A reflection on scripture for the people of Thankful Memorial Episcopal Church for worship from home, February 17, 2021, Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This Ash Wednesday is hard. It is harder than any Ash Wednesday before in my experience and I hope to God that it will be the hardest I’ll ever have to face again.

I remember, some years ago, calling my dad on my drive home from Thankful after the Ash Wednesday service. At the time, he was fading fast from the cancer that would kill him a few months later. I asked if he had gone to an Ash Wednesday liturgy that day and he said he hadn’t so I half-joked with him: “Yeah, it’s not like you really need a reminder of your own mortality right now, do you?”

And it’s the same thing for us – for all of us across the globe – this year. The traditional words of the Imposition, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” seem utterly and painfully superfluous this year. How could we possibly forget? With Covid-19 still very much a danger, with the tenuousness of life that many minorities face every day held up to us in the news, with the death of Bonnie Stamps, one of our very own beloved Thankful Ones still so fresh, we do not need a reminder of our own mortality, of our fragility and brokenness. We live with the reality of these things every day – almost every moment.

The prophet Isaiah must have spoken to a people who felt similarly as we do now. “Why do we fast, but you do not see?” they ask God. They felt forgotten and forsaken. And while the prophet reminds the people of their own culpability in their plight, their blindness and brokenness that have gotten them to this place, he simultaneously reminds them – reminds us – of the faithfulness of God: “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places,” he says. “And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”

The Lord is still here, Isaiah tells us, even in these parched places, and God’s promises remain true. The prophet offers God’s invitation to come into a garden that has already been prepared for us. But to accept the invitation requires the attention and intention to see God’s abundance. We must move through this particular wilderness in ways that allow us to see the oases in the desert.

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,” instead of really seeking to be holy, the prophet accuses the ancient people of God. Their outward show of penitence is empty because it is unsupported by any true repentance, any change of heart or behavior. Even as they fast, says Isaiah, they “quarrel and fight” with one another, refuse to “share your bread,” and hold tight to the “bonds of injustice.” This blindness to God’s ways makes them equally blind to the abundance of God’s love for them. Their lack of right intention in their repentance has inhibited them from receiving the good things God “continually” provides.

Right intention is at the heart of Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel, too. Of course there is nothing wrong with prayer and fasting and giving alms – these are good ways of being in right relationship with the Lord. But if we engage in these behaviors because we want to be seen as pious or because we want others to think we are righteous and not because we actually long to be right with God, then we will not receive the spiritual benefit of these actions. This is not because God withholds such benefit from us but because our attention to the earthly rewards of prestige and privilege will blind us to the heavenly abundance that’s “continually” on offer from God.

But what if we weren’t so blinded by our own desires, self-interest and need? What if we engage in fasting, prayer and alms-giving, not because we are told to, not because we want to look the part of piety, but because we want our eyes to be opened to God’s love for us, because we want to live holy lives, because we want to be in right relationship with the Lord? With that right intention behind them, maybe, just maybe, such actions will lead us into God’s promised garden where our thirst will be quenched and our breaches repaired.

This Ash Wednesday, we are not gathered together in person in our beautiful sanctuary. I am not imposing ashes upon you, my beloved Thankful Ones, with those familiar words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” That is hard, but that’s also OK. Because whether or not we impose ashes on ourselves and our loved ones this year, we are living in a season that reminds us of our mortality every day, every moment anyways.

What if we took that constant reminder of our own fragility as a constant impetus – at least through this Lenten season – to reassess our motivations for our actions? What if we saw this particular parched wilderness as an invitation to change our hearts and our behaviors such that we become more attuned to the oases of God’s abundance around us and step into them?

Take, for example, the face masks we wear when we go out. Imagine them like the ash crosses we would usually wear on our heads on Ash Wednesday. A daily reminder of our mortality, these masks force us to recognize how fragile our bodies are, how susceptible to infection, suffering and death. But they are also tangible signs of the ways in which we care for others and love our neighbors as ourselves, by protecting the health and well-being of those we encounter in our interactions that day. Masks are a sign of both our mortality and our righteousness, a way in which, with a change of heart and the proper intention, we can begin to see the abundance of God’s love even in this seeming wilderness.

Ten days ago, I gathered together with some of Bonnie Stamps’s closest family and friends for a funeral liturgy. As we neared the end of that service, I said the words of the commendatory anthem: “…we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

Yes, even at the grave, even in the wilderness, even among the dust and the ashes and the masks, we discover the signs of God’s abundant love for us. May our eyes be opened this Lenten season to such grace that we may become “like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” Amen.