Ps. 51 Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17
2 Cor. 5: 20b-6:10 Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
One of my favorite theologians and authors, Joan Chittister, writes that “Lent is a call to renew a commitment grown dull, perhaps, by a life more marked by routine than by reflection.” Recently, as I was thinking about Lent as it approached, I determined that my commitment to caring for creation had grown rather dull, just the familiar act of recycling and composting…but, as I mentioned in my newsletter article, my carbon footprint is fairly large. My routine definitely involves driving my car. So it was that I decided to give up driving my car on Wednesdays during Lent. Starting today.
The day was young when I initially fell off of my Lenten wagon as Taylor rightly observed that MY Lenten discipline should not mean that SHE had to walk or bus to school in the driving rain.
Later in the morning I pulled up the bus schedule that would get me from my house to the church. It’s easy…I just take the #5 bus from Greenwood and 103rd to Greenwood and 130th. The website said it would take four minutes.
I packed a waterproof backpack with my laptop, lunch, and other necessities, put on my rain boots, rain coat, rain hat…because it was RAINING…grabbed the umbrella…because this was no ordinary Seattle rain…and headed out into the day. My walk took me uuuuup hill to Greenwood. It started raining harder. The backpack was heavy. The wind was blowing. And the umbrella turned inside out. I wrestled it back to its normal shape, and continued toward the bus stop, but I had to dodge some sidewalk construction along the way…which put me closer to the street…where the cars were driving through the puddles. You get the idea of what happened next. Having survived that unexpected shower I paused to catch my breath at the bus stop and the phone in my backpack rang. Wrestle off the back pack, trying to stay dry, sure it was an emergency phone call…answer the phone. It’s Bruce. Calling his own cell phone number, his cell phone, which was in my backpack.
“Let me come get you” he offered “and I’ll get my phone too” which I had taken by mistake. “And I’ll give you a ride to work”
“No, no” I replied “I want to see this through. I’ve already fallen off the wagon once today. I‘ll just take the bus and I‘ll answer your phone when it rings.”
And so I waited patiently for the next bus while the jackhammers ten feet behind me joined their voices to the steady beating of the rain and the whirr of the traffic whizzing by. Peering around my umbrella I could see it in the distance…it no longer looked like a Metro bus; it looked like a chariot coming to take me to my destination. And I still had ten minutes before I had to be at staff meeting.
“Good morning” I chirped to the bus driver who didn’t respond, unless you count his frown. I sat down, ready to enjoy every one of my four minutes down Greenwood Ave. Until we turned onto 105th.
I called our home phone. “Hello, Bruce?” I said quietly into his cell phone. “Is the offer to come get me still good?”
Giving up my routine of driving was not a pleasant adventure this morning. And, in truth, I might have missed a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of Lent if it had been an easy commute.
Our tradition of giving something up for Lent comes from an older tradition of a Lenten fast. Some connect this fast to the fast of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days. But fasting itself is not particular to the Christian tradition. Fasting, for many religions, exposes to seekers the distance between self control and the compulsion to self satisfaction. The absence of that which makes us physically comfortable, that which gives us fulfillment or ease in life…food, driving our cars, holding grudges…increases our ability to focus on the spiritual. And so our tradition of giving something up stems from the Lenten fast. We give up things that keep us from considering the spiritual. We give up things that enable us to follow everything else in the world, except the One who created and redeemed it. And hopefully, those things from which we fast will provide some meaning to our Lenten journey. We will empty our days of dangerous distractions and empty diversions. We will no longer engage in senseless excesses and breaches of justice. We will no longer forget who it is that is our neighbor. We will stop being dishonest with ourselves and one another. We will give up those things to which we have become addicted. We will stop letting the voices of power, prestige, and position hold prominence in our lives and instead we will remember that at the foot of the cross, we are all equal. The ground is level there.
The first time I ever marked ashes on foreheads those foreheads included an infant, a man who had just gotten out of prison for manslaughter, and a benevolent and faithful grandfather. I was a senior in seminary, serving a very small congregation as their stated supply for that year. I had read many insightful writings about Ash Wednesday. I had been to seminary chapel that morning. But there was nothing as profound as saying to each of them, in turn “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”.
Ash Wednesday invites us to recall that life is fleeting, that it is transient and that change is urgent. We do not have time to waste on nothingness. And it is an invitation to recall that we are given fullness of life in the promise of Christ Jesus. The words that are said to us as we are marked with ashes are not a death sentence…they are a promise. We are dust. We came from the dust that was formed into humanity and breathed upon with nothing less than the very breath of God. We are dust…you and I and each of us together. No one gets to rise above that status, no matter what the world might say otherwise. And the certainty of our mortality is what provides us with the freedom to live every day fully trusting in the one who made us and claimed us.
Returning to Joan Chittister and her thoughts regarding Lent, she writes: “After a lifetime of mundane regularity or unconsidered adherence to the trappings of faith, Lent requires me, as a Christian, to stop for a while, to reflect again on what is going on in me. I am challenged again to decide whether I, myself, do truly believe that Jesus is the Christ – and if I believe, whether I will live accordingly when I can no longer hear the song of angels in my life and the star of Bethlehem has grown dim for me.”
Remember, remember, that you are dust. That’s it. Dust. And then allow that remembering to open for you a vast storehouse of possibility. The possibility to live a life closer to the one that God intended at the creation. The possibility to consider more carefully and more mindfully that you are a spiritual being as well as a physical one. That somehow giving up physical pleasures like comfort food and driving a car will turn your gaze more gently in the direction of the life of discipleship to which we are all called.
Remember that you, that we, are dust, each one of us, and that this is a great and true promise that we receive in our hearts this night as well as on our foreheads.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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