Welcome to Ash Wednesday! Too often the church’s message (especially on days like Ash Wednesday) can come across as bad news and condemnation. Sin is real, and we are called to repent. But there is good news too: Jesus offers forgiveness for our sin. A sermon on law, gospel, and the classic children’s story, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.
This year for Ash Wednesday, we had a joint worship service with Living Hope and Grand Avenue UMC joining us at Christ the King. Our Scripture readings were Romans 7:15-25a, Psalm 51:1-17, and John 8:31–36. For our ecumenical midweek services this year, we’re using the theme Tell Me Something Good from A Sanctified Art, so I touched on that theme in this message, although we didn’t use any of their liturgy or even the Scripture readings they’d selected for this service.
Unfortunately the worship livestream did not work for this service, so I re-recorded the Romans reading and the sermon for the podcast, which you can listen to below.
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Too often we in the church have a reputation for focusing on bad news. There’s a few different angles it can take. There’s sin, this idea that we’ve messed up and we’re broken people and everything we do is wrong, so we should feel guilty. I hear people talk about good old Lutheran guilt, or Catholic guilt. I don’t know, do people ever mention Methodist guilt? Maybe you all are better at avoiding that trap.
But of course, there’s a reason for us to feel guilty—it’s because we’ve done something wrong! The Church talks about sin, because it’s real. You and I are sinful people, just like everyone else, and Jesus calls us to repent. That’s a big part of tonight’s Ash Wednesday service. It’s a theme in Lent. Return to the Lord your God, and seek God’s forgiveness. You need to repent. Harsh, but true.
But there’s more bad news than that. From a different lens, even when we’re not talking about individual people’s sin, churches often focus on the brokenness of the world and how much work there is to do to fix things.
Again, for good reason: Many of our neighbors are scared for the future. People are hungry. People are hurting. If we’re going to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors, we don’t get the privilege of just looking away and pretending everything’s fine. We cannot and should not ignore the reality of suffering, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems.
And if what you take away from church is just how messed up the world’s systems are and how much work there is to do, that feels like bad news too!
Our theme for our Wednesday services this Lent is “Tell me something good” and I like this theme because Christianity is about good news, but sometimes that’s not what comes across.
I was trying to figure out a theme for this year’s Sundays in Lent, if we wanted to do a sermon series or stick with the lectionary readings, and I ended up planning to stay with the lectionary readings because there are some important stories there, but as I was looking for a common thread through them, the first thing I found was sin. Who’s excited to come to church and focus on sin for the next five Sundays in a row?
I know in worship planning conversations some of us have talked about the challenge that in our Lutheran tradition, we typically begin each service with a corporate confession and we’ve wondered if that’s welcoming to visitors. “Hi, welcome to worship. Please start by saying out loud how terrible of a person you are!”
Even better, come to church on Ash Wednesday – We’re going to put some ashes on your head and remind you you’re going to die! Be sure to come early for supper!
What is the good news we have to offer? Tell me some good news!
In the Lutheran tradition, one of our core principles is that the word of God comes to us as both law and gospel. John Wesley wrote about good preaching needing to include both law and gospel as well.
Law is the part where we hear what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s the ten commandments, and all the expansive interpretations of them.
Do not kill means don’t murder people, and it also means affirmatively taking care of your neighbors, supporting their life. Not bearing false witness includes speaking up against lies being told about others; interpreting everything other people do in the best possible light.
Or as Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, you’ve heard it said do not commit adultery, but I say even looking at someone with lust in your heart is adultery. Not only do not kill, but even getting angry leads to condemnation. Don’t just love your friends; love your enemies!
It’s too much for us to live up to. The law is overwhelming. We can try our best, but it’s never enough.
Paul says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…the evil I do not want is what I do…”
Do you know the song—well, I learned it as a song, but it’s also a series of children’s books—There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly? This is the most morbid children’s book.
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly—perhaps she’ll die!There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll dieThere was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!
And it goes on from there. She swallows a cat to catch the bird, then a dog to catch the cat, a goat to chase the dog, a cow to catch the goat, and eventually she swallowed a horse.
She’s dead, of course!
There’s a whole series of books you can get – There was an old lady who swallowed a frog, an old lady who swallowed a chicken, an old lady who swallowed a turkey, you get the idea.
It’s one thing after another, and everything she tries makes the problem worse. And at the end, she’s dead. How do you get out of the spiral of sin? That’s law.
And when you hear all that, when you are faced with the reality of your sin, how far away from following the law you are, you should feel overwhelmed. Sin leads to death. Remember you are dust. Bad news, yet true.
Tell me some good news.
Paul says in verse 24, “Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Where is the hope in returning to dust? Verse 25, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
We confess week after week, we receive ashes on our foreheads, not to just hear what’s wrong, not just to hear the law, but to be honest about our situation.
I love Ash Wednesday because it’s not about shame, it’s about honesty, facing who we are. First John 1 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
And when we confess, we hear the gospel. The good news. 1 John continues, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Law and gospel.
The Gospel is that Jesus Christ does what we cannot do. The good news is that life doesn’t just have to be swallowing one thing after another in an endless cycle. There is a way out, and his name is Jesus.
Jesus breaks the cycle of sin. Jesus sets us free. And “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
Jesus looks at our wearing out bodies on the way to returning to dust, Jesus looks at the stuck-in-sin spiraling messes we make of our lives, Jesus looks at us with all our shameful half-heartedly repenting trying-and-failing-to-do-it-on-our own attempts at life, and he says, “I love you. You are my beloved child. I forgive you.”
We confess so we can hear that promise of grace, the promise of love. The good news that Jesus sees you and says, “My beloved child, you are worth the cross. For you, I will lay down my life.” The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Returning to dust is no longer the end of the story, because God is the One who breathes life into dust. Resurrection. The good news is forgiveness and grace. The good news is freedom to love as you have been loved.
We ask God to take us as we are, and God creates in us clean hearts, new and right spirits. God does not cast you away, but comes into the world, to be with you. God chooses a body made of the same ashy dust as our own bodies so that we can be free. No longer slaves to sin, but permanent members of God’s own household.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Amen