Sunday: Ash Wednesday
Reading: Joel 2:1-2,12-17; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Preacher: Dan Puchalla

Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety in front of others. 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."

This gospel seems a strange thing to hear on a day when we smear black ashen crosses on our faces for all the world to see. In utter contradiction to our Savior's instructions, we begin our Lenten fasts, almsgiving, and spiritual disciplines by advertising this fact on no less prominent a place than our very foreheads. It would seem that, with this ancient tradition, the Church has slipped into the same hypocrisy Jesus saw in his coreligionists. If this is so, then the best thing for me to say to you is, "Go home now, lock yourself in your room, and begin your Lent there."

I'm not going to tell you that. I'm not going to tell you that because the ashes are not primarily - and perhaps not at all - about penitence. In a few moments, you will not hear from the priest "Remember you are a sinner," but "Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return" Remember that you are finite, temporary, mortal. Remember: You will die.

Our charge today is not to bear our ashes as a sign that we are being penitent and pious but to bear them as a sign for ourselves and for the world that I, you, all of you, all of this, everything in this life is dust.

That being said, I daresay that lately we seem to be surrounded by nothing but signs of our mortality, of how conditional our lives are. The suffering of our sisters and brothers in Haiti is evidence of our powerlessness in the face of the cataclysmic forces of the same earth that sustains our lives. And more than this, Haiti reminds us not just of how limited we are despite all our cultural and technological achievements - but, indeed, how limited we are by these achievements themselves. After all, it was not just an earthquake that crushed the Haitians - it was a persistent battering from the forces of history, politics, and economics - forces of our own making and yet largely out of our power to control fully.

And really, I feel this is the anxiety of our time. The ramifications of this so-called Great Recession, ramifications that seemingly still have yet to be realized, is a monument to the immensity and interconnectedness of the economies around the entire planet - and a testament to the utter powerlessness of any one person, government, or entity to fix when it goes wrong. These big things that are so abstracted from our lives, so beyond most of us to fully comprehend - mortgage-backed securities, sovereign debt, etc, etc. not to mention odious things like filibusters -- these huge forces are so beyond our everyday lives in scope and yet they have hurt us so personally and so concretely: they have lost us our jobs and homes, squeezed our incomes, vaporized our savings. And though things could certainly be much worse, and things are much worse for others in the world, we are just so ... STUCK in something. Our tires are spinning in the muddy snow, and every hint of traction is immediately followed by another slippery patch. We can feel so stuck in this mire that we may very well lose any hope of getting out. Friends, as far as I'm concerned, this is not the Ash Wednesday, not the Lent, to remind ourselves of how contingent and limited we are. We're living it. We are waist-deep in our dust.

So I offer you this year a different purpose for these ashes. Wear your ashes as a reminder of your mortality - but if you don't need that reminder today, wear them as a reminder to someone else - someone whom I sometimes feel has forgotten what we are and where we come from. I ask you to wear your ashes as a reminder to God.

Throughout the Old Testament, God is a forgetful. God needs reminders of past promises made, of past favor pledged, like cosmic Post-It notes. The Ark is a reminder to God of the covenant of the law given to Israel. Circumcision is a reminder to God of the covenant made with Abraham and Sarah and their descendents. The rainbow is a reminder to God not to exterminate the human species again.
The prophet Joel demands the same accountability from God when he cries today: "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?'"

The ashes today are a reminder to God of the first covenant made with humanity, prior to all of these: the covenant of our creation. We bear the ashes to remind God that she is the one who formed us from the dust into her very image and who breathed into us her own spirit. God has a responsibility to us as both her handiwork and her children. We are hers, so why should we have to say amongst ourselves, "Where is our God?"

And even if you do not personally feel the sting of our times, I challenge you to wear your ashes today as a sign of solidarity with those who do. And come to think of it, wear your ashes as a sign of solidarity with all who have suffered and all who will still suffer in this life - all those dusty figures who seem to have been forsaken by their God. The ashes bind us to one another, recalling our common origin and our common destiny.

Our penance today and throughout this season is likewise a demand on the justice and responsibility of God. We confess our sinfulness not in a groveling manner, but as an honest expression of who we are - yes, prone to our own injustice, cruelty, ignorance, and oppression; yes, given to our own forgetfulness of our neighbors, the natural world, and those in most need - yet still thoroughly desiring of righteousness and love, still hopeful that we can do better, still drawn to the God who made us. Yes, even in our sin, we demand that God not abandon us to our waywardness nor disown us from our divine heritage. We are honest about who we are and call upon God to be honest to who she is: the God of mercy, love, and justice who molded us out of the earth. We call upon God not to break our relationship lest her justice become cheap, a byword among the nations. Today, with rent hearts and on bended knees, we demand forgiveness and absolution.