When Ashes Produce Roses
Sermon given by the Rev. Christine Gowdy-Jaehnig on 2 March 2022
Texts for all Years : Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 * Psalm 103 * 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 * Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Every Ash Wednesday, we have bad news smeared on our foreheads in the shape of the cross. We put it there to remind ourselves that we come from dust and to dust we shall return. We are organic, dependent creatures, who live through the deaths of other parts of Creation. Like them, we are mortal; our bodies have biological limitations. We are made from the common dirt of the earth, wiped off of feet on doormats everywhere. We protest against death, rightly or wrongly, for it interrupts our work, upsets our dreams and separates us from those we love. Humans have fought against this fact and our anxiety about it in multiple and varied ways. Our struggle against our mortality has shaped our religions and our superstitions, our art and architecture, the focus of science and the development of technology –including cryogenics, perhaps the ultimate death-denier. Some parts of the church have nearly become health clubs, preaching that health is the consequence of right belief. Death is our greatest and final vulnerability and thinking or talking about it causes some people to feel even more vulnerable.
Our culture –perhaps most human cultures-- teaches us to deny or cover-up the fact that we are vulnerable to disease, accidents, age, and death:
We have developed all sorts of safety makers: seat-belts, airbags, and smoke detectors; colonoscopies and mammograms; and bombs and guns to help us feel powerful and invincible.
We idolize youthful beauty and strength. And many stand ready to minister to us with supplements and hormones, treatments and surgeries.
And because this is a war against aging and time that we can not win, our society offers much to dull our anxiety or distract us: addictive substances and activities, time devouring computer games and endless content, and shopping, acquiring and consuming.
Our culture teaches us to seek and prize self-sufficiency, deny our weaknesses and wounds, and to see others as competitors. There is pressure to be not just competent but perfect, to hide our errors, deny our mistakes and sins; to refuse to admit we need help and to equate needing assistance with being a burden. The lone sheriff tracking and fighting the outlaw gang; the knight who slays the dragon; the intrepid pioneers who tamed the wilderness; the super-mom who balances her great career and family life with a wink and a smile --these are our myths and fairy-tales.
In contrast to our national myths, the Judeo-Christian origin story in Genesis tell us that we were not meant to go it alone; we were made for communion with one another and with God. And this companionship depends upon being vulnerable! Our vulnerability is what makes us human, not gods. When the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempted Adam and Eve, it said that eating the forbidden fruit would make them “like gods”. Behind that first disobedience was the desire to be more than a creature, to be a god –all knowing and invulnerable
Our origin stories tell us more. The knowledge of good and evil was not something Adam and Eve could handle; it changed them. They felt ashamed of their nakedness and hid their most vulnerable and intimate parts from each other with clothes. They hid from God, too, and had to leave God’s garden. Their sin of disobedience lead to separation and more sin, to damage and alienation.
My husband Mark was diagnosed with cancer in July 2019. Surgery was scheduled for the beginning of September. For the two months in between we lived in a calm bubble of time out of time. One of the worst things had happened ---a cancer diagnosis, the first serious threat to either of our existences-- and we could do nothing. Ahead lay medical procedures and then uncertainty –except for death, sooner or later. Madeleine L’Engle wrote: “How we respond to death’s inevitability … make[s] us less or more fully alive.” We found this near threat, one we could see without binoculars, made us more alive. We were not anxious and each day was a gift to be cherished. Lent is a time to confront our mortality so it will teach us more fully what it means to live, and give us an awareness of the Grace that sustains our lives.
It takes humility to admit to our vulnerability, to look death and pain and sin and alienation in the face. The root of the word humility is the same as that for humus. Humble people are low to the ground, people who has embraced their dusty origins and mortality, their creatureliness and vulnerability, their need for God and others. This is the repentance that Lent calls us to: turn and confess that we are human, we are vulnerable, we have a constant need for and radical dependence on God. And God promises to meet us at our points of vulnerability, brokenness and need. We see this promise begun in the incarnation, when Jesus opened himself to all aspects of human life, including suffering, pain and death. No one can out-vulnerable Jesus.
The ashes we impose on Ash Wednesday come from the burning of Palm Sunday palms. Much is consumed in the process, leaving behind ashes -–potassium carbonate. In one of my favorite books, China Court, by Rumer Godden, a character bemoans the grimness of late autumn: its glories are gone, the gardens have been stripped, the dead plants are being burned, trailing smoke into the air. “Everything is ashes,” she says. And Mrs. Quinn, the gardener to who she speaks, replies, “Not ashes, potash.” Although burning dead plants has wisely been replaced by composting, the ashes left behind have long been use to fertilize and improve acidic soils. Ashes produce roses in Mrs. Quinn’s garden, just as repentance leads to healing, communion, and new life.
Let us pray:
Creating and Redeeming God;
We thank you for your graciousness to us whose lives are book-ended by dust.
During this season of Lent:
when we are hungry for you, feed us in the practices of fasting, prayer, generosity, and Scripture reading;
when we are in the wilderness, lead us to your heart;
when we repent in the ashes of our pride, sloth and greed, raise us to the glory of your resurrection.
This we pray through Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners. Amen.