Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Jesus said, “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.”

I would never have imagined beginning an Ash Wednesday sermon with a description of a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine, but this is the cartoon I found a few weeks ago when I randomly opened an issue of the magazine in the waiting room of my doctor’s office.

Two men, both in business suits, both holding briefcases, are walking side-by-side down a hall in what looks to be an office. The first man, sporting a mustache and a goatee, has a rather shifty look on his face. He is saying something to the second man who, suspicious and a little afraid is looking back at him. The caption, which is what the first man is saying to the second, is this: “In an effort to be more transparent, I’ve grown back my evil goatee.”

In a moment, you and I will participate in what’s called “the imposition of ashes,” that is, the tracing of a cross of ashes on our foreheads. In doing this, something about each of us becomes, as the carton says, more transparent, more visible. We, you and I, are mortal; we are are dust. It is this simple, incontrovertible fact that sets the tone for what we will be exploring during Lent.

We are mortal; we are dust. It’s something we should be aware of already, for most of us have seen plenty of death in our lives. When we were children we first learned about it through the death of a pet or a grandparent. When we got a little older, some of us experienced the death of classmates or a teacher or another relative. Later still, many of us have experienced the death of colleagues, siblings, friends, spouses and partners, and parents. Yes, we know that death is real through our experience of the death of others.

But even with all this experience, is it possible for us to take in the fact that we ourselves will die? Can we absorb the fact that one day we will not see the sunlight return as it always does in the spring, we will not taste a favorite food; we will not make a list of things to do, we will not smell a hyacinth, we will not touch the face or the hand of the one we love?

Today on the first day of Lent we get to sit with this just for a moment as the ashes are rubbed upon our foreheads and the words are said. We get a chance to sit with what’s hard to wrap our minds around—that we, you and I, and not just others, are mortal

Why do we need to do this as Lent begins?

Yesterday as I was out and about doing work and running a few errands I overheard two young women talking about going to church and “getting the ashes” as one of them put it. One of them was excited about it while the other commented that she thought the whole thing was “depressing and dark.”

I went back to my office, thinking about her comment: “depressing and dark” I thought. “Well, yes, you could look at it that way. Depressing and dark.” And then up from the great internal pool of remembered verses came a sentence from NW poet Theodore Roethke. IIn the poem he was writing not about death but about his own mental illness, a dark and frightening psychic break that he had. He begins the poem in which he is describing something dark and wild and depressing in this way: “In a dark time the eye begins to see.”

This is, in part, how I think about Lent. We sit with ashes and our own mortality as a way to begin to see what’s important in who we are and how we live our lives. And like the fellow in the cartoon with the goatee, during Lent we choose to become more transparent to ourselves and to others about who we really are and what we really want to be and to do as we focus on our own spiritual, relational and communal renewal.

And so to you: What does the awareness of your mortality allow you to see about yourself and about your life? In that you will not be here forever, who do you need to be let go of or what do you need to turn away from? Along with that, who do you need to move toward or reconcile with? What do you need to embrace? And finally, what are you doing or allowing that is inhibiting your own God-given humanity or inhibiting another’s God-given humanity…and what can you, with God’s help, do about it?

At the very end of Lent when we baptize people at the Easter Vigil, you will see that the promises they or their sponsors make for them will be about these very things: What will they turn away from? Who or what will they turn to? What will it look like for them to claim their God-given and full humanity? In the end then, the very same questions that come up for us in the face of our mortality are the questions that come to us and follow us all our days as baptized people, those initiated through water and the Holy Spirit into the death and risen life of Christ our Savior. For he is the one who lived among us as one of us, fully human, mortal like us but in that humanity, completely transparent and filled with the divine presence.

It sounds like a great contradiction.

Theologian Karl Rahner said it this way: “When on Ash Wednesday we hear the words, ‘Remember, you are dust,’ we are also told that we are brothers and sisters of the incarnate Lord. In these words we are told everything that we are: nothingness that is filled with eternity; death that teems with life; futility that redeems; dust that is God’s life forever.”

Works Cited and Consulted

The New Yorker

Theodore Roethke’s poem “In a Dark Time”

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Karl Rahner, The Eternal Year

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