Ash Wednesday Service

“The Road to Jerusalem”

February 25, 2009

I have a confession to make. I have lost a car…and it’s nowhere to be found. More specifically, I have lost a Volkswagen somewhere along the way. But before we instigate the search for my lost car, let’s reflect on Ash Wednesday and Lent as we prepare the journey to Jerusalem and Easter Sunday.

In the time of Emperor Constantine…say the early 300s… Lent was a time of preparation for Baptism. The Christian faith was outlawed, and practices such as baptism required planning and activities below the daily surface lives of the faithful. Those that wanted to be Catacumens.....called “hearers”… and then Baptized had to study for three years, take a test, and then fast for 40 days….anticipating the Easter Vigil. So Lent actually arose from the rigors of the preparation for baptism, a process of cleansing and reconciliation. This follows Jesus question on the road to Jerusalem, when he asks “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” We often answer, yes, Lord we can…..but the road is often not as easy as we hope.  

So, even today, it’s fitting that we experience Lent as a time of reflection, and maybe even take on some spiritual practices that we don’t follow throughout the year. We try to listen to our hearts, which might allow God to enter by any and all paths and openings in our busy lives. God says in Isaiah 41, “Listen to me in silence.

Lent is a time for soul-searching and metanoia…the Greek word for…literally…turning around to God and reviewing our lives and practices. Jesus, in His great silence in the desert, allows himself to be reconciled to his death and resurrection ahead in Jerusalem. He prepares to take on, to assimilate the trauma of the Jews lost in the desert. He understands what it will require for all to die to sin and be reborn in the freedom and truth of God’s Grace and salvation, offered to the faithful in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is the liberator, and the gift comes to us…at a great cost to Him…his human life. It’s hard to face the desert of our lives…it’s hard to enter the desert with out a clear way to return.

Everything looks the same in the desert, and sometimes we can lose our way and lose hope in the process.  We lose God – God doesn’t lose us, and God doesn’t give up on us.  God waits for the joy and celebration when we return home. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Repentance is an absolute spiritual decision made in truthfulness. Its motivations are remorse for the past, and even more importantly, responsibility for the future.” Could this be so for us? Do you know someone, someone close to you, who has struggled to personal strength and health?

There was a young woman who fell in with the wrong group she thought were her friends.  She began to rely on dangerous habits to make her happy and distance herself from her loneliness and loss of hope and faith. She quit a job she needed and was spiraling down into a hellish oblivion that could do her in. Her days consisted of the rage and bellow of her personal uproar. Her mom and dad loved her and would do anything for her…anything to help her find her way back to health.

The daughter drove herself to a hospital in the Arizona desert, arriving on a Good Friday morning.  She spent the next thirty days in the desert, literally, learning how to tell the truth and how to care for her soul. Her mother and father joined her for a week called “parent’s week.” It was not a vacation for anyone.  The young woman, along with her parents, learned that those of us who walk ten miles into the desert, have to turn around and walk out step by step. There is no express train exit from personal destruction, but there is hope, and God’s mercy is available to all of us who are lost and struggle to be found.

The young woman came home and began to set her life in order and motion.  Her parents loved her and supported her in the recovery process. They tried their hardest not judge her. They were relieved but could not figure out how to talk about it, and they didn’t feel like celebrating. They never really told their friends and never told their family about their daughter’s struggle.  In fact, they found they couldn’t talk about it to anyone. (Hold up medallion) The father still carries a bronze medallion from his week in the desert with his daughter.  I am grateful to God for helping my daughter find her way home, and for helping me to be with her on the hard road.  I still leave a light on for her in case she gets lost again. She found her way to reconciliation…to health and a greater clarity. Today this lovely young woman is a chef at a fancy restaurant named, The Bread Workshop.  Each day, she creates anew, bread for the day’s journey, feeding folks along the way. Amazing.

We live in an addictive society. Granted, some of our addictions are less lethal than others, but they still absorb our time and energy. I’m not suggesting we withdraw from our lives and the dynamics of our fast-paced culture. But during Lent, we can prayerfully discern what has a grip on us in the name of security and happiness. During Lent, we can try again to recognize and reject the lure of false gods that steal our time and energy, leaving us empty and exhausted. We can choose to follow the rough and dusty road to Jerusalem so we will recognize the risen Christ when the joy and celebration of Easter arrives.

It can be reasonably said that discipleship to is one of the important topics of Lent. The road from Ash Wednesday leads straight to the passion of Jesus in Jerusalem.  To really enter into Lent…to offer ourselves to God for whatever reconciliation we seek bears a significant cost. It asks more of us than just being bystanders along the road with the crowds of folks who’d rather skip right to Easter Sunday and all its celebrations. Jesus makes the challenge clear….take up your cross and follow. He calls us to offer up ourselves to God…not to literally die on a cross but to die to ourselves…..and live in salvation. Not so easy when the wind and sand blow across the desert, right in our faces.

So what practice can we take on during Lent that draws us closer to God and to clarity about our lives of faith and our relationship to Jesus Christ? There are several opportunities right here at DUC.  Ted Walker will continue to lead the weekly bible study, following the lectionary. Dale Rosenberger, our senior pastor will facilitate a book study on the meaning of the Resurrection. Katie Clancy will facilitate a new class for mothers, grandmothers and great-grand mother, examine and possibly change where they are in life now, and where they might wish to be. This class finishes just before Mother’s Day. I’ll be facilitating a new class in which we’ll use poetry as a spiritual practice, a form of prayer. I hope you’ll make time for one of these offerings.

I met a family this week, in dire need of help as they faced eviction from their apartment. They had a little more than a week before the power and lights would be shut off for lack of payment. The family has two boys, 2-1/2 years and 42 days old. Both mom and dad lost jobs, and dad doesn’t qualify for assistance because he is presently illegal. He has been in a costly two-year process to gain citizenship. In addition to asking for some money to pay a small portion of his $609 NSTAR bill and two Stop & Shop food cards, the dad asked for one more thing:

“Could you ask the people here to pray for us?  We don’t want to get rich…we just want our boys to be able to see a door with light around it so they can walk through it, and be safe. We’ll work for everything we ask for. I’m Catholic, so I know this is Lent,” he said. “I know what Jesus had to do in the desert and then to die for us and our sins. I feel like a sinner who has to ask for help and absolution. I’m gonna pray a lot this lent. I want to be better on the other side, after Easter. Thank you, please thank the people here, too, for this help. This is a blessing from God….I want to feel like we deserve it.” This man and his family are walking into the desert of their lives, unsure of where they are headed, but they are aided by their faith and trust in the resurrection of the soul.

 Lent is a time of prayer, discernment and reconciliation. Oh by the way, that Volkswagen I lost?  I actually know where it went. You see, over the years, I have usually lost 10 or 15 lbs during Lent as a result of prayerful, focused discipline on eating and exercise. And every year, I gain back the 10-15 lbs. in the time following Easter. All told, I figure I’ve lost about 1,600 lbs over the years. That’s about the size of a VW beetle. 

This Lenten season, I look forward to being in community and communion with you all, as we travel the road to Jerusalem together. Every time I want a cookie or a treat, I will think about walking with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. It’s not about denial; it’s about  turning to God in prayer and practice that transforms us in body and spirit.  Lent leads us to the power of the cross and the resurrection. It is our spiritual intention to present ourselves to God as we were born: naked, powerless and vulnerable to the demons of human existence. Like Jesus in his death and resurrection, In our human way we prepare to give up our sense of power. Then, in the celebration of Easter, we rise in Jesus Christ, in the new life of the resurrection.

Will you pray with me..

With faith in your resurrection Jesus, with hope in the power that undoes every death, we lift up our hearts with love for you. Send us the Holy Spirit who leads us to be more deeply your disciple. We thank you for the gift of our lives in this holy reflective season. On this Holy Wednesday, our foreheads and hands are holding spots for ashes. We pray to see our deaths to the self as a holy act of faith. We offer our lives and symbolic deaths in thanksgiving to you, Jesus, our brother, our Savior and the living God of our creation.