Ash Wednesday Homily (2.26.20)

Ash Wednesday Homily
Invitation to the Imposition of Ashes
February 26, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

Yesterday was glorious. One of those easy, perfect Mardi Gras days when we decided the night before what we would wear and then woke up fresh without an alarm clock. We made it down to the Bywater just in time to catch everyone else in costumes, snatching up the very last, really good parking spot. We ran into friends all along the way, ate great food, witnessed the creativity and beauty and untamed brilliance of the city amidst the flashes of life’s complexities—addiction, poverty, elite wealth, waste. We walked and walked and walked, and danced, and laughed, and walked some more. All on a Mardi Gras day.

Splashed throughout the Quarter were the Jesus Sign People. The ones who have visited us here before; the men with the tall, angry signs: “Hell is real! Do not delay! Seek Jesus!” “Repent or Perish!” “Hell is horrible—no warning is too strong!” (which needed some help with punctuation because it really read as: Hell is horrible. No warning. Is too strong.) My very favorite of their signs read, “Warning: Rebellious women, Pot heads, Drunks, Lewd Women, Homosexuals, Sports Nuts, Baby Killers, Jesus Mockers, Mormons—Hell Awaits You.” That sign got lots of attention and became a selfie magnet, but I’m pretty sure not a single person was MORE intrigued about divinity and spirituality and mystery and the pulsing rhythms of the universe by reading their signs. Certainly no one walked by and felt loved, truly loved, deeply loved. 

Some people calmly argued with the man who yelled, “Bible! Bible! Bible! Read the bible!” into a megaphone. Several people yelled passionately and angrily as they walked past, and I couldn’t turn my pastor heart off. Their yelling came from pain. These Jesus Sign People were far too much like every church they’d ever encountered, every church who told them they weren’t good enough, pure enough, lovable enough. At first blush, the Jesus Sign People make me want to change my name and distance myself from church altogether because the subtleties and nuance of THIS church versus ALL THOSE OTHER churches is too hidden for most passersby to notice. The Jesus Sign People have ruined a lot for all of us, and their message is part of what I’m glad to watch burn in the rubbish pile of history as Old Church dies forever. 

But my instinct to change my name and distance myself doesn’t last for very long because my pastor instincts and seeker heart draw me back to mystery, and love, and the pulsing rhythms of the universe. And I know that my voice and the voice of this congregation and my presence as a pastor in the church and our presence as a church in the world are all wrapped up in a message that the world desperately needs to hear and feel and know and receive. That’s why I care so much about what we are doing here and actively seeking to preserve and sustain far beyond our lifetimes. We know and believe that the Love of God is big and high and wide and deep. We know and believe that the Love of God is for all. And anything that keeps us from truly knowing that Love needs to be released. And any ways that draw us more deeply toward that Love need to be taken on and prioritized.

I’m thinking a lot this Lent about how we as a people are called to reflect on our presence and voice in this world. How are we as a people called to release old ways that distance us from who we’re called to be? How are we as a people called to take on ways of being that make us spark like light in darkness?

On Ash Wednesday, it’s common for clergy to remind us that we are marked for death. From ashes we come and to ashes we will return. What if we play in those metaphors as a people rather than merely as individuals? From ashes, the church comes, and to ashes, the church will return. Recently, many of my colleagues shared this poem by Keith Lewis. Listen to these words and hear a call not just to YOU but to US.

I want to go to a dying church.
I want to sit in the pews of an aging congregation with
wrinkled faces and wise hands.
I want my kids to have a couple of friends their age and 36 new grandparents.
I want a retired school teacher to slip my children a silver dollar
when he comes down our aisle.
I want to go to a church that made hard choices and paid for it.
I want to go to a church that will let me leave with dignity; 
that doesn’t claim to be anything other than a 
small part of the body of Christ.
I want a church that split when they ordained women 45 years ago
and split again when the pastor performed her first gay wedding.
I want to sit by parishioners who wept when their friends left
for the thriving, non-denominational worship center across town.
I want to go to a church that chose love, a church where the
gay organist cried when his husband was ordained.
Where the congregants try to use the pronouns they/them/their
for the 17-year-old trans kid who comes alone but never sits alone.
I want a church that makes hard choices, that will ‘do what is right, let the consequences follow.’
Because that is exactly what Jesus did.
Jesus led a dying movement.
His friends betrayed him.
His father forsook him in the garden.
And only a few women stood by his cross and cared for his body.
THAT’S what I want my kids to learn about God.
Even if their Sunday school only has a couple other children in it.
(slightly adapted from poem by Keith Lewis)

Consider what it means for us simultaneously to come from the earth and to be called to care for everything and everyone it holds. What old ways are too small for you and prevent you from living into the fullness of who God created you to be? What practices will sustain and restore you, making you come alive for good? How is God calling us as a people, a collective, to consider our calling and our mortality in the season of contemplation stretching out before us?

Whether on your hand or on your forehead, I invite you now to come receive the mark of the ashes. From this earth you come. And to this earth you will return.

Marc Boswell