Ash Wednesday/Valentine's Day Sermon

I really liked my Wednesday sermon for Ash Wednesday.  I won't always be able to preach this way--Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day will be on the same day only one more time during my lifetime (2029), so let me post it here:

Here we are at a strange confluence of holidays—not Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday—that confluence goes back at least as far as medieval times, when many Christians, if they were wealthy enough to afford the items in the first place, gave up sugar and meat and fat and alcohol for Lent. So, as Ash Wednesday approached, they had to get all those items out of the house--thus, a festive party opportunity. And now, we continue that tradition with our Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers and Mardi Gras festivities.

No, I’m talking about this day when we get to celebrate both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. For some people, this mix of love and mortality might be unwelcome. But let’s sit with it a bit. We will only have Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine’s Day one more time this century, in 2029.

When I was young, I hated Ash Wednesday, which seemed to be a holiday designed to tell us that we’re worthless sinners. And to be honest, I also hated Valentine’s Day, a holiday designed to remind schoolchildren how much some are loved and others aren’t. I have fond memories of making Valentine’s mailboxes out of shoeboxes. We had classroom parties with cupcakes brought in by moms (not dads, in those days, always moms). It was a different time, and no one made sure that everyone got a Valentine’s Day card, the way that some schools do now. You might get a bundle, or you might get none, for those of us who went to elementary school in the early 70’s.

To be fair, I was in the middle range. I had no reason to hate the holiday. But it was always that fear that no one would give me a Valentine, that fear that I would have an empty box at the end of the day.

Ash Wednesday provokes a similar fear in me, with its message of mortality. Worse, it’s a fear that I know is a reasonable one. Like so many of us, I am afraid that I will be the little old lady who outlives her friends and family. Sure, I have younger friends, in addition to the ones my age and older, but I’m no dummy. I’ve already outlived some of my younger colleagues and family members. We are dust, and every day that goes by means that we are closer to returning to dust.

Our texts tonight remind us of all the ways that humans try to forget that we’re made of dust. Maybe we’ve tried to stay on the right side of God with our religious practices, praying and fasting. The words of Jesus remind us to enter into these practices with the correct spirit. We can do everything that is helps us build Christian community and still find ourselves criticized and worse. The words of Paul in Corinthians remind us that God sees what we are doing and God blesses us, even if the larger world does not.

But frankly, that’s cold comfort when I think of ending up alone with everything I love in ashes. In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus acknowledges that we live in a world where thieves can steal and moths and rust destroy. He doesn’t try to explain God’s wisdom in creating this world. He doesn’t try to convince us that we should look on the bright side of our Ash Wednesday existence. He does remind us that our hearts should be elsewhere, that we should be focused on a treasure that’s not going to leave us.

Just as Saint Valentine is credited with delivering messages between lovers, Jesus delivers a message from God. Jesus comes to tell us how profoundly we are loved by God. I imagine some of his first century audience as similar to a fourth grade child who never received a Valentine, never got an invitation to a birthday party, never felt included. We see the powerful impact of this message, as Jesus cures people of all that brings them woe and keeps them excluded. Jesus declares God’s love for all of creation, from the least to the ones that already have plenty of love. And Jesus goes many steps further by showing us how to manifest more of that love in our human lives—by caring for each other, so that we don’t have to fear being the one who has outlived all of our family and friends and connections. What an amazing Valentine Jesus delivers to our cardboard mailboxes!

It's a Valentine message that I don’t always appreciate, that in God’s design, there’s room for me and there’s room for the cancer cell. It’s a Valentine message that I struggle to emulate, this love for all of creation. Our Lenten disciplines and enrichments can help us be open to receiving this love, even if we don’t understand it fully—and our Lenten disciplines can embolden us to extend that love to others.

Our knowledge of our mortality should inspire us to form more connections, not fewer. Yes, everything we love will be lost, but God promises that a new life will emerge.

As you come forward to receive the ash, let yourself reflect on all that it means. Traditionally the ashes come from the burning of last year’s Palm Sunday fronds. In the same way, the universe recycles all—we are dust, yes, but it’s dust made of decomposing galaxies and last year’s festivals and everyone who ever walked before us. We don’t have limitless amounts of time in this human form we inhabit now, but God reaches out to us across space and time, in the words of the prophets and psalmists, in the incarnation of Jesus, in the creation that God is always making and remaking.

Yes, we are dust, and to dust we shall return. But Ash Wednesday doesn’t give us the complete picture. Ash Wednesday points us to Easter, God’s ultimate Valentine message of love where God shows us that even though earthly powers and principalities join together to defeat the ultimate message of Love that Jesus brings, those powers and principalities will not succeed. Easter gives us the promise of resurrection. Everything we love will turn to dust, but dust is not the final incarnation. From that dust will come something new, something shining, something celestial in its beauty.