February 22, 2012
Ashes
By The Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
Morningside Presbyterian Church, Atlanta
Ashes
The Book of Matthew
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
February 22, 2012
Ashes
The Book of Matthew
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
February 22, 2012
I had a few minutes to kill this morning between finishing one project and starting the next so I logged on to Facebook to see what 500 of my closest friends were doing. After I had seen who had what for breakfast among the more prolific posters, I began to notice a trend among my clergy friends. An overwhelming number has posted a single line as their status update.
The line, I’m sure you can guess it, was “Remember from dust you have been made and to dust you shall return.”
What a cheery good morning. What I found particularly odd culturally was the number of people who “liked” these posts. (If you’re not one of the folks who wastes time on Facebook, I should explain that last bit. Facebook allows you to click on a thumbs up or a thumbs down icon to “like” someone’s status post. I think it’s a way of showing you care, but it just sort of struck me as funny when I saw my colleague’s dour proclamation with ten thumbs up next to it.)
The other thing I saw was a laundry list of things people were fondly bidding farewell to for 40 days. No more martinis, no more French fries, no more chocolate, and in a few cases, no more Facebook. Some folks “liked” that too.
It all gave me pause to think about what we’re really saying here at the start of Lent. “Remember from dust you have been made and to dust you shall return.”
It’s not a breezy statement. It’s not a light statement. It’s a statement of mortality.
When we hear those words and feel the coarse brush of the finger with ashes on the end of it on our foreheads, it is an abrupt reminder of how precious life is.
I have never had a single ash Wednesday service where I didn’t rub ashes on the head of someone I knew who was seriously ill and someone I knew who had defied all odds in living.
For many years, my friend Barbara was the person who rubbed the ashes into the sign of a cross on my forehead. It was her task to do so because her wheelchair would sit in the aisle of the church I served next to the front pew. Indeed, I know that she is there right now. Every year as I imposed the ashes on the last congregant, I would turn to the closest person, that was Barbara, and ask her to put ashes on my head. It was a sobering reminder that though Barbara has lived with cancer every day I have known her, that she could be just as likely to be at my funeral as I was to be at hers.
There is something about mortality that reminds us of our need for penitence. Lent is the season of clearing out. It’s more than clearing out of our cupboards. Last year I shared an old Robert Herrick poem with you about keeping lent. “To starve thy sin, not thy bin, is to keep thy true lent,” he wrote hundreds of years ago.
It is so tempting to reduce penitence to giving up bad habits rather than clearing out the cobwebs from the corners of our faith lives. What we’re invited to do at Lent is to remember how deeply precious life is, how fleeting, and to adjust our lives accordingly.
Jesus seems to assume that we will do so. I’ve often heard this passage that we read tonight listed as the reason to avoid public prayer or public practice where faith is concerned. Keep it hidden, don’t Tebow, don’t make a show of faith.
There’s perhaps some truth to that, though I’m not equipped to sit in judgment of the practice of NFL quarterbacks in expressing their personal faith. The point seems to me more that we are to keep the main thing the main thing.
I was standing in the parking lot greeting last night during our Shrove Tuesday pancake supper – it was great fun - and one of the folks who was here for another meeting said to me, “Why pancakes?”
I was quickly able to answer, “Well that’s what you can make with all of the milk, sugar, butter and eggs that you’re trying to clear out of the cupboard.” She waited a moment and added, “Why would you be clearing out your cupboard?”
“Ahhh…” I thought. “Nobody knows what it’s for.”
Don’t let what we’re doing by way of self-examination and moral inventory get pushed down to edges while we clear out the butter, eggs, milk and sugar and make pancakes. Have the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and certainly lay off the chocolate on Ash Wednesday if you feel so moved to do, but remember why. It’s a fast.
The purpose of a fast is to focus the mind. We don’t give things up for the sake of giving them up, but so that we can be reminded of something.
In the case of lent, we are to be reminded that it is a season of penitence we are entering. Whether you give something up or take something up, the point remains the same: to remember that Good Friday is coming. We gather to remember that before the resurrection of Easter, there is the cross of Friday.” Grace is costly.
Grace is costly and life is precious.
The point of Lent is to help us remember to keep the main thing the main thing.
I was called to the hospital very unexpectedly one year by Barbara’s husband. Barbara had suffered a complication from her disease and was lingering between life and death in a medically induced coma. He had to make the decision to authorize exploratory surgery. Her surgeon urged him to proceed as quickly as possible. He did. For weeks Barbara wouldn’t wake up. We almost gave up hope. And then slowly the signs of life began to return. Finally she woke up and was almost immediately rushed into rehab to regain strength. On Easter Sunday, I went to her clinic room to share with her in celebrating the good news of the resurrection, and she said to me, “I have to tell you about what happened.”
“Surely you don’t remember those weeks?” I answered.
“No,” she said, “I don’t remember anything from when the emergency physician put me into the coma. The last thing I said to him was, ‘If you can’t fix me, let me go.’ And then there were those weeks and weeks that are lost to me. I don’t remember a thing. But the first memory I have of waking up was that the nurse in the intensive care unit was giving me a bath. I heard the water dripping in the basin as the nurse wrung out the sponge and I felt the water run down the side of my face. All I could think of was my baptism, and I remembered, ‘I am baptized. I belong to God.’
The single line, “remember, from dust you have been made and to dust you shall return,” cannot tell the whole story. There’s a second line that we need to remember in this season of penitence and reflection as we work our way toward resurrection and renewal, and it is this: we belong to God.
It is true. From dust we have been made, and to dust we shall return. And we belong to God. Remembering these things, let us strive to keep the main thing the main thing. However dour the proclamation of our mortality, it is always, always contained within the gracious mercy of God who claims us, loves us, and never lets us go.
Thanks be to God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Ashes
The Book of Matthew
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
February 22, 2012
Ashes
The Book of Matthew
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
February 22, 2012
I had a few minutes to kill this morning between finishing one project and starting the next so I logged on to Facebook to see what 500 of my closest friends were doing. After I had seen who had what for breakfast among the more prolific posters, I began to notice a trend among my clergy friends. An overwhelming number has posted a single line as their status update.
The line, I’m sure you can guess it, was “Remember from dust you have been made and to dust you shall return.”
What a cheery good morning. What I found particularly odd culturally was the number of people who “liked” these posts. (If you’re not one of the folks who wastes time on Facebook, I should explain that last bit. Facebook allows you to click on a thumbs up or a thumbs down icon to “like” someone’s status post. I think it’s a way of showing you care, but it just sort of struck me as funny when I saw my colleague’s dour proclamation with ten thumbs up next to it.)
The other thing I saw was a laundry list of things people were fondly bidding farewell to for 40 days. No more martinis, no more French fries, no more chocolate, and in a few cases, no more Facebook. Some folks “liked” that too.
It all gave me pause to think about what we’re really saying here at the start of Lent. “Remember from dust you have been made and to dust you shall return.”
It’s not a breezy statement. It’s not a light statement. It’s a statement of mortality.
When we hear those words and feel the coarse brush of the finger with ashes on the end of it on our foreheads, it is an abrupt reminder of how precious life is.
I have never had a single ash Wednesday service where I didn’t rub ashes on the head of someone I knew who was seriously ill and someone I knew who had defied all odds in living.
For many years, my friend Barbara was the person who rubbed the ashes into the sign of a cross on my forehead. It was her task to do so because her wheelchair would sit in the aisle of the church I served next to the front pew. Indeed, I know that she is there right now. Every year as I imposed the ashes on the last congregant, I would turn to the closest person, that was Barbara, and ask her to put ashes on my head. It was a sobering reminder that though Barbara has lived with cancer every day I have known her, that she could be just as likely to be at my funeral as I was to be at hers.
There is something about mortality that reminds us of our need for penitence. Lent is the season of clearing out. It’s more than clearing out of our cupboards. Last year I shared an old Robert Herrick poem with you about keeping lent. “To starve thy sin, not thy bin, is to keep thy true lent,” he wrote hundreds of years ago.
It is so tempting to reduce penitence to giving up bad habits rather than clearing out the cobwebs from the corners of our faith lives. What we’re invited to do at Lent is to remember how deeply precious life is, how fleeting, and to adjust our lives accordingly.
Jesus seems to assume that we will do so. I’ve often heard this passage that we read tonight listed as the reason to avoid public prayer or public practice where faith is concerned. Keep it hidden, don’t Tebow, don’t make a show of faith.
There’s perhaps some truth to that, though I’m not equipped to sit in judgment of the practice of NFL quarterbacks in expressing their personal faith. The point seems to me more that we are to keep the main thing the main thing.
I was standing in the parking lot greeting last night during our Shrove Tuesday pancake supper – it was great fun - and one of the folks who was here for another meeting said to me, “Why pancakes?”
I was quickly able to answer, “Well that’s what you can make with all of the milk, sugar, butter and eggs that you’re trying to clear out of the cupboard.” She waited a moment and added, “Why would you be clearing out your cupboard?”
“Ahhh…” I thought. “Nobody knows what it’s for.”
Don’t let what we’re doing by way of self-examination and moral inventory get pushed down to edges while we clear out the butter, eggs, milk and sugar and make pancakes. Have the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and certainly lay off the chocolate on Ash Wednesday if you feel so moved to do, but remember why. It’s a fast.
The purpose of a fast is to focus the mind. We don’t give things up for the sake of giving them up, but so that we can be reminded of something.
In the case of lent, we are to be reminded that it is a season of penitence we are entering. Whether you give something up or take something up, the point remains the same: to remember that Good Friday is coming. We gather to remember that before the resurrection of Easter, there is the cross of Friday.” Grace is costly.
Grace is costly and life is precious.
The point of Lent is to help us remember to keep the main thing the main thing.
I was called to the hospital very unexpectedly one year by Barbara’s husband. Barbara had suffered a complication from her disease and was lingering between life and death in a medically induced coma. He had to make the decision to authorize exploratory surgery. Her surgeon urged him to proceed as quickly as possible. He did. For weeks Barbara wouldn’t wake up. We almost gave up hope. And then slowly the signs of life began to return. Finally she woke up and was almost immediately rushed into rehab to regain strength. On Easter Sunday, I went to her clinic room to share with her in celebrating the good news of the resurrection, and she said to me, “I have to tell you about what happened.”
“Surely you don’t remember those weeks?” I answered.
“No,” she said, “I don’t remember anything from when the emergency physician put me into the coma. The last thing I said to him was, ‘If you can’t fix me, let me go.’ And then there were those weeks and weeks that are lost to me. I don’t remember a thing. But the first memory I have of waking up was that the nurse in the intensive care unit was giving me a bath. I heard the water dripping in the basin as the nurse wrung out the sponge and I felt the water run down the side of my face. All I could think of was my baptism, and I remembered, ‘I am baptized. I belong to God.’
The single line, “remember, from dust you have been made and to dust you shall return,” cannot tell the whole story. There’s a second line that we need to remember in this season of penitence and reflection as we work our way toward resurrection and renewal, and it is this: we belong to God.
It is true. From dust we have been made, and to dust we shall return. And we belong to God. Remembering these things, let us strive to keep the main thing the main thing. However dour the proclamation of our mortality, it is always, always contained within the gracious mercy of God who claims us, loves us, and never lets us go.
Thanks be to God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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