Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,

given by Rev. Eliza Linley/February 21, 2007

  The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share

Christ's love in the world.  We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to other

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In a few minutes we will line up to have a cross traced in ash on our foreheads, a reminder of our mortality and the penitence with which we enter into Lent. We will all go out of here today bearing the sign of the cross in a way that everybody will know you’ve been to church. Unless you wipe it off. 

But then, we‘ve just heard Jesus tell his followers not to look dismal when they are fasting, not to disfigure their faces so others will approve of their holiness, but to wash up, and to fast and pray in secret. So…what’s the real story on the ashes? After Palm Sunday we take all the palms, and the palm crosses, and we burn them. Next year’s ashes are made from these. Our brows are symbolically marked with the palms people used to welcome Jesus at his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed in the one who comes in the name of the Lord. And in this way we are enrolled once again in the drama of the journey to the cross. What part will each of us play? Are we enlisted as faithful followers, as traitors, or both? 

Ashes are carbon. They’re what’s left when matter is burned and energy released. They’re also one of the building blocks of the universe. The presence of carbon indicates that a substance is biogenic – that it has a plant or animal origin. Carbon dating was a revolutionary process that enabled scientists to tell the date, more or less of anything that lived. The release of carbon compounds into the atmosphere is the chief cause of global warming. You could say it’s the hallmark of human civilization. More than all our learning or accomplishments – how ironic if carbon were the culmination of all we’ve done, and the thing that does us in. 

These ashes are stardust. Every atom in them, and in us, was present at the dawn of creation, when God created the heavens and the earth. The fire that created these ashes is a step in the endless cycle of life that binds us to all creation. These ashes were here in air, in water, in the dust of the road, when Jesus walked among us. They were here, in one form or another, when Isaiah prophesied, when Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, when Abraham left his home in Iraq, Ur of the Chaldees. They were here when the only consciousness that existed was that of our Creator.

The mortality that these ashes represent, then, is much more about life than death. They stand for our connection to all life, to the great chain of being, to the One who made us, to the One who came to be with us and who is with us still. We bear the ashes as Christians, people who are deeply involved in the web of life, who care for one another, who care for all humanity, for all creation. That’s the backbone of our faith that Jesus taught, this giving and receiving – call it love, call it stewardship – this radical involvement with life.

Jesus talks about almsgiving, prayer and fasting, a pattern that the church has adopted. It’s one that we might do well to remember all the time, but it is especially brought to our attention during this season of Lent. I remember riding on a bus in Morocco when a beggar came by asking for alms at a bus stop. Windows went down; hands reached out, money and food were given. Not a sight you’d see here, I think. I remembered that almsgiving is also a part of Muslim tradition, of Jewish tradition, Buddhist and Hindu as well. It’s part of every religious tradition that has lasted because it connects us one to another. A daily practice of giving reminds us of whose we are. Maybe, just for Lent, we can leave behind the vexing political questions that rise up when we consider the persistence of poverty, and just give.

Prayer. Self-examination. We are too busy. Our lives suffer for it. We are fractured and fragmented. We wish it were otherwise, yet we do not change. And here comes Jesus, telling us, not that we should pray, but how to pray. The passage that was left out of the middle of the gospel reading, by the way, is the Lord’s Prayer. But in order to pray as Jesus suggests, we have to make time. Rejoice, then, that Lent is at hand. This is our big opportunity. Pray every day. It’s like exercise. Once you do it every day it gets easier. That’s why walking is great – you can do both at the same time.

Fasting. How many diet plans are out there in the culture? How many books?  How many billions of dollars’ worth of low fat, low carb, high fiber, you name it, food products are out there, ostensibly to help Americans lose weight? They are legion. And yet we gain weight. The great profit-making machine seems interested in us chiefly as giant consumers. And all too often we oblige. Jesus assumes, assumes, as with prayer, that we do fast, and suggests that we be cheerful about it. I think fasting is culturally subversive. To just take our minds off the merry go round and set them on God is very countercultural indeed. Like the giving of alms, fasting reminds us of those who are hungry, of our connection to them as brothers and sisters. Taking the emphasis off stuff, including food, helps unclutter our lives. 

Slow down. Unclutter. Give a little and let go a lot. If we keep a faithful Lent we will find out more about who God is calling us to be. Dust we are, but we are stardust. Jesus invites us to sparkle through eternity.