Tonight’s Ash Wednesday worship service presents an interesting challenge because it’s the introduction to two different Lenten themes for the churches I serve. For midweek ecumenical services, we’re focusing on the theme Enough, but on Sundays at Living Hope and Christ the King, we’re using the theme Everything [in] Between from A Sanctified Art. So, this Ash Wednesday message attempts to weave both those themes together.
In our daily lives, we hear message after message of scarcity. We’re told all kinds of ways we are lacking. We’re short on time and resources; we don’t have the resources we need. Often, those messages are accompanied by an invitation to buy something, but products don’t solve the problem. In this year’s midweek Lenten series, we are exploring stories in Scripture of how God is ENOUGH. God provides what we need and more for life.
Lent begins with tonight’s service of confession and ashes. The ashes symbolize our repentance before God’s just condemnation of our sin, as well as our total dependence upon God. Genesis 2 speaks of God forming humans out of the dust of the earth and breathing into us the breath of life. With the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” we recognize our own mortality and accept God as the only source of our life.
The Scripture readings for tonight’s joint Ash Wednesday service are Isaiah 58:1-10, Psalm 51:1-17, and Luke 9:51-62. Here’s the livestream and sermon podcast audio from Christ the King.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
There is a song I learned as a child—it might have been in Sunday School or I think maybe it was from a We Sing Bible Songs cassette tape—that goes like this:
I have decided to follow Jesus.
I have decided to follow Jesus.
I have decided to follow Jesus.
No turning back, no turning back.
That song goes well with today’s gospel reading. Luke 9:57 “As they were going along the road, someone said to [Jesus], ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’” And again in verse 61, “Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’”
Part of the theme for tonight’s service is the gap between action and intention. It is a wonderful thing to say, “I have decided to follow Jesus.” But so often, the way we act does not match our intention. No matter how much I might want it, I cannot perfectly follow Jesus.
There are things that hold us back, things we want to do instead, earthly obligations to deal with. Some of them are better than others, but the result is the same. The best I can do is follow…most of the time. Some turning back, whether I want to or not. I cannot follow perfectly, and neither can you.
And that’s the message of Ash Wednesday.
We are people made from dust, who will return to dust. We are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves, as our confession says. We cannot escape the truth that we will return to dust. We cannot save ourselves. We can’t do it on our own. Happy Ash Wednesday, right?
I was at the Quake youth conference a few weeks ago with some of our Lighthouse youth, and someone in our group had a whole bundle of motivational stickers with them.
I don’t know how many of those you can read, but they’re full of positive, feel-good quotes like “You can do it!” “You are capable of amazing things.”“Yes, you can!” “You can do this” You get the idea.
And that encouragement can be helpful—sometimes we need the push to keep going, a reminder of what we’re capable of accomplishing. “No pain, no gain.” “We can do hard things.” “You are amazing.”
But the truth we believe as Christians is the best you can do is not always enough. Yes, you should try to “Be the best version of you!” But you’re not always going to succeed. In fact, you’re guaranteed to fail. Romans 3:23 says all of us “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s not quite as catchy on a sticker.
There are two lies our world tells that we get caught in between. First, our world is full of tests, and if you don’t pass, you’re not worthy. The world says your worth depends on what you accomplish. You have to get the grades, pass the tests, make the sale, get the raise, the promotion, and then you’ll be good enough.
Maybe you’re not enough right now, but if you do enough, if you work just a bit harder, or maybe if you find the right product and buy it, then you’ll be enough. Your life will matter if and only if you do enough. That’s the first lie.
The second lie is what those stickers say, that you’re so great you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. And some of it’s true, right? There are a whole bunch of skills you can learn if you spend enough time practicing. 10,000 hours is a common figure that gets thrown around. At that rate, I’ll be pretty good at leading worship by the time I’m 110!
It’s true that you are created with amazing gifts and talents. God has blessed each of us a lot to offer. But the reality is that there are things you can’t do. There are areas where the best you can do will not be enough. Christin and I went to the Kentucky Derby Museum in Louisville a few weeks and we learned about a whole bunch of winning jockeys who worked hard at their craft.
Let me tell you, I can work really hard, and I’m never going to be able to compete in a race where I need to weigh in at under 126 pounds. I have a weak sense of smell, so I’m never going to be an award winning chef. I’m never going to be a great singer.
What I love about Ash Wednesday is that tonight’s ritual highlights the ultimate thing we can’t do: None of us can do enough to avoid death. We can’t give ourselves eternal life. And to stand here and say you’re not enough, you can’t do whatever you put your mind to, is one of the most counter-cultural things I can do as a pastor.
Two truths I want to share with you tonight. First, you’re not enough when the world says you should believe in yourself and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you’re a special unique snowflake and all that. I’m here to say you’re not that special—you’re stuck in the same hole of sin that leads to death as everyone else.
Remember, all have sinned and fall short, and the result of sin is death. That’s the human condition; it’s true for all of us.
We might want to follow Jesus, but we look back. We turn away. We love ourselves more than our neighbors. We fail to speak up for others; we act out of fear. Our intentions don’t match our actions. And of course, even when we succeed undoing the right thing, even if we somehow did all the things the way we want to, it still wouldn’t be enough, because we cannot work our way to eternal life.
Tonight we acknowledge that death will come for each of us. Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Truth number two—I’m also here as a pastor to be perhaps even more countercultural in a world that says your value is determined by how much you accomplish, how much you earn, how good looking you are, and say, No! Your worth is determined by God. Your Creator gets to declare your value. No one else.
God gets to say what you’re worth. And God looks at you, looks at all the ways you fail to live up to your potential, all the ways you fall short, all the things you’ve done and failed to do, and God issues a verdict: God declares you are worth dying for.
You are dust, and to dust you shall return. And Scripture tells us in Genesis 2 that the Lord God took dust and breathed into it, and gave it life.
God can work with dust. In God’s hands, dust is enough. God loves dusty people. We cry with King David, “Have mercy on me, O God” Not because I deserve it, not because I’ve earned it on my own, but “according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.”
We confess that we were born guilty, sinners from conception, and in humility, we ask God to create in us a clean heart, to put a new and right spirit within us.
And God answers our prayer. The dust you will receive tonight is a reminder of your mortality, your shortcomings, your sinful nature. But it’s placed in the form of a cross. (Maybe if I do it 10,000 times the crosses will be a little more consistent looking!)
But it’s a cross because that’s the ultimate picture of God’s love. Jesus has come to do what we can never do. Jesus has died so that we may live. Put to death on the cross, Jesus has broken the power of death and been raised to life again so that we too can live eternally.
As I heard Pastor Will Layton say recently at a funeral, “God would literally rather take on flesh and die for us than hold our sins unforgiven or unforgivable. That’s how much God loves you. And there is nothing in all creation that is more powerful than that love.” (This quote is from the funeral for one of my seminary professors, Rev. Dr. Duane Priebe, and from watching, I’m unclear if this may be a direct quote from Dr. Preibe.)
Again from Romans 3: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
In Christ, you are made enough. You are forgiven. When we fall short, when we are unfit for the kingdom of God, Jesus offers us grace, the free gift of eternal life. God makes you beautiful. You are loved.
Amen