Get Good and Dusty—A Sermon on Ash Wednesday

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

When Rob Lee was here two weeks ago for the St. Augustine lecture, we had dinner with some of our board members and local faith leaders. It’s important to know that Rob is severely allergic to peanuts and to shellfish. As we were about to order dinner, I double-checked with him about how other folks’ orders could affect him, and he said shellfish was just his problem, but he needed us to all abstain from peanuts. Our server stepped in and said that the restaurant was actually a peanut-free establishment. We were delighted! She then said, matter-of-factly, “you will live one more day.” We all laughed at her frankness, and Rob thanked her for the reminder.

We have a cultural saying, don’t we, about taking things “one day at a time”? It’s sort of questionable advice, right, because there are things we need to plan ahead for. If you never looked at a calendar, you would be unprepared all the time, and never accomplish anything that took more than one day’s advance planning. Usually, though, we err too far from this “one day at a time” plan. We are always counting the weeks of the quarter, or checking the calendar for when our friends are coming to town, or perhaps looking ahead to our next birthday, or even the impending anniversary of a personal tragedy. We are so occupied by what’s next, what’s next, what’s next that we rarely live in this moment, here, and now. We are so busy living that we rarely stop to consider if we like the lives we’re leading.

Frankly, we are so busy living that we rarely even notice that we are all dying. We know, intellectually, that we are on this earth for a limited time, and that our death is eventual. Most of us are healthy enough to be fairly confident that our own deaths are in the distant future. And most of us are fairly uncomfortable with that fact, anyway. We just go on living like it will always be this way. Even though we know that can’t be true!

Our friend Martin Luther, instigator of the Protestant Reformation, had a habit of theological paradox. (We reflected on this in LEVN this week, doing some reading about feminist and womanist theologies.) For Luther, it is perfectly sound to say that we are all simultaneous saints and sinners. You’ve heard that one before? What about that we’re simultaneously empowered and humbled? What about that we’re simultaneously bound and free? What about that we’re simultaneously living and dying? We’ll skip that last one, thankyouverymuch. Death-denying is one of our favorite activities.

Except tonight. Tonight, in observance of Ash Wednesday, we’re intentionally reflecting on the inescapable truth that we all will die.

As surely as you live and breathe, you will surely die. It’s okay! It doesn’t always feel okay. The death of a loved one earlier than expected is one of the worst human experiences. The tradition of Ash Wednesday is not to trivialize the pain of death. It serves as an annual reminder, an occasional familiarization, a slow softening.

In our world of 24-hour news, we are no stranger to violence and death. We see images and read headlines of natural disaster, gun violence, police violence, domestic violence, car accidents, mass shootings, war, terrorism...we are nearly desensitized to mass deaths of innocent people. It’s unjust. We cry out to God, wondering why any of this is happening. We cry out to God, wondering if God has noticed that God’s people are dying. God has noticed. The deaths of thousands of people every day to hunger, disease, war, famine—God sees those lives and those deaths. The long, quiet goodbye of an elderly family member—God sees those lives and those deaths. The devastation of overdose and suicide—God sees those lives and those deaths. Each life and each death is precious to the God who created each and every person, each and every creature.

If pressed, we would say “of course, we know that.” But as it’s happening, we don’t always remember. Tonight, we remember. We remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We remember that just like every person who has lived and died in the generations before us, we are made of the same substance, the same mud into which God has breathed life. The same bundle of cells that somehow become the miracle of humanness. The paradox here, dear ones, is that you are made of the same stuff that everyone has ever been made of, and you are the only you there has ever been. You were created by a God who loves you, and you live each day in that belovedness.

I know this to be true about me and about each of you, and about every human who has ever lived and died and will ever live and die.

Remember how Martin Luther liked paradoxes? And that one of them is that we are simultaneously bound and free? As created beings, we are bound to our God—we depend on God for our very existence. And, at the same time, because of the grace we have received, we are free. We are free to be fully human. It is not hard to see, as we look around at our fellow full, free humans, that we do not always do what is right with our freedom. We sometimes use our freedom to inhibit the freedom of others, to directly oppress others, to indirectly allow someone else to use their freedom to oppress others. The scripture that we read on this Ash Wednesday reminds us of the connection between our bondage and our freedom.

The prophet Isaiah basically mocks the community, saying that their fasting is empty because they do it only for show. They cover their faces in ash, they wear sackcloth, they writhe about in performative anguish. After everyone has seen them behave in this most holy of ways, they return to their wicked ways: oppressing their workers, quarreling, and fighting. The prophet tells them that he has seen—and God has seen—right through them. Their fast is false until they fast from oppression. Until they fast from injustice. Until they fast from unchecked power. They must change their ways. They must share their food with the hungry, and clothe the naked, and invite the homeless into their families.

Jesus, too, goes down this same path. “Do not be like the hypocrites,” he says. Do not come here to this place of holiness and perform your sacrifices. Do not come here to this refuge and make false promises to your God. Come here and put this ash on your face and feel the scratch of this sackcloth on your skin only if you mean it.

It may seem like a very odd choice for us to hear these words and then proceed to mark ourselves with the sign of the cross, and then walk out the door into the world. It may seem like we are doing exactly what these prophets have told us not to do. When you walk back out into the world with a cross of ashes on your forehead, someone is definitely going to look at you funny. Maybe you’ve gotten used to that over the years. Or maybe this is going to be your first time receiving ashes, and you’re sort of worried about it. Wherever you are, God is there.

When you receive these ashes tonight, listen to the blessing that accompanies them. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Remember your fellow creatures, and treat them well. You are made of the same stuff. You are bound to the God who loves you, free to love and serve your neighbor. Free to do as the prophet Isaiah challenges: loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke. Untangle yourself from the things that hold you back from being your best self, from treating everyone like their best self. You are made of good stuff. Remember yourself.

My friend Emily, who is a Lutheran pastor in Iowa, writes a blog from a queer perspective. They sometimes write re-imaginings of stories from scripture, or traditional prayers, to reflect queer identities and the true vastness of God’s family. They wrote the most beautiful blessing for Ash Wednesday, and so I will close this homily by blessing you with it:

“Blessed gift of God’s good creation, it is true:

You are dust, made from the rich, dark matter of the earth, a human from Earth’s hummus.
You are from this life-giving ground and one day you also will return to the earth.
    Nourishing it as it has nourished you.
    Nourishing others as they have nourished you.
But, beloved one of God, it is not just dust and soil that make you up.
You are made of stardust, scattered like infinite glitter, sparking and sparkling throughout the universe.

As you journey through Lent this year, return to who you are.

May the Creator bless the dust in you and around you.
May the Word made flesh, who crossed boundaries and borders, affirm your humanity.
May the Spirit spark imagination and wonder in the stardust that lives in you.
You are dust and stardust, and to the cosmos you will return.”

A Tale of Two Prophets—A Sermon on Fishing, Farming, and Following

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Have you been out to the MU when the street preachers are there? You know, the guy reading the Bible out loud—out very loud—and perhaps with a sign that says something like THE END IS NEAR or another alarming pronouncement. Sometimes, there’s even more than one of them at a time. Are we familiar? Okay, so those guys believe that they are doing what Jonah was doing in our story.

“Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!” Jonah yelled, presumably, throughout the center of town. The guys by the MU believe that they, too, are telling the sinful masses the truth about the punishment in store for them from God if they do not change their ways. Do you think those guys are effective? I haven’t looked at any data, per se, but I would be surprised if a significant number of UC Davis students were moved to repentance from their efforts. In part, because—as of the time I was writing this sermon—our city has not been overthrown.

Tonight’s two stories—Jonah and Jesus—go sort of nicely together. They have things in common and ways that they differ. Both men are prophets, proclaiming the will of God. Jonah was, as the story goes, recently in the belly of a large fish; Jesus is inviting fishermen into the kingdom of God. That one is definitely a stretch, but I just like that we have a latent fish theme. The stories have some contrast, as well. The people of Nineveh, where Jonah is prophesying, are rich and powerful. The fishermen on the seashore, where Jesus is prophesying, are not.

When you think about the stories of the prophets, what do you remember about how the citizens of the place usually respond to the prophets? Not very positively, right? This is what is so weird about Nineveh, did you notice? They heard Jonah’s prophecy, and call to change their ways, and then they...changed their ways. “And the people of Nineveh believed God” it says, and “they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” That’s kind of surprising. It’s especially surprising that they seem to have done so immediately. They didn’t ask clarifying questions, they didn’t make excuses, they just...did it.

And that’s true in Jesus’ story, too. One of my favorite things about the Gospel according to Mark is that, in it, everyone does everything immediately. You may begin to notice that, as we go through this Gospel this year. The immediacy is so apparent, that in my seminary Greek class, when we were learning to translate, we learned the word “euthus” so well because we saw it so many times. I’ll always associate that with these stories. Mark’s is also the shortest Gospel, probably because he doesn’t waste time with details and detours. Whatever Jesus is doing, we get to the point—immediately.

So, Jesus heads down to the Sea of Galilee and says “follow me,” and the men on the shore immediately drop their nets and follow. Immediately! They ask no clarifying questions, they make no excuses for why they can’t. And, frankly, this is where my ability to identify with the original 12 disciples often hits a wall. I rarely do anything immediately. I rarely do anything without asking a laundry list of clarifying questions. I have a lot going on, and dropping my nets—or my work, or my plans, or my relationships—is just not something I see myself doing immediately. Fortunately for me, God seems to have plenty of time, and just pushes me to get to the point eventually.

Did you notice the oddness of where Jesus goes to collect his disciples? The seashore. These fishermen are not powerful, or rich, or well-known, or well-connected.

Living here in Davis, we are adjacent to a world-class university and just across the causeway from the capitol of the world’s sixth largest economy. We know a thing or two about the halls of power. If you’re looking to make waves here, you go to the top of the food chain, right? The chancellor of the university, the members of the state legislature.

We're also in the neighborhood of an agricultural behemoth known as California’s Central Valley. There are tons of other valleys around here—Capay, Anderson, Napa—and they all grow the food that sustains much of the United States, and, arguably, the world. If you have lived in California for your whole life, you probably take for granted that abundance of produce we have here, and the length of our growing seasons. The strawberries for sale at the Davis Farmers’ Market in August are truly a wonder of the world.

The farmers there, week after week, are keeping us alive and well. They are very likely not wealthy people. Their livelihood is determined by an incredible number of uncontrollable factors—weather, pests, consumer preferences, market prices, other farmers’ yields—and this is a risk they take season after season.

Why am I waxing poetic about farmers right now? Well, we don’t live on the Sea of Galilee, and so we’re not intimately acquainted with a first-century diet and economy based on fishing. We’re in Davis, CA, where we’re blessed to be intimately acquainted with our farmers, and an economy that is fueled in large part by vegetables.

This, then, is where I imagine Jesus scooping up disciples. They’re in Dixon and Winters and communities like those all over the northern half of California, planting and tending and harvesting and then trekking to markets like ours in Davis every Saturday morning. I can imagine Jesus walking through the rows of strawberries, telling sun-worn farmworkers that he would make them cultivators of people.

Jesus would not waltz into Governor Brown’s office and invite him to join the movement, as he did not waltz up to the throne of Rome and invite Caesar. Jesus knew that those whose day-to-day lives were already leaps of faith, interdependent on the earth and each other, would be the ones brave enough to join him. The ones who knew the power of small things done with great love. The ones who had been tossed about by the waves of injustice, and seen the fruits of the labor of their collective.

Grassroots organizing is perhaps a buzzword to us, now, in the age of online connection for political and community changemaking. For Jesus, though, it was an entirely new way of life. These fishermen, and the others who joined John the Baptist and Jesus’ movement were not the people whose opinions were usually sought after, were not the people whose work was usually valued, were not the people usually in control.

You and I live somewhere in between these locations; students at a university, but not its administrators; citizens of a global superpower, but not its governors; members of the largest protestant denominations, but not its bishops.

Do you think that those distinctions matter in the eyes of God, or are true measures of your worth in the world? No, certainly not.

Do you think that, out of whatever circumstance you find yourself in, Jesus calls you to be his disciple? Absolutely yes.

Will you follow? Will you fish? Will you farm?

...immediately?

God is Calling—An Audience-Participation Sermon on Listening

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Have you sensed a theme for this week yet? Our opening hymn was “Listen, God is Calling” and it involved some call and response that we don’t usually do. And then our first lesson, from 1 Samuel, we did a little reader’s theater, which we don’t usually do. And just when you thought the audience participation might be over! What did you notice about the song and the readings?

I could have chosen any song about being called, and I could have just had one person read the lesson. Is there a meta connection, too?

I am really asking. I have written “insert brilliant responses from students here” in my notes.

[insert brilliant responses from students here]

***

We did some extra listening, and some more intentional listening, by doing things differently. We didn’t just mosey through the opening hymn, we didn’t just zone out while someone read a long reading. We listened about listening.

Talking about listening is one of my favorite ironies. In a minute, I am going to stick giant papers on the wall, and you are going to sit for a minute, and think about the answers to the questions written on them, and then get up and write something. And then maybe spend some time this week thinking about the answers.

Where do you hear God?

What has God called you to “come and see,” like Phillip says to Nathanael in the Gospel story?

Who has God called to walk with you?

What has God called us to do?

You can be as literal or as figurative as you like in your responses. You can be as specific or as vague as you like. And in the last one, especially, what has God called us to do, you can think as personal or as communally as you like. Has God called you to something specific? Or, is the whole church called to a certain action?

As soon as I say “there are no wrong answers” I know someone is going to poke at that and find a wrong answer, so I will just preface with this: God does not call us to commit violence against each other or to oppress each other, but otherwise I think anything you come up with is going to be safe.

Where do you hear God?

What has God called you to come and see?

Who has God called to walk with you?

What has God called us to do?

[insert brilliant written responses from students on giant poster papers on the chapel wall]

***

Where do you hear God? Anywhere, any time you’re quiet long enough to listen.

What has God called you to come and see? The truth, and that the truth will set you free.

Who has God called to walk with you? The communion of saints.

What has God called us to do? Live as disciples, sharing the good news.

All of us are called. You are called. God speaks to you through all the channels in your life that bring you joy, and that challenge you, and that support you. God has called you and continues to call you to be your best self. God has called you to come and see what freedom, and love, and grace, and friendship, and community, and justice are really all about. God has called us all to walk together, supporting one another and learning from one another. God has called us to live as disciples, sharing the good news. God has called all of us to all of this.

Our scripture this week makes it so plain. There is no person, no place, no circumstance, to which God does not speak. The holy spirit moves in every nation, in every city, in every community, in every person. For centuries, humans have tried to restrict the movement of the spirit, limit the work of God, by declaring who is fit to preach the gospel and who is fit to hear it. In 2018, as we read these words from Samuel and from Eli, from Jesus and from Nathanael and from Phillip, we can say—for sure—that God is still speaking. We can say—for sure—that any restriction on hearing God’s call is not a restriction put there by God, but a restriction put there by people.

God spoke to Samuel, who wasn’t sure what he was hearing. Hearing the voice of God does not always sound like your name, in the middle of the night, when you’re trying to sleep. God can sound like so many different things—in fact, God must sound like so many different things, because God’s people are so many different things. When you feel drawn to something or to someone, and you can’t really explain why, that can be the voice of God. When you’re so excited about something you’re learning or work that you’re doing, that can be the voice of God. When you’re challenged by something, taken outside your comfort zone, that can be the voice of God. When you’re feeling truly at peace, that can be the voice of God.

And the voice of God is not just a still, small voice that we listen for. We, too, are amplifiers and interpreters of the voice of God. When you practice kindness in the midst of this messy world, you help others hear the voice of God. When you work for justice, you help others hear the voice of God. When you provide encouragement, you help others hear the voice of God. When you stand up for something or someone that has been cast aside or silenced, you help others hear the voice of God.

Sometimes, we’re afraid of the word “disciple,” I think. In our American Christian environment, most of the people we know who identify as disciples are like really hardcore, and we’re intimidated by that. We can work our way toward identifying with the word disciple, but already, we’re doing the thing. How we live out our lives as Christians depends on who we are and where we live. “Discipleship require[s] fresh, ongoing, creative acts of interpreting and contextualizing our faith story.” It isn’t going to be the same for you as it is for me, and it won’t be the same as everyone else we meet along the way. We don’t have to compare ourselves to other people, and wonder if we’re “as good a Christian” as they are. “Our discipleship must be for the world the reality of love, justice, peace, and compassion for all”—including our own selves.

As we go out into the world, called and sent, keep asking yourself all those questions. Keep asking God all your big questions, keep asking me all your big questions! And then listen. Listen to yourself. Listen to your God. Listen to your community. Listen, God is calling.

[Dear reader, if you have answers to those questions, I'd love to listen.]