Ash Wednesday Sermon

Here is the sermon from last night's service. It was a great beginning to our Lententide. Loved praying the Litany at the beginning of the service with its great mental imagery.

Ash Wednesday
Feb. 17, 2010
1 Peter 2:2-25
Life’s better in whose hands?

In the name of Jesus, amen. We have responded to the call of Ash Wednesday to gather again to hear the stories of Lent, the stories of Jesus’ passion for you and me. I know your life is busy, and we do not have the time to hear the stories in a mindless way. You don’t want to hear the stories in a routine, in-one-ear and out-the-other sort of way. You’ve come for your spiritual growth. We want the word of the cross to go in both ears, to get into our head and to go down into our heart. As Jesus himself said from the cross, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” We want to leave worship knowing that life is best lived when we live it totally in the Father’s hands.

Yet what we know is very often the opposite of what we experience. Sometimes life is better in my hands and not in the hands of other people. Is your life better when you leave it in the hands of the state or federal government? Survey after survey say that we do not trust the government to take care of us. Is your life better in the hands of Wall Street? Wall Street seems to be doing okay these days but Main Street is not in great shape. Is life better when we put ourselves into the hands of technology and science? To be sure we have been greatly benefited by scientific advances but there are many Toyota drivers who are not so sure about that. Technology is not a fail-safe way to accelerate towards happiness. We all know that life is not dependably better in the hands of other people.

More and more people are saying, “Life’s better in my hands.” There are a lot of self-assured confident know-it-alls around us. I’m one of them. How many of us give advice yet never listen to what we are saying? We are bull-headed. We know what is best. We know how to get ourselves out of every jam we find ourselves in and if something goes wrong, we know that certainly there is somebody to blame. Yet I periodically get the wake-up call that life is not better in my hands.

So what is left? Yes the ashes but not merely the ashes. We’ll wash the ashes off when we get home. The cross remains. From the cross we hear our savior say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Ash Wednesday repentance should drive us to confess, to live the truth that life is better when we entrust our life to the heavenly Father.

I believe that is what we heard this evening in the text from 1 Peter. Peter was writing to Christian slaves in Asia Minor, let’s just call it present-day Turkey, although Asia Minor encompasses a larger area than that. It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that many of those slaves were leading wretched lives. And what is Peter’s encouragement? It is not rebellion but obedience. Do not take life into your own hands. Instead Peter pointed them to the example of Christ. Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

Life is better when we entrust ourselves to our heavenly Father. But Peter’s words do not simply suggest that Jesus is our moral model. The reason we are in church is because Jesus is our suffering savior from sin. He has forgiven me and you for taking life into our hands. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

Coming to Ash Wednesday, to the season of Lent, we come to the awareness of how joyful repentance can be. We do receive the news that life is not better in our own hands as we live with the consequences of our prideful decisions. We think that we know best. So tonight we repent and our Father forgives.

Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. He did that for a reason- so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. True repentance is confessing our sin and receiving God’s forgiveness for Jesus’ sake. And in gratitude for that we will pray God’s Spirit to help us live holier lives.

How we will do this is to keep doing what has been done. We’ll come together around the cross, under the cross, in the cross. The body of Christ will come together to ponder the stories of Christ. These familiar stories of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, of Jesus celebrating the Passover, of Jesus’ betrayal, his time in Gethsemane, the injustices wrought by the religious establishment, of Jesus’ crucifixion, and of Jesus’ crowning story, his triumphant resurrection…they are not stories that go in one ear and out the other. These are stories that keep going in both ears, in our mind, down into our heart, out through our lips and our lives. We have a life together in this congregation and this life is different than any other association we have in our life. Life together here is a way the Holy Spirit keeps putting our lives in the hand of the heavenly Father.

We’re going to hear references to a great book called Life Together. It was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian martyred at the hand of the Nazis. Bonhoeffer wrote,” Beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. If you scorn the fellowship of brothers and sisters, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you.”

In whose hands? Life is better in the Father’s hands. Amen.