The house that we moved into in December has a large fireplace, and this winter I have kept almost a constant fire burning. Due to the surplus of free firewood, courtesy of Ivan, Dennis and Katrina, this has been relatively easy. I like to think that it reduces our heating bill. This week we had a special fire at my house. On one of my first days on the job here at First Church, Henry came into my study with a big box of palm branches. He said, “Here, take these and make ashes out of them for Ash Wednesday.” And, like usually, I thought to myself, “Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?” And the palms have been sitting in my study until Monday. As I fed the fire, a profound feeling came over me. I imagined the hands of the children grasping the branches and waving as they marched down the aisle. Jubilant voices shouting “Hosanna! Hosanna!” And, there in thick black smoke, the branches melt away.
The box of palms-had the florist
label, “100 palms for FUMC.” Gradually, the hundred palms dwindled into a very
small pile of ashes. It did not even fill up one of the ash containers. Where
there used to be a large cluster of green palm branches sat a small pile of
black ash. What used to represent our praises, now represents our sin.
It reminded me of seeing the small urns purchased to hold the ashes of my
grandparents. It is hard to believe that all that is left of the human body is a
small pile of ashes. “Dust to dust—ashes to ashes” are the words spoken at the
graveside service. So goes the story of our lives. Where there used to be a
loved one standing is a small pile of black ashes.
Ash Wednesday took awhile to develop in the church calendar. It was not until the beginning of the Middle Ages that it became widespread throughout western Christianity. The oldest form of imposing ashes was with the words from Genesis 3:19, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”. These words remind us that none of us are going to get out of this life alive. The Bible affirms that death is God’s enemy and not in God’s ultimate plan. Our death represents our separateness from God. In some way, death is connected with our sin. Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death”.
This brings us to the second traditional focus of Ash Wednesday. The second formula of imposing ashes is from Mark 1:15, “repent and believe the gospel”. This is a simple message. We have all heard preachers, either personally or on TV, preach hell-fire messages calling for repentance, like Jonathan Edward’s famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God”. Most of us dismiss this type of preaching as not our cup of tea or our taste of religion. On one hand, this type of preaching is dangerous because angry is not the best adjective to describe God. Saying that God has us like spiders on a web dangling over a fire, just waiting to cut the web so we plummet to our death”, compromises the full thrust of the gospel. God is love. God’s discipline is for those whom he loves. Our God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. On the other hand, that being said, the TV preachers are at least part right. We need to repent. We are sinners to the core. God has a dream for the world, a way that God wants it to be. God has a dream for our lives, our families, our church, our world. Yet we consistently fall short of that dream. We are always ruining God’s plans, always raining on God’s parade. God's dream for humanity to live reconciled with God and with each other is ruined. Isaiah states, “our righteousness before God is like filthy rags”. We don’t measure up. We have broken God’s heart. Lent call us to recognize that we are in deep need of God. Lent calls us to have our hearts broken, because we have broken God’s heart. Psalm 51 states that the sacrifice that God wants is a broken and contrite heart”. Our heart is the burnt offering that God desires.
I was visiting in one of our hospitals a few weeks ago, and I read one of the many signs posted to provide information to patients. It stated, “You have a right to not be in pain. If you are experiencing pain, please consult a physician”. I am sure these signs are meant for those that just want to grin and bear excruciating pain, but it made me wonder. Who has given us this right to not feel pain? I don’t think it is a God-given right.
Rights are about what we deserve as individuals. I think that the Bible and Christian tradition make it pretty clear that if we all got what we deserved we’d all be in big trouble.
In Lent we think about what we deserve. The penalties and pain we have caused for every lie, ever hurtful action and inaction, we take to God, trusting in his abundant mercy.
Several months ago my family went for a walk at the new Tarklin Bayou State Park. The first thing that I noticed was how the forest was in bad shape. All the trees were badly scorched. The thick underbrush of the forest was missing. Even well down the trail we could see the cars go by on the highway, because of the lack of foliage. All I could think about was the tragedy of the fire. The fire ruined a beautiful forest. I thought to myself, “what kind of new state park is this”? I thought it might be the most depressing park I had been in. As we walked further down the trail I noticed something amazing in the ashes. New sprouts were piercing through the black soil, new life breaking through everywhere. As we came to a wetland meadow that had been further cleared by the fire, there were many varieties of the rare pitcher plant coming up everywhere. The experience was surreal. I have never experienced such a concentrated area of natural beauty in my life. The colors were so vibrant. The meadow was absolutely enchanting. Where there once was a pile of black ashes now is a vibrant ecosystem. As we were headed back to our car, we came upon the park message board. Posted on the board was a lot of information about controlled burns. It stated that they had burnt the forest on purpose. A periodic burn is helpful to the life of the forest. It purges the forest of sick and dead trees; it eliminates the thick underbrush and causes the larger trees to flourish. Some conifers have cones that can only open under the pressure of extreme heat. Only through death and destruction of a fire can new life come.
As you come forward tonight to receive ashes, what areas of your life need a control burn? What areas does God need to burn through as a consuming fire? What do you need to turn over to the mercy of God?
The ancient church tradition of using Palm Sunday’s palms to create Ash Wednesday’s ashes is a profound illustration of our mortality. Even our highest praise of God is tainted by our sin. The same crowds that shouted “Hosanna, Hosanna” to praise our Savior, shouted “crucify him, crucify him”. We are cut from the same cloth. From one side of our mouths -“Hosanna”, the other “crucify”. The ashes in the sign of the cross on our heads in one sense mark our death. It signifies our sin, but it also signifies something deeper. The cross is not the end of the Christian Story but actually a new beginning. The palms of praise that have become the ashes of lent make way for the new life piercing through the black soil of our hearts.
In the Gospel of Mark, the author writes with a quick stroke. Unlike Charles Dickens where a complicated sentence can go on for pages, Mark with a simple subject and a brief phrase will make a statement that communicates volumes.
For example, “Jesus was from Nazareth.”
Later on in the story, it would be asked “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
The observation of Mark that Jesus was from Nazareth, reveals that God Can Make Something Out of Nothing.
Those of us who grew up in rural Alabama were always the blunt of jokes about coming from “No where USA.” We were pretty impressed with our hometown when we were growing up, but you have to understand that a trip to Selma was like a trip to Disneyland. They had real stores, a number of red lights, and policemen with real bullets.
Those of us who grew up in rural Alabama always joked, “Thank God for Mississippi,” because we laughed that there would always be one state below us on any social measurement. Most of us might consider growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi as a disadvantage, but not Zig Ziglar, the popular author and self motivating speaker. He grew up in Yazoo City and he often said: “You can go anywhere in the world from Yazoo City, Mississippi.” Jesus was not from Yazoo City, but he was from Nazareth. Nazareth received the same kind of respect from the rest of Israel that any small rural town yet receives from the big cities. It was Nathaniel, one of the future disciples of Jesus, who asked when Philip told him about Jesus: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Jesus proved that an individual can go anywhere from Nazareth. The message of the first chapter of Mark tells us clearly that when you know yourself to be a child of God, you can overcome your circumstances.
Scott Peck, the author of, The Road Less Traveled, wrote in the opening sentence of his award winning book: “Life is difficult.” Let us recognize that life is difficult, for many of us come from “Nowhere, U.S.A.” Let us also recognize that many have overcome their circumstances and so can you. And third, know that God is saying to you as God said to Jesus: “You are my child, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”
Fred Dawson in the book When Black Folks Was Colored tells of the l906 hurricane that all but leveled the city of Pensacola, Florida. At the time, he and his family were living in a south Alabama community raising cotton and nearly starving to death. Most of the other black families were packing up and moving north. Dawson’s family packed up and moved south to Pensacola to help rebuild the city after that major hurricane. They became significant landowners. Fred Dawson learned early on that it is not so important where you come from, but who you are that makes the difference.
Years ago when I was in college I drove to a community just south of Monroeville, Alabama, to preach every other weekend at the Bermuda Methodist Church. I have a friend who now lives in Monroeville and recently told me an amazing story: He and his sister grew up in a shack of a house in Bermuda, Alabama. His father was a two-mule farmer, his mother a part-time beautician. The children would walk out of their house to catch the school bus for the eight-mile trip to school. While they waited for the bus, sometimes on a cold day they would see black children walking on the road to their rundown black school about four miles away. What they didn’t know was that some of those black kids had already been walking for thirty minutes in the rain and cold and would still be walking long after the school bus would pull up to the white school. One day his sister asked, “Why can’t they ride the bus with us?” And no one ever came up with an answer that would make sense back in the l940s.
My friend, now in his 70s, has moved to Monroeville and recently met a very impressive lady, who joined the local Kiwanis Club. It is new territory for a woman to be a member of the formerly all-male club, but what is even more unusual is that this lady, the retired librarian at a junior college, is black. She has three children—one a medical doctor at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), another a college professor in California, and a daughter, Cynthia Tucker, who is the senior editor of the editorial page of the Atlanta Constitution. What is even more amazing is that this lady was one of those black children who sixty years ago walked past my friend’s house to her black school. It is not so important where you come from, nor the color of your skin, but who you are and where you are going that makes a difference.
When the world asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” the stories of the Lord of the church and of God’s people of all the years answer back: “You can overcome the circumstances of your birth.” The heavens opened when Jesus was baptized with God’s affirmation. Some people couldn’t see it while Jesus was here on earth, and some still can’t.
But eyes of faith see wondrous things happen all the time. Believe and you will begin to see things happen in your life. Listen and you will hear: “You are my child, whom I love, and with you I am well pleased.”
Yes, we may start off in a place called Yazoo City, Mississippi, or a place called Nazareth, but hear this: it doesn’t matter where you start out and it doesn’t matter what obstacles you have to overcome. You can become a winner, a hero, a Christian, God’s special child, by listening today to the mystery beyond us. Listen and you will hear: “You are my child, whom I love, and with you I am well pleased.”
A few years ago I listed significant things children have learned about life. Here are just a few of them:
“You can’t trust dogs to watch your food for you.”
“Don’t sneeze when somebody is cutting your hair.”
“You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.”
“When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.”
“No matter how hard you try you cannot baptize a cat.”
May you learn this today: “You are God’s child and you can overcome any obstacle.”
In the season of Lent, we consider the life of Jesus. I have been thinking a bit lately about “One’s Legacy.” Maybe I have had too many funerals. Perhaps I am planning one too many retirements. For whatever reason, I have turned to the stories of Jesus asking the question of “His Legacy.”
It is not far from Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, to Golgotha, where he died. The distance is less than five miles. You could walk it in less than half a day. You could run it in less than an hour. If you didn’t have to pass through a number of military checkpoints, you could drive it in less than ten minutes.
As you stand on the lonely hill at Golgotha and look all the way back to Bethlehem, one haunting question comes to mind: Was it worth it? Was Jesus’ trip worth what it cost? On that final day, when the sun hid its face in shame, when he cried out in agony from the top of a cross saying, “It is finished,” what had he really done? What is the legacy of Jesus to a world that scorned his coming, turned their back on his simple teachings, and chose to worship him only after he was gone?
Here was a person who was born in a barn, the child of peasant parents. He lived the first 30 years of his life in an obscure and provincial little village, of all places Nazareth. To our knowledge not one word of what he had to say was written down in his lifetime. He never went to college. He never traveled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He never did any of the things that we usually assume one might do in order to attain greatness. He had no credentials. Public opinion turned against him, he was betrayed by an intimate friend, and his other friends scattered like a covey of frightened black birds when threatened by Roman soldiers. He was condemned by the church for heresy and by the state for treason. Along with two convicted criminals, he was executed in the cruelest manner then known to humankind. He was nailed to a cross. When he died, he left no system of rules, no organization, and no set of doctrines. When he breathed his last breath, he left nothing behind but the soiled garments that he wore on that last fateful day.
His carpentry was his sole tangible legacy to a world that had greeted him with hostility at his birth and rudely dismissed him by crucifixion at his death. His tangible legacy to the world was minor, but if this were all that he left we would have long since forgotten him.
What was there about him that made him the central figure of the human race and the person whose birth date has become the dividing mark for all of human history? What did he leave for us to use in an age like this to help people like you and me?
Does the legacy of Jesus have a word for us in our troubled times?
One thing he left us is his teachings and the example of his life. So simple yet profound were his short statements: “Turn the other cheek.” “Go the Second Mile.” “Love one another.” “Do unto others as you desire they do unto you.” We need to take these simple teachings and allow them to guide our actions.
It used to be that young people would wear a small bracelet asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” I like the ones they are wearing today that read “Integrity,” “Hope,” Love,” “Truth,” and “Perseverance.” Listen, if you have a choice between a tattoo and a bracelet, choose the bracelet.
Secondly, he left us “the church”. He gave us only the concept and the hint of structure and we, for better or worse, have carried it on. In most cases it has been for the betterment of humankind. I know my experience says to me, “Thank God for the sense of caring and non-judgementalness in our church.” “Oh sure we have our problems, and we have some who push the edges of acceptance. As someone has said,” When two or three are gathered together there is trouble.” I have seen you at your best and you have loved and cared for one another.
Thirdly, he left us “His Holy Spirit.” As Jesus neared the end of his life, he said to the disciples: “I must go away, but when I leave, I will send to you the Holy Spirit, and he will teach you many things that you are not yet ready for.” The Holy Spirit is often referred to as the Comforter, the Counselor, the Teacher, the Guide, but perhaps best it is referred to as, “The Spirit of Jesus”.
Summary: In the New Testament, Jesus is often referred to as, “The Good Shepherd,” “The Door,” “Teacher,” “Healer,” “Saviour,” the Way, the Truth, the Life,” “Sacrificial Servant.” These descriptive words capture the essence of his legacy. What a gift he is, has been, and will be to us.
What will be your legacy? How will others remember you? What descriptive words will capture your essence? “Grouch? Miser? Mean? Arrogant? Most of us were horrified this past week when we learned that two students at Birmingham Southern College, one of our premier United Methodist schools of higher education, had been arrested for torching some nine small churches in rural Alabama. How devastating this is for families, the school, the Church, and for the entire human race. How can someone be so stupid to cross the line between playful pranks and evil destruction? The character of Birmingham Southern was demonstrated by its President, who immediately began raising money to rebuild the churches. My only question is when will kids stop relying on their parents and institutions to right their wrongs and to clean up their messes. These people will probably spend the rest of their lives in an adult prison, and what a shame they have brought upon themselves. Each person will ultimately leave his own legacy for the next generation to clean up, or to live down or to appreciate. Which will it be for you?
Is There Something Wrong With
Us, Or Something Right With Us
John 3:14-21
There are times in all of our lives when things aren’t going anywhere, when we wonder what is wrong with us. At such heart rending times, the larger question in more pensive moments that begs to be asked is: “Is there something wrong with us or something right with us?”
Reinhold Neibuhr has written in the books “Moral Man and Immoral Society” and “The Nature and Destiny of Man” that we are in God’s image, but we live in a corrupt society. “ Man is moral. That is his fate. Man pretends not to be moral. That is his sin." Neibuhr wrote his books in the l930’s and 1940’s while the holocaust ovens of Auschwitz were burning and German planes were bombing England. “Moral Man and Immoral Society”—Get the picture?
Dr. Wayne Dyer, in his new book, “Inspiration Your Ultimate Calling” writes, “Before we showed up in form, our mind and the mind of God were synonymous.” Other theologians have written of “the divine spark” within man. Now, over the years, I have sought to communicate this awareness that we were created “in the likeness of God” to young Christians and new Christians. We seek in various ways through our spirit and through our teachings in Sunday School and Confirmation classes to communicate to the next generation of believers that “We are formed in the Image of God.” I have sought to say, “There is something right with you and it is that you were born in the image of God.
On the other hand, however, there is a religious perspective that believes that there is something wrong with us. In the four spiritual laws taught by Campus Crusade for Christ, which does a lot of good work, there are four truths identified:
God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
Man is sinful and separated from God, therefore he cannot experience God’s love and plan for his life. (Something is wrong.)
Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin.
We must individually receive Jesus Christ as our Savior.
The second spiritual law affirms the scripture that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Here, it seems to me, you start off at the wrong place. You start off in the hole, or as a failure, where as Dyer and Neibuhr start off with the recognition that something is right about us, but we have botched it or made poor choices. Dyer calls it “getting out of sync with the spirit.”
This interesting divergent attitude, which comes from many sources, raises an interesting issue for us. The issue it raises is: “Is there something wrong with us or something right with us?
Ask me on different days and you might get a different answer. But for today, before I become tied down with trivialities or overwrought with the awareness of the evil in the world of today, ask me quick and I will revert back to the healthy position that there is something healthy and right with us. “I’m okay and you are okay.”
I have tried over the years to make clear my bias about the nature of human life. Occasionally by using a visual illustration that as a student you start off every semester with an A and all you have to do is work to keep it, don’t blow it, and don’t lose it. While at the same time, I have had teachers who have had an attitude that you start off with an “F” for failure and you have to work hard to climb out of the hole you find yourself in.
Some of you have experienced over zealous teachers or distraught parents who have had the kind of attitude that if you don’t quite make it, that there is something wrong with you. When this happens, “You are a failure from the get go and there seems no way to get out of your hole.”
It’s a miserable feeling to feel like you are a failure, or that there is something wrong with you, or that everybody else is better than you, miserable, isn’t it? You wake up and go to bed with this overwhelming depression that “something is wrong with you.” “That you’re a failure most of the time.”
How would you like to come to church every Sunday and be told that you don’t cut it, that you don’t measure up, that you are no good, sorry, sinful failure.
For weeks I have known Brian Wren, the poet, was to preach last Sunday and I read devotionally, as many of you do, the lectionary scriptures each week and then preach out of the overflow of those readings each week. I knew that last week the scripture would be on Jesus’ anger and how he would throw out of the temple the money changers and people who had turned God’s house of prayer into a market place. So I figured the gentle poet would not preach on that text of the day, so I worked for weeks on a sermon entitled, “The things that make Jesus Mad.” It has been such fun. For weeks I have been preparing this sermon on what makes Jesus and Henry mad.
And last week when I came to church and the guest poet preached on that biblical text and described in a silver tongued language, i.e. Jesus gently striking the buttocks of the animals and driving them out of the temple. I was so frustrated that I didn’t have that opportunity because I was ready to unload a quarter of a century of pent up emotion on what makes Jesus and me really mad.
So what happens? Wren, the poet, preaches the “Jesus’ anger” sermon and I am left today with dealing with Jesus saying, “For God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” God is good to you isn’t he!” God saved you again, didn’t he!
Listen to this scripture that I have to announce to you instead of the angry, mad one I intended. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
And that is The Word of God for the people of God, Thanks be unto God.
Let us pray: God of all creation, thank you for carefully shaping us into your own image and giving us the privilege of life in Jesus Christ. Forgive us when we have sinned and chosen a way incongruent and discordant with your eternal hopes and plans for us. Awaken in us a love for your right ways and enable us in this new day to walk in the spirit on your eternal pathway, now and forever. Amen.