These days many of us have learned to worry about becoming the victims of what is called “identity theft.” The term is something of a misnomer, because the perpetrators of identity theft are not primarily interested in your identity; they are interested in your money, and your credit. They could care less who you are; what they really want is what you have.
Of course, very little frightens us as much as someone who has access to our stuff, our bank accounts, our credit cards, our treasures. It is no coincidence that we have all gotten good at remembering various passwords, or that many of us probably have our own document shredders at home. We don’t want people rifling through our trash, or hacking through our computers to gain access to our money and our credit. Oh, it’s easy for people to find out our identities – we don’t so much mind that: just look me up on Face Book! But we don’t want people getting the stuff that really matters: our financial information and assets.
But tonight we have come to get a smudge of ash on our foreheads and be told, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” And this custom is something of an affront to our identities. Is it true that all we are is dust in the wind? Do our identities mean nothing more than that, not even to God?
Interestingly, many people come to church on Ash Wednesday who don’t normally make it a habit to be in church. There is something like a homing instinct on this day that leads us to this old ritual, to these ashes, and to this strange declaration that you are dust and to dust you shall return. And that instinct is not activated because our souls fear that in God’s eyes all we are is dust in the wind. Quite the contrary; our homing instinct kicks in because we suspect that most of the time we have not been living the lives God means for us to live, we have not grown into the selves we hoped to grow into, and our identities have somehow become confused, lost, or stolen among all the demands of our daily lives: from raising the kids, to paying the bills, to caring for the house, and everything else.
Somewhere deep inside us lurks the suspicion that even though our financial records are in order, we have been the victims of identity theft, and it doesn’t have anything at all to do with our credit or our money. Somehow we suspect that our identities have become overly entwined with our things, our stuff, our bank accounts, our credit cards, or our social status. And we may begin to wonder if anybody cares about us not for what we have, but for who we are.
So we home in on church on Ash Wednesday. We may come for a lot of reasons, or no reason at all, but when we get here, we are going to be confronted with the truth of our identities. Because most of us have been victims of identity theft: somehow the person we meant to be, tried to be, were raised to be, always knew we could be, is nowhere to be found. The ideals, and hopes, and talents, and brains, and principles and even the looks we once held onto have slipped away. Hope has been crowded out by depression. What’s more, we have developed bad habits, forgotten what it was like to exercise self-discipline, and gotten too accustomed to being selfish. Look in a mirror, and what do you see? Is it someone you recognize and like? Or is it a victim of identity theft?
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Like so much else in religion, these words are not as easy to understand as at first they seem. All we are is not dust in the wind. It is true that our bodies and all we have (even our credit cards) will return to the ground: dust to dust, ashes to ashes, as the saying goes. Most of what we guard so carefully in life cannot be saved. And the church is compelled to remind us of this because we have tended to store up for ourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. We have tended to value all those things that are inevitably perishing (including our bodies), and paid no mind at all to our souls.
But we were made to be more than bodies passing through this world for a while; more than the accumulation of our wealth; more than the sum of our credit. We were made to be citizens of another kingdom: the kingdom of heaven - to which God calls all people.
In the kingdom of heaven our lives take on new meaning; we work for the benefit of others; the poor are not disenfranchised; the rich do not have special privileges. Justice is accomplished in the kingdom of heaven; the sick are made well without a thought of health insurance. Peace is the watchword there. In the kingdom of heaven you are worth more than your credit score! And in the kingdom of heaven no one can steal your identity, because you are most perfectly and beautifully yourself, your own true identity.
Jesus talked about the moth nibbling away at what does not belong to it and ruining it; about that little trickle of water that causes so much rust over the years and ruins what should rightfully have been yours. Do we have to name the moths? Do we have to prove that there is rust? Isn’t it true? Is some of it your own fault? Probably. Was some of it beyond your control? Probably, too.
There is a secret about Ash Wednesday that is not at first apparent. The secret is a white lie in those words: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. For, the truth about Ash Wednesday is that God wants you to have your real self back: the lovely, true, and holy identity that could only ever be yours alone.
Have you strayed like lost sheep? Have thieves broken in and stolen? Have moth and rust consumed what was not theirs to take? Have you let them do it? Have you let your life turn to so many ashes?
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. But remember this too: you are more than you seem to be. Saint Paul saw how easily our true identities are taken from us. And he reminded his fellow Christians in Corinth about the truth: “we are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything!”
Like everyone else who has ever languished in prison, Paul knew what it was like to face losing everything – even your own identity. And he knew the marvelous truth that when your identity is rooted in Christ, no one can ever take it from you!
Because the kingdom of heaven is not a faraway place or in the distant future. The kingdom of heaven is at hand – this, Jesus came to teach us. And you and I were made for that kingdom. There are treasures of unimaginable bliss to be found there that no one can ever take from you. And you begin by coming here and believing for a moment that little white lie – that you are dust. And then you begin to ask God to lead you in a new way, and to give you your identity back. Which it is his joy and glory to do, since he made you in the first place, and rejoices to see you returned to your rightful, beautiful self.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Ash Wednesday 2010
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
Awe and terror
I was reading recently a history of how people in different times and places have interacted and reacted to space, which may sound rather abstract but is actually quite fascinating. Throughout history, people have generally seemed to find a similar awe and amazement in different spaces. The magnificence of Chartres Cathedral has been experienced by people for 800 years without much reservation, but there are some notable exceptions. One of the most interesting examples of people responding very differently in a time and place was the response of people during the 18th century to the Alps. There was, apparently, no awe or astonishment at the beauty of the Matterhorn; instead people found the Alps rather terrifying, and the practice if one was forced to undergo the trial of crossing the Alps was to travel in a closed carriage so that one would not have to experience the terror of the Alps.
Which I would find incomprehensible except that I think those two emotions, awe and terror are not too far removed from each other, and perhaps go very much hand in hand.
Awe is one of the glories of human emotion – to feel astonished and overwhelmed by wonder at a glorious sunset over the ocean, or the space of a cathedral, or the silence of an old growth forest.
Beyond the awe that we feel at the natural world is the awe that we feel when we encounter the transcendent, indeed sometimes it is the glory of nature that leads us to that encounter with God. Encountering the mystery of the Divine is always awe inspiring, often unexpected, and it is not unusual to have a feeling of unworthiness, of smallness, even of terror in the face of the God who is wholly powerful and other. Like the Alps, we may encounter the majesty of God with terror, with a wish to withdraw and block out the vastness and majesty of that sight.
We have that sense of awe and of unworthiness expressed both in the reading from Isaiah and in the Gospel this morning. The prophet has a vision of the Lord glorious and enthroned and it is the kind of experience that leaves him blind and groping, deeply aware of his own unworthiness in the face of the heavenly court crying “Holy,” shaking the hinges of the Temple with their voices. “Woe is me!” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Simon Peter has a similar experience in the Gospel. After a night of fruitless fishing, as he is washing his nets, Jesus gets into his boat to teach, and once he's finished teaching, he tells Peter to let down his nets on the other side of the boat. Despite how ridiculous the request is, Peter tries it, and ends up swamping both the boats with a massive catch of fish. And like the prophet, Peter is brought up short by an awareness of his own limitation and sinfulness. Falling to his knees he says “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
However we encounter the Divine, it can be a sobering experience that brings home to us our finitude and our own very real lack of perfection, before a God whose worship shakes the doors of the Temple.
And that is not an inappropriate emotion – however much we encounter God in the small things of life, in quiet moments and kind words, or however much we encounter God in the person of Jesus, speaking to us through the Scriptures, God is both encountered in small things, and in the moments of glorious holiness and terror: worth of the adoration of seraphs, glorious and majestic.
It is, I suppose, out of fashion to speak about the overwhelming side of God. Generally we are told that this God is experienced by people as unapproachable, as too reminiscent of the sometimes difficult and judgmental images of God that some of us learned in childhood. Moreover, we are told that God enthroned as King is a difficult image, for most of us have no experience of kings and how can we possibly related to God as an extra-large monarch, with all the trappings of royalty?
Which I suppose is all true in a way, but is also somewhat sad, because if the God of glory and terror is downplayed, or fails to make it into our teaching, preaching and thinking about God, the awe tends to go away as well.
As, of course, does the framework for interacting with God's majesty and power. If you look at both passages that we hear read today, the goal of the vision of God's majesty or the power expressed by the God who is enfleshed is not to make us feel guilty or unworthy, although that might be an unintended effect, but because God simply IS. Powerful and infinite. I am that I am. Glorious, magnificent. Worthy of eye covering worship. Worthy of having the Temple filled with smoke, whether the choir likes it or not. Worthy of that perpetual chant of “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
And rather than our finitude and unworthiness being the occasion for God's wrath or judgment, in both these passages they are instead the beginning of our healing and calling.
The prophet finds himself cleansed and purified, and then when the God of terrible majesty asks for volunteers, the prophet finds himself offering to go “Here I am; send me!”
And rather than Jesus agreeing with Simon Peter that he is unworthy, Jesus simply tells him not to be afraid. We may encounter God's holiness with terror, but we do encounter it, and it changes us forever.
The majesty and wonder of the God of glory is not the terror of judgment. It is the awe that the God whose worship shakes the doors of the Temple, the hem of whose majestic robe fills the Temple, that same God also is available to us in quiet, is present with us in bread and wine, can compact the vastness of that robe down into the frame of a tiny child, and comes to us despite our sinfulness and foolishness, asking “Who shall I send?”
To encounter the God of majesty and power is to come to terms with our smallness before his glory, and our vocation to speak to the peoples, to fish for people, to work as God wills, despite our smallness and sinfulness. Not because we are cowed by his majesty or frightened at his glory, but because the vision of the God of glory brings up in us the deepest awe and wonder, and the will to worship God ceaselessly. “Holy, holy, holy.”
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia
7 February 2010
Waiting in silence for God
Sometimes the Scriptures give us complex parables to untangle, or esoteric passages nearly illegible with the passage of time, and the preacher must perform feats of extreme hermeneutical acrobatics to come to some sort of explanation. Sometimes the Scriptures give us stories that are obvious, and it is the duty of the preacher to soften the hardness of the teaching, if only a little bit. And sometimes in the Scriptures, there is simply an image, so laden with symbolism and historical import that the preacher gets to simply hold the image up, and slowly turn it for all to see. Simeon, that old man of faith, waiting on God’s messiah and holding the infant Jesus is that kind of image: laden and poignant.
There is, all the way through the Hebrew Scriptures a kind of sad and silent waiting for God. God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Sarah, and Leah and Rachel, the God who chose his people, and made a covenant with them, and led them from exile and through the wilderness, and gave the law, that God, despite the years of prophets, judges and kings, that God is silent, and the people of Israel wait for God’s movement, for God’s salvation with a longing and a hunger of the deepest sort.
For it seems as if God has abandoned his people. As if he has left them, finally, to their idolatry and sinfulness. They couldn’t keep focused on God for the time it took Moses to climb the mountain to receive the law. How could they possibly keep God central to their lives, surrounded by other tribes, by distractions and by the cares of life lived now in the land that they had long awaited?
“Turn again to God” the prophets warned the people of Israel, and they did not. Again and again God sent prophets to call them home, and punished Israel with battle and exile, and begged, pleaded and thundered, and still the people of Israel, the chosen people, did not return, did not repent.
And so Jerusalem was overcome and the Temple was destroyed, most of her people were carried into exile, and what was perhaps worse than all of that was the terrible silence which descended, and God no longer spoke to his people. Even when he fought with them and punished them, God was at least speaking to them, but now a silence has come down, and there are no words from God, there are no messengers and no prophets.
And the people of Israel are left waiting, in silence. Waiting is something that they are good at, something that they have learned to do through the long years of their interaction with God. They waited in Egypt and they waited in the wilderness; they waited for a king, and then they waited for a decent king. They waited to come back from Babylon and now they are waiting to see what happens with the Roman Empire.
They are getting good at waiting, or at least resigned to waiting. And what they wait is the savior who is promised again and again through all their interactions with God, the one that can restore Israel again.
All of that is there in the background, as Simeon stands there in the Temple, holding a forty day old child. Simeon is an image of disparate pieces at the very moment of intersection, the place between the longing and waiting of the people of Israel throughout the years, and the advent of God’s savior and messiah, at the moment when prophesy moves from possible to actual and dreams turn into reality. He stands there, right on the cusp of waiting being transformed into joy, and longing coming to satiety, desire to completeness.
So laden is the moment, so poignant the vision of God’s salvation in the frame of a tiny child that Simeon bursts into song. It matters not that death is near, for God’s savior is here, and he has held him in his arms.
It is a glorious image and symbol, an old man and an infant, a man who has lived in hope for God’s action, and a child whose potential will shake the foundations of the world. And Simeon, death near him, breaks out in a song of praise to the God who has been silent for so long, but is now working: “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation which though has prepared for all the world to see, a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel.”
And because he stands there, holding the savior of the world, an image and sign of God’s redemption, Simeon is a better answer to the questions about God’s silence and God’s absence, that constantly arise.
For those questions are constant from year to year and age to age. Where is God when his people are in bondage to a foreign empire? Where now is God in Haiti, where in Iraq? Why is God silent when the planet is being ravished, and millions live in abject poverty? Why is God absent when my life seems to be falling apart?
Simeon holding Jesus is far better than a theological or a philosophical answer to the question of God’s absence, in 1st century Palestine, or quake-ravished Haiti. The answer to our questions is cradled in an old man’s arms. The tiny child offers no theological answer, no philosophical defense of God’s absence and silence. All that he offers is himself, a tiny frame, a wisp of hair, and miniature fist.
Simeon doesn’t claim that this is God’s messiah. He does nothing except hold the child, and praise God. Nothing need be said, for God’s absence and God’s silence is not undone by human words, but by the child who is the savior of the world: into the silence of the world a word has been spoken and the Logos has come down to be God with us.
Preached by Fr. Andrew Ashcroft
2 February 2010
The Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple: Candlemas
St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia