Ash Wednesday by Rev. Gabrielle Martone at Pearl River United Methodist Church on Wednesday 26 February 2020
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Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 NRSV
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near— a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come. Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy. Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 NRSV
So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 NRSV
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
So many of you know that we are at the train station this morning, 5:45, bright and early. I had an opportunity to be able to join with Pastor Alina from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church and Kyle from the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. I watched the very interesting nature of being in a very Catholic town. You know why? Everyone thought Kyle was the real priest, which is wildly entertaining. So there would be people that Alina and I would say, "Would you like to receive your ashes?" and they'd say no, and then Kyle would walk up to them in all of his like 6 foot 12 … and I know that's not a real height … in all of his 6 foot 12 clerical collar on priestness, and they all thought he was Catholic. So they were like, "Yeah, Father, we'll take ashes from you. That's fine." Okay, fine, that's good.
But it was also a very cool experience because over a hundred people received their ashes today. So in the span of just a couple of hours, over a hundred people got on a train and went into the city or went about the rest of their day with this weird looking mark on their head. Then, of course, because we're really good religious people, we had to go get food, because we have to eat. After you've been standing outside in the cold, but not as cold as it was last year, as they kept reminding me, we headed up to Muddy Brook. We're like, "This will be lovely." While we were in Muddy Brook, every single person who went in the hours that we were there asked for ashes. Okay, that's very, very cool experience. So you started to think about why in the world we do this, right? What is the point of doing Ash Wednesday? We're good Protestants, and Protestants don't do things that look Catholic because everyone starts to get a little angsty about it.
So why in the world would we celebrate Ash Wednesday? Why is it important for us to mark this day, especially in light of the gospel reading that says, "Do not disfigure your face so that other people do not know what you are doing." It's really, really, really easy for us, as our small town down home good Christian folk, to go from Easter or not … go from Advent and Christmas, where little baby Jesus gets born, and that's very exciting. Baby Jesus comes, everybody else gets presents. Santa is around. People like each other. It's really good, and we move into the season of epiphany, which is all about celebrating the fact that Jesus Christ came to this world and lived the life that we should have lived. Then we just want to go right to Easter. We want to just party all the time because we're good people. We are good people who do not like to have to look in the mirror and say, "Maybe there are some parts of you that are not so great." We have a really hard time with it because, pastor, I haven't murdered anyone. I'm generally really good to the people around me. I must be fine, right?
There's a personality test now that's very quickly out-taking the Myers Briggs and it's called the Enneagram. The Enneagram is all about this idea that we are all different facets of numbers. There are nine different numbers and each one has a type that goes with it. Somewhere along the way we all have different aspects of these different numbers, but we all have that one number that really defines who we are and our core fears and our core motivations in how we exist in the world. So there's things like the nine is the peacemaker. So nines are really good at not having any conflict. Now that sounds really great. The downside of being a nine, the shadow side of being the peacemaker means that you don't have any conflict ever and you will do whatever is humanly possible to get out of conflict, which means you never deal with the issues that are around you. Never get to talk about what's really bothering you.
So lots of nines often experience a blow up. So all of you who have ever made pasta before and it boils and the foam is just getting to the top and you're watching it and you go, "Oh, that's definitely going to go over," but you're hoping that it's not because you don't want to have to clean up the mess that comes when that pasta water boils over, and every once in a while, it just cascades down the side of your pot. If you're anything like I am, it also puts out the flame that's supposed to be boiling your water. Then you're like, "Oh, I put too much water in there again. Maybe I should …" So nines get to this point where they are so overwhelmed with all of the conflict that they haven't been dealing with and they've been at that nice surface tension, and then all of a sudden they explode and everyone's like, "Where'd that come from?"
Well, there are twos. Twos are called the helpers. Twos sound amazing because these are the people that are going to do anything humanly possible to make you feel important. These are the people who show up time and time and time again, and they move tables and they help elderly folk across the street, and they're nice to little children and they will do anything and everything humanly possible so that you don't have to stress or worry. But the downside of being a two is you often exist on not understanding why not everybody else exists in the world the same way that you do. So you have this issue a little bit with reciprocity. It's like, "So I showed up for you at 3:00 in the morning, are you going to show up for me at 3:00 in the morning?" Probably not. Twos often get walked all over, and they too reach a boiling part, a point when they are so overwhelmed by not understanding where the rest of the world doesn't function the way that they do that they, too, will boil over.
Then you have my favorite number, which is my number, which is the eight. The eight is the challenger. When you first read all of the great things about the challenger: We are strong-willed. We are good leaders. We are the people that get things done. But the shadow side of being an eight is you get everything done by yourself. So everybody else, look … The motivation is you don't want to have to inconvenience anyone, but the reality is, is you just look like you don't like other people. I worked very hard at that. The shadow side of being an eight means I hate being vulnerable. So I will build up all kinds of walls so that you can't see my vulnerability because my core fear is that you're going to hurt me. So I will do anything and everything in my power. I will protect, I will save, I will stand up for everybody else, but you will not make it past my walls.
So when people take the Enneagram, sometimes you have two that come up like really close to each other. So the known saying is whichever one makes you feel the most like, "Oh, I really don't want to be that person, but I probably am," that's the number you are. But here's the beautiful thing about the Enneagram and how it's helped me is that it's made me understand that who I am inherently is not bad. I'm not a bad person because I have a stubbornness that runs through me. I will do it all by myself. Please do not help me. I will not ask for help. I carried an 80-pound mattress up my stairs with a dolly and I couldn't make the turn. Still managed to figure to how to get that thing off and into my room all by myself. It has helped me understand the core fears and the core motivations that begin to let go of that, of beginning to step outside of the things that I have built up to make me comfortable, to be willing to put myself out there to say, "This is who I am." It's not all perfect. In fact, most of it is not perfect. I mess up a whole lot. This is what I am trying to do.
This is the practice of Lent. Lent is all about saying there is a shadow side to who I am. I may not have murdered anybody physically, but I have wished many people dead. I may be so kind to the people that I encounter, but when I get home at night, I'm not the nicest person to my family. I have this deep hatred that runs through me or have these attitudes and these parts of who I am that when I look in the mirror I just ignore them because it's a whole heck of a lot easier to pretend that the shadow side of who I am isn't there, and we all know that that shadow side of who we are destroys everything in our path. As much as we try and quell and hide and shove in closets, our shadow side, until we're willing to name it and wrestle with it and work through it, our shadow sides wind up running our entire lives.
Lent is about being able to say, "How do I, in my heart, need to draw closer to God, who takes all of the shadow parts of who I am and breathes new life into them?" The Greek word for repentance, which is the primary goal of Lent, to repent, is metanoia. Metanoia means a turning. It means 180-degree turn. So the idea of repentance is that the path that you are going down gets turned and you head in a different direction. So when Jesus says repent, He says, "Turn around, you're going the wrong way. That's not where I have called you to be. Come back and let me set you on the path that you should be on. Let me help you see how your shadow side is running your life, and let me lead you down a different road."
Now that means, too, that we get turned around a lot in our lives. We have to keep turning in our experiences and in our lives where we are because we always seem to wander off that path. Jesus puts us right and then we're like, "Oh, this grass over here is much nicer. I'm going to go over here," and God has to continue to help us to realign ourselves, but we can't be realigned until we are willing to talk about the stuff that we carry within us. We cannot and will not find the fullness of God's love for us until we can acknowledge that we are broken.
The Lutherans have this beautiful concept in their theology of people being simultaneously sinner and saint, all at the same time. We are deeply, deeply flawed people, brokenness, but in Christ we are also raised into wholeness. We are taken from our shadow sides and we begin to see how even the darkest parts of who we are give a light to the path that Christ calls us to walk. So Ash Wednesday for us marks the beginning. It marks the beginning of a journey and even when the gospel says do not disfigure your face, if you listened to the emphasis I was putting on the words, it is so that others may see you. We don't do anything so that other people can see us.
We do not do it so that the person who sits next to us in our cubicle in the office looks at us and goes, "Oh, you must be a very good Christian because you have ashes on your forehead." That's not why we do it. We do not do it so that other people acknowledge our great piety. We do not do it so that other people might be reminded of how good we are. Instead, we mark ourselves in dust and the sign of the cross to remind ourselves that we come from nothing and it is God who breathes life into us and makes dirt and ash and dust into something beautiful. It is a reminder of our mortality, but also a reminder of the beauty of God's handiwork in our lives. How God can take darkness and breathe life into it. We mark ourselves not so that they can see how good we are, but so that we are reminded of how dark we can be. We do it in the sign of the cross to remind us that it is out of darkness that light comes. It is out of the dust and the ash that life appears.
In forest fire fighting, I spent two years as a fire chaplain, which was very entertaining. Things are intentionally burned, so life can come. There is an entire part of the creative understanding of creation in which we literally set fire to beautiful trees and plants and life so that something new can grow. So that out of the ash comes life. Even when it feels like everything around you has burned down and you are discovering parts of yourself you didn't know existed or you had been denying existed, still life comes. So we mark ourselves today, not for them, but for us, to know that even out of the darkness comes light and out of dust comes life today and every day. Amen.
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