It is an accident of the calendar that today marks both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. I was joking with the staff earlier today that instead of preaching tonight I should just show the clip from the Barbie movie where everybody’s dancing in a big circle and all of a sudden Barbie looks at all the other Barbies and says, “do you guys ever think about dying?” I had a colleague who shared a picture of a pink and red Valentine that said, “Roses are red, ashes are gray, we’re all gonna die, happy Valentine’s Day.” Quite a convergence. In fact, the church’s director of adult discipleship, Janice Yates, has created several slightly irreverent Valentines, along these lines, that you will see linked here.
It’s an accident of the calendar that today marks both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, and it’s an accident of geography that each year as we mark this solemn occasion, we do so just as the jonquils are pushing up from the ground, when everybody’s starting to thaw out just a little bit, when there’s a green sprig of grass here or there, football is over, and of all days, today is the day that pitchers and catchers report for spring training. It feels like we’re finally looking ahead to spring, and yet for some reason, you good Christian people have decided to come have ashes rubbed into your face as the pastor reminds you that you are going to die. Later in the service, the clergy will impose ashes on your foreheads, and as we do so, we will alternate between saying, “From dust you were created. To dust you shall return.” and “Repent, and believe the Gospel.”
I should admit that Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite days of the year. Maybe this is surprising. I just don’t think that the world does a very good job of reminding you that you are, in fact, finite. I don’t even think the church does a good enough job. One day, you will stop breathing, your body will fail, and you will die. It is simply a fact of life, perhaps the fact we hide the most from one another.
I likewise don’t think the church always does a bang-up job of reminding you of your sin. I know I don’t. You are made in the image of God, you are a person of sacred worth, you are deserving of love and worthy of grace. But you are not perfect, and I do not mean this in the old “take me or leave me, I’m not perfect so just deal with it” kind of way. I mean it in the, you have places in your life where you need to grow now kind of way. You hurt others. You fall victim to the human sin of valuing things and using people instead of valuing people and using things. You miss the mark, not just here and there, but if you are like all of the people I know, like, you miss it quite a lot. I do too, by the way.
I don’t mean to wallow. I just want to remind you, as your pastor, that you are going to die, so will I, that there are parts of your life which run counter to the intentions of God, just as there are parts of mine that do the same. It is simply the truth that we’re eventually going to die, and in the meantime, we have a problem with sin. I also want to remind you that the acceptance of the first thing may well help you address the problems of the second. Accepting death may well help you address the problems of your sin. I mean, I don’t know how you’d calculate this, but I wonder what percentage of sin has as its genesis the human desire to live forever. I know that’s the impetus behind wanting to have the most money, the best stuff. It’s the reasoning behind wanting to have the most fun toys, the fanciest cars, the biggest hous. On Valentine’s Day it strikes me that this is also why people who seem to use others for physical pleasure instead of valuing others with self-giving love, why these people engage in the behaviors they do. It’s all about wanting to avoid the realities of death. And yet, and yet you are going to die. Everyone is going to die. Every material thing dies. From dust you were created. To dust you shall return. Repent, and believe the Gospel.
I suspect that in some ways this desire to avoid the realities of death was behind the behavior of the people Jesus was talking to in this evening’s scripture passage from the Gospel of Matthew. These were the showy people, the ones who wanted everybody to know just how much they had it together, with their showy religion and their showy prayer and their showy fasting and their showy possessions. Jesus says, don’t be like the hypocrites who want it blasted everywhere when they give their money away. Don't’ be like the hypocrites who pray prominently in public so that everyone sees just how faithful they are, as if that were its own reward. Don’t be like the hypocrites who fast and walk around as if they are miserable, just to show others that they are Super Christians, miserable for Jesus, as if that were the point. That’s not the point at all. Repentance is the point. Growing in Christian love is the point. Inching closer to God is the point.
It is telling to me that it is in this section about hypocrisy, about showy religion, that Jesus goes even further, as we sometimes say in the southern church, he goes from preaching to meddling, when he says this: “Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Eventually, you are going to die. Everyone is going to die. Every material thing dies, as moth and rust eat them, or thieves come in and steal them. Somebody else is going to live in your house, work in your office, go through your stuff.
This probably is not the message you came to hear tonight, Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way, but I have to tell you, I find it immensely freeing. Immensely freeing. For one, if it really is the fear of finality that causes me to horde stuff, or to act like a hypocrite, or to try and make other people believe that their sins are worse than mine, if it is the fear of finality, the fear of death that drives all of that misery that I inflict upon myself, then it becomes a whole lot easier to navigate the world, because for as difficult as it is to deal with my sense of fear, it’s a whole lot easier to address that singular feer than it is to address the multiple expressions of greed that flow from it, on top of the hypocrisy, on top of the envy.
And for another thing, some of the most settled people I have known in my life are people who are comfortable with death. I mean, in a sense, John Irving was right when he wrote in The World According to Garp that ultimately, we are all terminal cases. But it is the people I know who have most come to terms with the fact of their own eventual deaths who are the happiest, the most generous, the kindest, even the funniest. The most fun to be around. It’s especially true of many of the people I have known who are actively dying, at least if they are given the gift of having time to wrap their heads around it, and once they have done so. So many unimportant things pass away before the body passes away, and thanks be to God for that. Things worth focusing on come into focus. There’s a clarity there. A gift, even.
I wish there were a way to get this clarity without remembering the inevitability of our own deaths. If you have a strategy that will let me properly understand my relationship with God without my own having to do the work of dying one day, I’m all ears. I wish it were so. But I am starting to believe that death does not have to be immediately around the corner for each of us to attain this clarity, this deepening focus, this willingness to grow in love and faithfulness, this peace. All that is required, at least on our part, is two things: remembering that from dust we were created, and to dust we shall return, and then repent, and believe the Gospel. All that is required is to remember that these truths are also gifts. Thanks be to God Amen.