Ash Wednesday Reflections
Ash Wednesday Meditation
March 6, 2019
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
People keep asking me “What is Lent?” Technically, although you wouldn’t know it this year, Lent means “springtime.” It starts on Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter Sunday. It’s a time the church has designated for preparation, especially in ways that honor Jesus, tempted for 40 days in the wilderness, and journeying to the cross where he gives his life showing love conquering fear. Penitence and repentance are common themes over the centuries as people give something up to remind them of struggle. It’s also a time to take on extra things which build our spiritual muscle, such as additional worship services, giving money to needy causes, doing service work, or learning a spiritual discipline. Lent helps us prepare for Easter’s joy. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, this also coincides with spring.
Lent is also a great time to not only look at our individual lives, but to take a large step back to gaze into the cosmos. As Creatures, we worship the Creator, and are humbled by the scale and unitive qualities of Christ’s creative presence. Like an astronaut looking at the earth from space, world peace takes on a new perspective, and the natural systems of the planet held in the vast spaciousness of the universe, gain relevance in ways that are life changing.
Back in the 1934, Dietrich Bonhoffer gave what’s called a “Peace Sermon” to an ecumenical youth conference. Even without the benefit of images of earth from space, he shared his perspectives of living the Christian life in the world. Just a few years before WWII really broke out in earnest, he asks,
“How does peace come about? Through a system of political treaties? Through the investment of international capital in different countries? Through the big banks, through money? Or through universal peaceful rearmament in order to guarantee peace? No, through none of these, for the single reason that in all of them peace is confused with safety. There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be made safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means to give oneself altogether to the law of God, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross. Which of us can say he or she knows what it might mean for the world if one nation should meet the aggressor not with weapons in hand, but praying, defenseless, and for that very reason protected by ‘a bulwark never failing’?” (Dietrich Bonhoffer, German theologian Address, ‘peace sermon’ to the Ecumenical Youth Conference in Fane, Denmark, 1934, on display at the 2017 Gates of Freedom Reformation Exhibit in Wittenberg, Germany).
We are not on a Lenten journey to seek security. We are not taking on disciplines in order to gain guarantees. Lent invites us to dare peace, to give ourselves to God.
At the Gates of Freedom exhibit in Wittenberg Germany, marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, there is a display sharing a quote by another person, Steven Vincent Benet, as he writes in 1942, in the midst of World War and violence demeaning humanity and the larger creation. He offers this prayer to the United Nations,
“Our earth is but a small star in the great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color, or theory. Grant us that courage and foresight to begin this task today so that our children and our children’s children may be proud of the name of humankind. Amen. (Taken from the ‘United Nations’ prayer by US author Stephen Vincent Benet, 1942; on display in Wittenberg, Germany in 2017 in the Gates of Freedom Reformation Exhibit)
Today as we stand on the verge of entering a new Lenten Season, millions of people will participate in the sign of mortality by marks of ashes. Something within us knows that, ultimately, we are participants in a mystery much larger than our minds can comprehend. Using symbols, we enter rituals that help us stay honest enough to not only claim our finite, limited existence, but a deeper hope in a participatory love that holds us. With each breath, we are invited to find our center in Christ, to claim the energy of life itself as creation groans and grows and evolves, changing deeper into glory as God’s creative power continues to proclaim a divine YES!
As we mark ourselves with ashes tonight, we bring our personal lives, whatever it is we’re facing in our context, and like a book mark claiming a certain page, we rest within a larger story of cosmic significance.
With the ashes, marked in the shape of the cross, we Remember We Are Stardust, and to Stardust We Shall Return. Blessings to you on this Lenten journey to Easter and beyond. Amen.
Benediction, sharing words, perhaps inspired by Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582):
Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world.