LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Ash Wednesday + March 1, 2006 + St. Paul’s Church, Lake James

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Well, here it is again. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of another Lent. Today we start six weeks marked by emphases on self-examination and repentance. Six weeks during which the Church gives us frequent reminders of how far we have strayed from being the people God intends us to be. Gone are the bright flowers which often adorn the sanctuary with their lovely colors and interesting shapes. Missing from the liturgies are the happy exclamations of “Glory to God in the highest” and “Alleluia.” Instead of the gleaming white vestments of Christmas and Easter, or the bright red worn at Pentecost, we have the purple of penitence. For those who follow the Church’s traditional discipline, the Lenten fast on Wednesdays and Fridays changes familiar patterns of eating and drinking.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to prefer seasons which proclaim joy, even glee! But today’s message as reflected in Bible Readings and the seasonal theme gives no basis for glee. It is far from being a religious version of “have a nice day!”

In this homily, I’d like to direct our attention to the eleven words spoken by the priest as ashes are placed on our heads: “Remember that you are dust and to dust shall you return.” If we really listen to those words, if we give them serious thought, they are apt to invade our lives, thrust aside our usual preoccupations, and confront us with a reality our society desperately tries to ignore: the reality of death.

Like most other people, my conscious attention day by day usually centers in a number of things: family and friends, finances, the day’s appointments, and plans for the future. I am concerned about the continuing deaths in Iraq, the Holy Land, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world, the threat of terrorist attacks here at home, and the seemingly ever-growing numbers of homeless people. I try to be a good Priest and Pastor for this parish, a helpful colleague to Father John, our Wardens, Vestry, and other parish leaders. On a typical day, I pray the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, perhaps celebrate a Mass, counsel people, and spend time preparing a sermon. There are often meetings to attend, letters to be written, and bills to be paid. I expect those time-consuming involvements are not all that different from those in your life. The specifics may differ, but most of us tend to concentrate on the here and now or the immediate future. One thing missing from my list (and perhaps from yours) is much time considering the fact that I am going to die. That you are going to die. That all our plans, hopes, and energies expended on concerns of this life, no matter how noble or worthwhile, are but a small part of what our existence is about.

Today, Ash Wednesday, the Church bids us begin our 40 day observance by expanding our attention to include the fact of our mortality, to put our thoughts about life and our lives into a more realistic perspective by including considerations of the reality of the presence of God in ways which transcend this life and our usual preoccupations.

Remember that you are dust and to dust shall you return!

For many people, serious consideration of one’s mortality is not an easy thing to do. Those whose professional work with people includes that focus all testify to the strength of human resistance to contemplating one’s own death. Attorneys trying to teach people that they really should make wills, insurance agents trying to help clients plan for the financial protection of their families, even priests preaching on the subject – not to mention obeying the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer which instructs priests to remind parishioners (quote) “while they are in good health to provide for the church in their wills.” (unquote.) The point is that, for many, facing mortality in any but the most general, intellectualized or abstract way, is difficult indeed! That applies to all sorts of people, not just church folk. Have you ever noticed that in hospitals, patients never die? They expire as if they were magazine subscriptions! Blunt, honest words such as “death,” “body” or “corpse” are shunned as if they were contagious, reflecting a desire to avoid confrontation with death itself. In contrast, the Church says those eleven words to us: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Why does the Church do that to us? Where’s the “Good News” in that? The answer is that, unless we take the Christ’s great promise of Eternal Life into account, unless we accept the profound importance of what we say in the Creed, namely that we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, we ignore one of the most important facts about human life – the fact that God intends this life to be temporary! Our Creator has designed us so that our bodies will die. Our religion teaches us that there is more, far more to our existence than the few brief years we live on this earth. Without that belief, this life emerges as “all there is.” Without that belief, the promises of God are not trustworthy. Without that belief, death is the end and such things as Ash Wednesday and Lent have little or no real meaning.

The Church gives us Lent to help us put first things first, to restore a focus on reality which lets the Gospel break through the many defenses and filters provided by our busyness, whether that busyness is self-centered, work-centered, golf-centered, or even church-centered!

Today, Ash Wednesday, invites us to begin Lent by putting our thoughts into a new perspective, one in which we measure our values and commitments in the light of our mortality and the clear teachings of Jesus Christ about life, death, and larger life. However you have decided you will keep Lent, whatever the specific observances called for in your Lenten Rule of Life, may you keep in mind that the God who so lovingly created each one of us and called us into life, also calls our bodies to death, but at the same time, calls us to join all the faithful departed in the Church Expectant in Paradise, and finally, in the fullness of time, to join all the Saints in the glorious enjoyment of God Himself forever in the Church triumphant in heaven.

IF that’s true, and it certainly is the promise made by Jesus the Lord and taught by the Church for over two thousand years, then the message of Ash Wednesday is Good News. So, remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return, rejoicing at the promise of what comes after that!

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Reverend Alfred T. K. Zadig, Sr.

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