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You are here: Home / Archives for Ash Wednesday

Ashes

March 6, 2019 by Cam Miller

One of my favorite poems,
whose author is not known, goes like this
(Slightly paraphrased):

The sacred pearl.. has been bitten, priced,
and strung around blasphemous necks;
andthe Tree at the center of the Earth
under which Buddha sat and on which Jesus hung,
has been cut into beams
for the ceiling of the games room…
and human beings…
have become producers and consumers…
so the Eucharistic world
is ground down to mere bread
and a wine
that refuses its mission of blood.

Lent is a season
in which we aim to restore the sacredness
of the ordinary world,
which has been robbed of its holiness.

Of course, we cannot really rob the world
of holiness
because God owns the sacred
and it can’t be stolen.

But we can, and do, turn ourselves
into producers and consumers of life
rather than the co-creators
we were made to be.

Assuming we truly were created in the image of God,
we must also be full of the presence of God.
It is worth remembering on a day like today
that our creation story in Genesis
says that we were created by God
and then God declared that we are good.
Unlike Augustine, I am more inclined to
side with those that say we are not
innately damaged or congenitally evil –
sin-sick or ruined
by some mythical act of Adam.

Rather, we are precious
in our imperfection,
and beautiful in our weakness,
even splendid
in our strung-out limitations.

Even so, we constantly lose sight
of who we are
and whose we are,
and as a result, we are willingly seduced
into becoming primarily producers and consumers
instead of co-creators.

As producers and consumers
we suddenly view the people around us
as utilities –
objects who can satisfy our need
or extend our influence.

As producers and consumers
we eventually view all manner of    natural resource
as an object for our use –
merely a source of food and shelter
for our comfort.

As producers and consumers,
we eventually come to view
our work and the labor of our lives
as primarily an opportunity
to make money
rather than enhance the life of the creation.

As producers and consumers
we view God as a distant target of prayers
shot glibly out into the universe
like radio waves
seeking other life in the cosmos.

What we miss when blinded
by our producing and consuming lens,
is that other creatures,
the earth, even our work, is sacred –
all of it imbued with God
and reflecting the holy.

Everything we see,
hear,
smell,
touch,
and come to know,
could be revealing of the holy.
Creation itself
is sacramental,
we are sacraments: you and I
are outward and visible signs
of God’s ordinary presence.

But as producers and consumers
we suck the sacred out of life
like milkshake up a straw.
We finish and hardly notice.
This is our disease,
whatever we want to call it,
and Lent is an opportunity
we create for ourselves to get well
and find a little healing.

Lent is a time we set aside
simply to remind ourselves
of God’s presence,
and to recognize
the spiritual calluses and cataracts
we built up over the last year.

Getting well
does not require a spiritual transplant,
transfusion, or even surgery –
there is nothing wrong with us
in any constitutional sense.

We are, after all, a beautiful creation
made in the image of God.
We simply need to re-orient ourselves.

Fasting and giving up chocolate is fine –
it reminds us
that we have become too attached
to some things.

A new diet of prayer, meditation,
or contemplation is nice,
it reminds us
to be centered in the moment with God.

Spiritual direction, therapy, or confession can help,
they remind us
that repentance requires rigorous self-honesty
and willful intention, and
in the end, grace.

There are any number of resources
we have in our bag of tricks
but none of them are sacrosanct –
they are merely tools
that help us remember
who we are and whose we are.

The particular tool is not so important
but the initial act of making the time and space
to intentionally replace our lens is essential.

The very act of keeping a season of Lent,
of using it to lift our head and heart
above the flooding waters of the economy
is essential for remembering
that where our treasure is,
there will our hearts be also.

 

 

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Ash Wednesday, Genesis, Good

Ash Wednesday 2017

March 1, 2017 by Cam Miller

I knew a woman in another city
who only attended church
on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
She grew up Roman Catholic
but had long since ceased to be a church-goer.
Neither her husband nor children were church-goers.
So she satisfied her liturgical desires
with the two grimmest events on the Church calendar.

I get it.

They are utterly authentic moments
that face mortality
in strange but compelling ways.

So, ”Happy” Ash Wednesday.

Remember that old Hallmark verse,
“This is the first day of the rest of your life?”
Well, on Ash Wednesday,
we can say this is last day of the rest of your life.
So happy Ash Wednesday.

Seriously, Ash Wednesday
is a reality-check on our personal mortality.
That is what it means when we say,
“ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

It’s crazy really, this thing we do today.
What other organization or business in their right mind
would create an event around personal death awareness –
except a funeral home, maybe.
In a culture that denies death,
Ash Wednesday is very counter-cultural.
It is like watching the Muppets during the Super Bowl.

Ash Wednesday is designed
as an imaginative visitation to our own funeral.
What are they saying about you at yours?

What, at your death,
will be the measure of your life?

Although we cannot measure any
single human life,
because we touch more,
love more,
give more,
and influence more
than we will ever know…
what will they say about you at your funeral?

At my Dad’s funeral
all the speakers, unbeknownst to one another,
focused on the same word: “Integrity.”
What word might we coalesce around
at your funeral?

So today is a reality-check with our mortality.
We are going to die,
and when we do,
will our lives have been a
sacrament of loving
or a life of loving things?
Will we have been a sacrament
of things compassionate
or of things self-orbiting?

A sacrament remember,
is an outward and visible sign
of an inward and spiritual substance.

You and I are sacramental.
You are a sacrament.
We are outward and visible signs
of something,
and the question is what?

What are you
an outward and visible sign of?
What is the substance
that lives inside you –
but that that shows itself on the outside?

Designing your own headstone
is another great Ash Wednesday parlor game.
What will they put on it?

One of my all time favorite headstones
is in a magnificent old cemetery in Buffalo, New York.

It is a relatively simple headstone
surrounded by huge pretentious monuments,
but it reads simply: “Be right back.”

Is there a phrase,
or even a single word,
that your family and friends might emblazon
across your headstone?
Courage
Loving
Faithful
Bossy
Last one standing?

When they gather round after you are buried or scattered,
and your family and close friends are sitting together
eating all that good food,
what stories will they tell?

Which stories will they tell about you,
and what kind of picture will those stories paint?
(I hope my children remember to tell the story
about the time my older sister
locked me outside on the balcony – naked).
So Ash Wednesday is counter-cultural.
It is a moment to stop denying death;
to stop running on the treadmill of frenetic activity
that gives us the illusion
that life won’t go on without us.
It is a time stop the world and sit in church,
listen to some oddball ask us to
think about our own funeral…and then,
most peculiar of all,
to have ashes, the symbol of our nothingness,
rubbed in our face.

Wow, how great is that?

But seriously, how great is it?
Ash Wednesday is an amazing sign of health in our tradition.
It is an incredible gift we give ourselves
when we stop and consider our lives
in the context of our death.

It is in the face of our mortality
that we ask ourselves truly important questions,
and see our lives from an extremely different angle.

It is in the face of our mortality
that we can ask ourselves
how we want to change,
and what we want to do more or do better –
now that we have a little more time left?

So congratulations for being here, really.
It is not something that everyone is willing to do.
And yet…and yet, it is a deeply authentic moment
from which we can cull profound and intimate wisdom.

So good for you, for being here;
for doing this;
and for asking the tough questions
in the face of our own mortality.
“Happy,” Ash Wednesday.

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