Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019, "Like water on concrete"

C Ash Wednesday 2019

March 6, 2019

          Throughout the season of Epiphany, we often read from the apostle Paul in his letters to the churches in Corinth.  The apostle Paul writes that the aim of Christian spirituality is to act in freedom for God.  Our culture sends out a message that would enslave us to a gospel of prosperity, competition, violence, warfare, and death.  We are ultimately defeated when we have no hope of another way.  Not only do we find ourselves anxiously worrying what will happen to ourselves if we do not swallow the cultural gospel, we find ourselves possessed by it.  We lose hope in the way God has set before us, that Christ’s gospel will bring us the things we ultimately need, and we begin practicing prosperity, competition, violence, warfare, and death ourselves.  We know we need transformation, some radical change, we just do not know how to get there.

          In Henri Nouwen’s book, With Open Hands, the story is told of an old woman brought to a psychiatric center.  She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctors had to take everything from her.  But there was one, small coin she gripped in her fist and would not give up.  In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand.  It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.  If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more and be nothing more.  That was her fear.

That is very often our fear.  We are forever invited by God to open our tightly clenched fist and to give up the thing that possesses us.  But who really wants to do that?  We hold fast to what is familiar, even if we aren’t proud of it.  We clutch onto prosperity, competition, violence, warfare, and death so tightly that it becomes all we know, the only spiritual practice we have learned.

In Jewish faith and tradition, three spiritual practices were considered the standard for making a way for God’s work in the world—almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.  Christ outlines their character and content in our gospel passage for today.  He makes it clear that they are not to be outward shows but about inward commitments.  Spirituality is about that inward commitment to do something over and over again as a way of transforming our character which ripples out to transform the character of our systems and structures. 

We do not have to do something huge.  We just have to do it over and over again.  The popular rock band U2 has a song entitled “Beautiful Day.”  The opening lyric to that song is “The heart is a bloom”; “Shoots up through the stony ground.”  In the middle of the song, the songwriter asks us to believe that there is still hope for them, the songwriter is not beyond the pale.  And throughout the song, the songwriter knows they can be that bloom in stony ground as their eyes begin to see not so much the truth of beauty within themselves but the beauty they see of God working throughout the world—the world in green and blue, canyons broken by a cloud, a Bedouin fire in night, a bird with a leaf in her mouth.  And yes, such beauty that you see being accomplished out in the world is also breaking out within you.  God at work in the beauty around you confirms God at work in the beauty inside of you.  See that in you now, the greens and the blues, the canyon broken by a cloud, the Bedouin fire at night, the bird with a leaf in her mouth.  It’s a beautiful day, inside of you.  God is at work.

In effect, that is the role of spirituality within our culture.  Not alone, but as a community we are called to be a bloom that shoots up through the stony ground by practicing almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.  The beauty is happening, God is at work, within you.

We can start from where we are.  God forever offers an amazing grace to begin.  Begin small and begin practicing.  Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting are all about reminding us that we are not alone.  Indeed, almsgiving suggests that we are willing to recognize the world as bigger than ourselves.  In a culture which seeks to divide and conquer, almsgiving suggests that we will reach across the division to give.  Almsgiving asks, “Where will you put your resources?”

Prayer expresses solidarity with our God and neighbor.  Prayer expresses our willingness to work with God to create green and blue, to share beauty and love for all.  Prayer asks, “With whom or what will you stand?” 

And finally, fasting is detaching ourselves from a culture that seeks to destroy beauty and life and love.  In the book of Joel, fasting was the way the community was called together in repentance.  It shows hope in another way.  Fasting asks, “To what will you refuse to give your energy, your presence, your resources so that you may be free to give that energy, presence, and resource to beauty, life, and love?”

So today we recognize our need to reenter our tradition and claim almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.  We begin small.  We are like water dripping on concrete.  Those who are not in the struggle for the long haul would never guess that water could change the concrete.  But we know, we know as we look out at water that has carved mountains over time and by snow that has broken pavement in a season, by a bloom of a rose that has been fed in stony ground—the slow drip of water will change the concrete.

So on this Ash Wednesday, I encourage all of us to receive the amazing grace of God to begin again and begin small with practices of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. 

Let us now spend time in silent meditation, thinking to what practice of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting we will give ourselves this Lenten season—at least once a week, every week.  You will be like water on concrete, slowly and surely dripping, transforming yourself and your world.  Drip . . . drip . . . Praise God.  Amen.