charred remains of last year’s palm branches will temporarily remind us that this life is fleeting; these bodies, mortal; but God’s love? Eternal. The light of Christ in us? Everlasting. The mortal? Immortal.
And God loves something else: direct, unobstructed contact with us. Ash Wednesday launches us on a journey. The early church envisioned this day as a preparation for baptism. Most of us have already crossed that threshold, so that changes the context of Lent: we prepare for Holy Week and Easter. It is desirable to think of this day as a fast, a word which we tend to hear and think “cleanse” like a juice cleanse. That’s not too far off actually. A fast doesn’t necessarily need to mean stop eating today, though it can. It more so means “clear out the excess.” Remove those things which get in the way between you and God. Maybe that is junk food, or alcohol - or both! Maybe it is bad habits. Maybe it is something known only to you and God. Maybe it means create more space and time for God. We are beckoned on this day to re-establish a direct link with the creator who hates nothing he has created. This can’t be done in one day, it can’t be done in a few days, and may take a lifetime; so we try as best we can to focus on that aspect of our lives in a season; and so it is, as we embark on a Lenten journey.
So, what about what Matthew’s Gospel says about being hypocrites for marking our faces? Can we just wipe them clean after this service? Absolutely. It’s not about what we see on our foreheads after the service, but about what’s going on inside. I’m reminded of a saying about priests: first among sinners. In other words, we are all sinners, we are all imperfect, we are all the hypocrites in Matthew’s Gospel, there’s no escaping that. We cannot be deduced to a mark on the forehead to be our salvation. No, the mark of ashes on the forehead, one of the most intimate and sacred things we can do together, is more than that: it is about the contact of human being to human being; it is about the meaning of those ashes; and it is about the symbol of the cross - that crossbeam of wood that will ultimately overpower Jesus’s mortality, only to be reimagined as a symbol of hope three days later. Even now, in this day of fasting, when we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross, we are admitting our mortality while at the same time acknowledging that we know all too well that juxtaposition of hope founded in God’s love for us all.