Ash Wednesday

It’s about at this time of year when we become disgusted with ourselves for not being able to maintain our New Years Resolution… again. It is so frustrating to continually go through the cycle of failure, hitting rock bottom, wallowing in it for a while, wondering if there is any hope for us to be something other than we are. We then get the courage to get back up and try to overcome ourselves, usually around New Years, only to slowly slide back down the slimy slope into the slop of our miserable lives. Well…that might be a bit of an exaggeration.

For some of us our lives can often times seem like a cycle of despair, ever turning on its axis, always repeating the same things, encountering the same things, and being the same thing. As the Godfather once remarked “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” Sometimes I wonder if it is easier to get out of the mafia than it is out of some of our sinful, despairing, and sometimes even destructive cycles of life.

It is the very cyclical nature of our lives that make us sometimes wonder how we can even hope for anything else. Hope is the belief that things can and will be different. But a cycle seems to doom us to turn around to the very thing we were going away from.

How often do we let the current of the world turn us in its direction? On a global scale, we are constantly reminded of the cycle of violence in which the nations perpetually spin. On personal level, our daily lives rub up against children, coworkers, and employers who turn out the hate that has been turned into them. Racism and oppression seemed to be passed down from generation to generation as if it were as established as DNA. The cycle of violence seems to turn under a flood of ignorance and hate. Love, forgiveness and peace seem only to be a mist that is lost in the tidal wave of coercion.

How can we turn the tide that turns the wheel? How can I stop one violent act in the Middle East? How can I stop the poor from being oppressed? How can I keep parents from abusing their children?

This is the cycle in which the world has always been.
This is the cycle in which many of us have always been.
This is how our lives turn. This is how the world turns…

…this is how the world turned.
As the world turned,
Jesus turned into it,
turning the world into something new.

The old cycle, that turns off of violence and hate, is loosing power and passing away. The new cycle is gaining momentum. We do not turn the world, nor do we turn our own lives. But we place ourselves in one these two cycles: either the one that is a cycle of death, destruction, and despair, or the one that is the cycle of birth, resurrection, and new life.

Lent is a time when we show the world that our lives turn by a different flow. And of all the Christian observances, lent is the one that goes against that flow the most.

In Lent, and in other traditions of our worship as Christians, we place ourselves within a different cycle. Every year we come to remember an aspect of Christ that has already happened. Today in particular, we use ashes to help our cycle of remembrance.

These aids to remembrance are already a part of our every day lives. We use all sorts of things to aid our remembrance, as well as to aid in making a past event a present reality: fireworks in remembering a countries birth, cake and singing and gifts to remember a person’s birth, a black arm band to remember the death of a loved one, a flag at half-mast to remember the death of a political leader, a yellow ribbon to remember soldiers on foreign soil.
We even remind ourselves of things that have not yet happened: a yellow sticky note to remember an appointment, wedding invitations to remember an upcoming day in the community’s life, all sorts of electronic gizmos that hold our future of where we are to be at what time and the things we are going to do.

And so the cycle of lent turns us around to remember Jesus’ call to repentance and discipleship; a call that leads through the cross. And the cycle also turns us forward towards the resurrection and the coming of our Lord, and the braking in of the kingdom of God. These remembrances of past and future events turn around our present reality.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. At first glance this seems bleak. Indeed, all of Lent seems to be depressing. The Lenten themes are usually things that most people would want to forget. So why do we go to such great lengths to remember it? Because buried under the ash on our forehead is the reality of the life of Christ. In celebrating our death and mortality, we set the contrast by which resurrection may be seen in our lives so that the world may know it is not us that live, but Christ who lives within us.

It is a reality of our faith that is with us all year, every year, but now is the time where we allow our lives to cycle through this aspect of Christ at a slower pace. This cycle, unlike the cycle of our lives, is a cycle full of hope because it is always turning towards resurrection. There can be no crippling despair when the wheel will always turn towards resurrection.

It is also important to note that we are not the axis on which everything turns. The texts that we read on Ash Wednesday makes sure that our lives are not only being turned in the right direction, but that the turning is doing something. Our acts of worship, and the symbols we use, from the waters of baptism, to the table of Christ, to the ashes on our foreheads, are acts and symbols that are to enable us to see the reality of the kingdom of God. If these acts aren’t turning within us the desire to serve the homeless, visit the lonely, speak out and stand up against oppression, then we had better think twice about doing them. Jesus disciplined himself, Jesus gave things up, Jesus fasted, all to enable him to faithfully live out the kingdom and administer justice.

During lent, many of us alter our lives in small way, so as to help bring a particular reality of Christ into our lives. These alterations, the things we may give up, or take on, are usually things that are not in themselves bad things. In fact they are everyday common things, sometimes mundane, things that are a part of our every day life cycle. But when we give these things up, or take these things on, the cycle of our lives hits a slight bump, jarring us out of cruse-control and making us think, reminding us of Jesus’ words, Remember me? Remember me.

Unlike New Years resolutions that seem to remind us that no force of our own will is able to transform our lives, Lent teaches us that only the Holy Spirit is able to bring about any substantial transformation in our lives. While major themes of lent are discipline, repentance, and confession, these are not acts that remind us of our cyclical failure. Rather, they remind us that all of our past and future failures are followed by God’s grace and Christ’s resurrection. Lent prepares us for Easter.

The Holy Spirit moved Jesus to fast for 40 days in the wilderness to prepare himself for acts of justice, mercy and power that ultimately led to the cross. As we give up and take on during lent, we remind ourselves not only of Christ’s giving up the goodness of heaven to take on the brokenness of humanity, but that Christ’s call to confession and repentance enables us to give up our brokenness in order to take on his divinity.

Christ gives new birth to our cyclical journey through our cyclical lives, so that, as T.S. Eliot wrote,

…the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

May the symbol of the ashes bring about a better awareness that it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Blurring Borders in a Nation that Fears Its Neighbor

or, The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)

Every year the National Wildlife Association faces the challenges of regulating the rules and guidelines of deer hunting. It seems that the prospect of getting that 8 point buck is so tempting that many hunters are willing to break the law in pursuit of this great prize.

But back in 1942, something happened that caused a dramatic drop in deer hunting. You know what it was…Bambi. That’s pretty hard to believe, isn’t it? How in the world is Bambi going to cause some big burly deer hunter to not go hunting? Two possible explanations, either they just couldn’t bring themselves to putting Bambi in the cross hairs of their thirty-alt-six, or little Jonnie Jr. wouldn’t let daddy out the door with the knowledge that he intended to blow Bambi’s head off.

It is so intriguing that one story, could so dramatically transform the way people see deer, that it would even transform a deer’s greatest enemy? But that is power of story, Bambi being the more ridiculous example. But think of the ways in which stories transform not only the way we see, but many times the way we act. Think about how stories like Uncle Tom’s Cabin influenced the ways whites viewed African Americans. Think about the way in which the Movie Philadelphia or the play Angels in America helped to transform the way many American’s viewed Aids and even Homosexuality. We could all mention stories that hit us at certain times and quite literally transformed the way we see things.

It is this transformative power of story that Jesus harnesses in his parables. Jesus is not interested in giving rules and regulations, Jesus is interested in transforming the way we live and understand our lives, and more importantly, how we understand our neighbor.

Rules can prevent us from doing certain things, and force us to do others, but this is not what God desires. God does not want to prevent or force, God desires us to live a certain way because it is life as God intends it.

But the problem is, we often times like rules. We want to know exactly where the boundaries are, so that we can go just to the threshold without going over. We often want to know what the bare minimum is, because we see this life as a matter of abiding by rules so as not to be panelized in the afterlife.

And so it is no surprise that an expert of the Law comes to Jesus asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life. This lawyer believes that life is wrapped up in laws, and in the borders those laws create. Eternal life is attained by following certain rules, and this man wants to boil the laws down to its bare essentials. Out of all the laws, which ones are vital? Jesus, in typical Jesus style, leads the man to the right answer without directly stating it himself. Well, what is written in the law, what do you read there?

“Love the lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus’ response, “do this and you will live.” That’s an interesting response, because the lawyer didn’t ask what he must do to live, but to inherit eternal life.

While I’d be done for the day if I gave the right answer in class, this lawyer still wanted to push the issue. There were no parameters laid out, no dos and don’ts, and so in his search for the boarders of the kingdom of God, he asks Jesus to define a neighbor. It is as if he cannot do anything until the borders are set up. If life, and or eternal life, is wrapped up in loving my neighbor, then I need to know who my neighbor is, right.

This is an interesting situation created by the lawyer because once you define who your neighbor is, you also define who your neighbor is not. But Jesus flat out refuses to use these categories; the categories of who’s in and who’s out are boundaries in which Jesus doesn’t play.

And so Jesus takes some of the categories of this man and completely flips them around, and puts them in a story. Why a story? Because stories have the power to transform how we see others, and possibly even how we interact with them.

And so to this Jew who is very concerned about what to do, Jesus tells a story about a Jew who did nothing. Jesus continues play with the given categories by placing the enemy as the hero who is doing the action. And then places the awkward question back in the lap of the lawyer – Who is the neighbor? Here we see Jesus not creating a border that clearly defines who’s in and who’s out, but Jesus is blurring the borders. It’s not about who’s in and who’s out, it’s about mercy.

And this characteristic of the very law in which Jesus came to fulfill. Even the law as articulated in Deuteronomy was set in place to blur certain boundaries between neighbors for the very purpose of showing mercy. In chapter 24, they are told not to harvest to the very edges, and not to take all of the olives from their trees, or grapes from the veins. Why? It is for the widows, orphans, and aliens. But it’s private property, right? Even the lines between public and private property are blurred if you obey the torah. But this is not a law to be obeyed out of blind obedience, the law, like Jesus’ parable, are to be followed because they transform the way we see our neighbor. If all during harvest time I am taking much of the harvest to feed my family, how am I going to understand the food I’m leaving? I’m probably going to start associating those widows, orphans, and aliens as my family.

How is it that so many people can see the imaginary border between Israel and Palestine as border to be defended, but cannot see it as the blurry line where mercy can be shown? Who is my neighbor? How is it that so many people can see the imaginary border between the United States and Mexico as a threat to our freedom, and not as the blurry line where we find life in providing the outpouring of our abundance? How is it that Christians can utter the words illegal and alien in the same sentence, when our law emphasizes our dependence upon welcoming aliens into our lives in order to remind us that we are all living as strangers and aliens in this world; and reminding us that just as we give shelter to the stranger, so to did God give us shelter in his body.

We are in need of practices and stories that transform the way we see each other. And that is part of what is at work when we worship together. These are no mere stories of Christ that we hear, but stories that transform the way we understand life and each other. The songs we sing are not for sentimentality, but for declaring the glory that is due God’s name. And the words that are spoken at his table are no mere words, they are words that redescribe the world. And it is an action that redescribes us into the body of Christ. So that we see no distinction between ourselves and our neighbors, but only one in Christ

And just as we are transformed by this story, may the world see us and be transformed by the lives we live, and the mercy we grant.

Sailing to Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats

I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.