Ash Wednesday, 02/13/2013

Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 (RCL), by Luke Bouman

Matthew 6:1 "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 "So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 5 "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you...

16"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (New Revised Standard Version)

Running

Carrie likes to run. Every day she runs, rain or shine, frigid or scorching, she runs. Sometimes it is 5 miles, sometimes 10, sometimes more. Carrie runs. She times each run, rejoicing when they are "fast times", determined to do better next run when they are not. She runs. Her life is like that too. Her life is also running. She runs from place to place, project to project, in her fast-paced job. When work is over she runs around with her kids, getting them to all their lessons and practices, games, plays. Her kids run too. She raced to get dinner on the table, to clear up the mess when it is done. When everything is in place, when the older kids are settled in, watching the younger ones, when the day is starting the wind down, that's when Carrie runs.

It would seem like there was no purpose to her running, but that would not be true. Her running helps her not to think. Truth be known, she is afraid. She is afraid of the things that will flood her mind if she ever stops running. Like so many women, single again, successful, driven, Carrie runs with purpose. She runs so that the demons don't catch up with her. She runs faster because they are gaining on her. She knows that if she slows down, or, God forbid, stops running, even for a moment, that she will be overwhelmed. So she runs. She runs from failure. She runs from the reality of the failure of her marriage. She runs from the possibility of the failure of her career and the idea that she and the kids would lose the lives they so desperately cling to. In the past she has run from the idea that her life is a disappointment to her parents, perhaps she still does. Her life is so different from theirs. She runs from rejection, thus from every new relationship that might come her way. She runs from love, even as she is desperate to be loved. Running is cheaper than therapy. It is physically better for her than an escape into drugs or alcohol, though sometimes she allows herself to escape into a bottle of wine as well. Running doesn't heal her, but at least it doesn't make things worse.

That was true until yesterday. Yesterday, on her run, she felt a stab of pain in her right leg. Not the nagging pain of a muscle strained, no this was a deep, "O Lord please make it stop" pain between her ankle and her knee. She sat, far from home, unable to continue. She called her friend, Amy, who sometimes runs with her, to pick her up, and on the way home she called her mom to go watch the kids while Amy rerouted her to the hospital ER. She sat in pain while the more urgent cases were handled. Pain was her friend in the moment, for it blocked out all of her other thoughts, kept the demons at bay. Finally, they examined her, took her in for x-rays, then the doctor came with the grim news. A bone in Carrie's leg was broken. She was put in a cast and on the way home the enormity of what just happened sank in. She could not run for a while. It was even going to be hard for her to drive. She would have to change everything about her life, at least for the near term. All of her means of escape were gone. All of her fears were being realized and there was nothing she could do about it.

Carrie looked into the mirror and caught sight of a wild person in the reflection. There was a moment where she thought she was looking at someone else. The confident woman was caught, glimpsing at a different reality. She was looking at her own limitations. She was staring straight into her own future. It was a future that she could not run from. It was a future in which, someday, she would die. She looked away. She slid to the floor in her bathroom and the tears began to flow, silently, at first. More and more uncontrolled tears rolled down her cheeks, the stream becoming a torrent of brine and raw emotion. The demons had caught her. She had no way of running and nowhere to hide. The illusion of "supermom" was stripped away. She was human again, fragile, grounded, vulnerable, human. Her brain flooded with noise and she had no means of making it stop. When there were no more tears to cry, when she was left, heaving on the floor, laboring for each breath, only then did everything come to a halt.

Stopping the Noise

People the world over run. In the developed world we run from our problems, like Carrie. In the undeveloped world, each day is a race just to survive. Everyone has a different reason to run, but in many cases the fears are the same. We are afraid of what happens if we don't. Even our religions are often part of our races. We use them to motivate us in our race. We use them to show that somehow we are miles ahead of other people. We use our piety to demonstrate that God has blessed us and the resulting show demonstrates that we are worthy, or if not exactly worthy, than at least more worthy than others.

In this way, religious piety joins the noise of the world. My piety becomes only so much noise in someone else's life, and their piety likewise in mine. The resulting competition, whose piety is better, is just another way to run. It is just another way to keep the demons at bay, or at least to pretend that they are not gaining ground on me, to pretend that they will not overwhelm me again as they have so many times before. It was just this kind of piety, just this kind of religious expression that Jesus was addressing in our text for today.

What we don't realize is that while we think we may be running from our demons, we are actually also, at the same time, running from God. We are running from love. We think that we are running from the noise of the world only to find out that we are, in fact, contributing to and surrounding ourselves with noise because we cannot stand the silent place where the reality of our limits sets in. And when we do find ourselves limited, it is often so overwhelming that we shut down, unable to function. The busier our lives become, the more complex and involved we are, the less likely we are to be able to escape the dissatisfaction that reaches deep into the core of our beings and accuses us from within. We are hurtling toward death. We are running like lemmings toward a precipice that will mean the end of us, and desperate as we might be, we cannot find meaning. We are, individually and culturally, lost, lonely, depressed, and desperate.

Ash Wednesday marks a reality check of sorts for those of us who find ourselves in this desperate place. It is a time when we look in the mirror and see, perhaps for the first time, perhaps not, the reality of our situations. The ashes that mark our faces remind us that we cannot run forever. We cannot escape our demons. We must face them. The greatest of those demons is our own mortality. We are only human. We will, someday, die.

But Ash Wednesday is also something so much more. Those crosses that mark our foreheads are also signs that we are not alone in this place. They remind us that God has joined us, here and now, that no matter how far we have run, we have not outrun God's love. God has named us and claimed us in Baptism, and these crosses are the visible reminder that we wear the cross of Christ on our foreheads year round. God bids us stop running. God bids us sit still. God hushes the noise. God is at work in us. God alone heals the demons that we have made. It is the cross of Christ that accomplishes this all. Seeing the ashes reminds us of our limits, but also of the boundless love of God. They don't heal everything that we face, but they remind us that facing everything, knowing of God's love and forgiveness, is the path to healing. The ashes remind us that death is not just an end of our lives, but also the necessary last step in the destruction of our demons, the last step before God's final healing in the resurrection. The ashes stop the pain's power, if not the pain itself. The ashes hush the noise.

Running Again

Carrie's friend Amy stopped in to see how she was doing about three days after the ER run, and about 15 minutes before Carrie was at the end of her emotional rope. She invited Carrie to join her in worship, on Ash Wednesday at her church. Amy even drove Carrie and the kids to the church, helped them get comfortable. The family hadn't been to church since the divorce and Carrie was grateful for someone to sit with. The rhythm of worship was unusual. Confession, Ashes, Communion, it all seemed to move so slowly. But something extraordinary happened as Carrie looked around the room, while she hobbled back on crutches from Communion. Everyone had ashes. Everyone had the same mark on their foreheads. The pastors sermon had talked about this as a sign of mortality and a sign of God's love and Carrie's mind wandered to the mark on her own forehead. She was not alone. Everyone faced demons, just like she did.

Carrie worshipped with Amy every week, sometimes both on Sunday and Wednesday, during the season of Lent. All the while, she practiced slowing down, easy enough while she was on crutches, and for Carrie it wasn't the hymns, the prayers, the lessons or the sermons that meant the most, meaningful though they were. It was the moments of silence, more silence than she remembered, that were the most meaningful to her. Finally, several days before Easter the cast was off, and Carrie felt some sense of elation when, at the end of this long season she was free to move about again. She drove herself to worship, but still found and sat with Amy that day. It was not only Jesus' tomb that was empty. Her own life seemed renewed indeed that day.

It would be a while before Carrie would be able to run again. Her leg needed to be rehabbed and strengthened before that day came. Carrie was not concerned. When the day finally came, she had already decided to do a couple of things. First, she quit timing her runs. Maybe she would again later, but not now. Now she ran just for the joy of it, because she could run. Second she decided she would only run with a partner or two. Most days that was Amy. They would run and talk on the way. She wouldn't run from her day and problems. She and Amy would talk through them. Her running now had a different purpose. She processed the noise in her head rather than trying to keep it at bay. At the end of each run, Carrie and Amy would stretch (doctor's orders!) and pray. In this way, Carrie realized that the ashen cross on her forehead, hard as it was to face, was still working in her each and every day. Once a year she would return to have it retraced and to look at it in wonder. She was running again, but no longer from... She was now running with, toward, for...

Dr. Luke Bouman
Valparaiso, IN
E-Mail: luke.bouman@gmail.com

(top)