Ash Wednesday: What is your next step?

Sermon for Ash Wednesday, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

In August of 1993, I started an intense year of study in Medical Technology School that changed me in many ways, and I was a different person when I graduated. I had to quickly figure out how to put together and master a large amount of information and then apply it, and whatever academic or analytic weaknesses I had were exposed from day one. The director and instructors of the program were sympathetic and supportive, but we as students had to confront our successes and failures on our own, and take responsibility for them. Lent has been a somewhat similar experience for me, not that I have a huge amount of material to learn that I’ll be graded on, but that it is a time of discovery of who and where I am. It is a discovery of my weaknesses and gifts and where they are leading me.

Traditionally, Lent has been focused on sin: our brokenness and recognition of that brokenness through confession and self-examination. But in the readings we just heard, Pauls talks of a visible perseverance of piety, or remaining faithful through trials and tribulations. Jesus, on the other hand, speaks of a humble, almost hidden private piety, or remaining faithful because God hears our prayers. In this liturgy, we hear of, in rough order, contrition, repentance, mercy, perseverance, humility, prayer, fasting, self-examination, sinfulness, confession, and absolution. That’s a lot to take in, a lot to experience, and then a lot put together, so it’s a good thing we have six weeks to get through all of it. While we do that, we have to confront our weaknesses and failures, and somehow celebrate our successes. This can make Lent a stressful experience because we don’t know what we ought to feel or not feel, what we ought to do or not do to prepare ourselves to be resurrected into a new life with Jesus on Easter.

In reality, contrition, repentance, mercy, perseverance, and so on, are the steps on a journey toward being Christ-like, but not everyone will go through all of them, or go through them in the same order. You’ve heard the saying that the journey is more important than the destination, as well as the counter saying that we should pursue our goals however we can get to them. And it is true that the journey is important, because we have to remember what we learn about ourselves as part of our accountability toward who we say that we want to be. It is also true that the goal of becoming Christ-like is important because that is where our faith and the story in the Gospel is leading us. What is ultimately most important is that we challenge ourselves to know both where we are in our journey and where we want to arrive. By confronting our weaknesses we come closer to being authentic and closer to the life Jesus calls us to live.

During this Lenten season, look at where you started on your journey, and where you are now - these perspectives will help you determine what the next step is, and Lent is the time to take that step. Lent does not have to be an intense time of experiencing everything we are exposed to in this service; that is not the point. The point is to engage in the journey toward the goal, which is to become as close as we can to being like Christ. Lent is the time to take the next step of our journey, and to make sure that we are on the path that will take us to the goal. That requires discipline to put away the old things of life and begin the new things that bring us closer to Christ, so that we come out of Lent different than when we started it today. Lent is about transformation, through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not about focusing only on our faults, shortcomings, or brokenness, because those can become distractions from the work we have before us. It is about continuing toward the goal despite those things that distract us and get in our way.

May we all have a blessed and fruitful Lenten season.

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