Ash Wednesday

February 17, 2010

Pr. Tom Schoenherr

 

      Irreconcilable differences! We know the term, and it seems to identify much of what is happening in our world. War with the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan; infighting between Republicans and Democrats in our own Senate and House; are brief examples of the divisions we see every day in our world. There does not seem to be much interest in reconciling these differences. There are people with whom I have had irreconcilable differences and these are situations I would rather forget, and would like to run away from.  I don’t want to remember them. We wear the ashes as a sign that we are a people with irreconcilable differences.

 

      We will deny it but we also have irreconcilable differences with God. We may think that, like Adam and Eve, we want to be like God, but we are not able to bridge the gap between us and God. We can’t run away from our differences and our sin. The ashes are a sign to us that we are only dust and we don’t want to admit that.

 

      When the ashes are put on our heads and we hear those words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return;” we are painfully aware that we cannot run away from God’s claim on us and death’s hold on us. Without God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our differences with God and with one another are irreconcilable.

 

      In his book, Slowness, Milan Kundera says that as we are walking along and we want to remember something that we are trying to recall, we slow down or even stop. Meanwhile, if we want to forget a disagreeable event or incident, we automatically speed up as if we are trying to distance ourselves from the event.

 

      This evening we pause in our busy lives and stop at the communion rail to kneel and to receive an ashen cross on our foreheads and hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Some would maybe like to run away from that cross and those words, but we slow down and stop, because they are words we want to remember. Later as we come forward, Christ comes to us in bread and wine or grape juice to forgive and heal us. Jesus Christ is the sinless Son of God who becomes sinner in our place. God counts all of our sins against jesus on the cross and sees us as righteous, his beloved children.  

 

      Yes there are still wars going on, and people who have irreconcilable differences with us and with others. There are people who just refuse to work together or to work out their differences with one another. We don’t have to just accept these differences but we seek to build Christ-centered communities where reconciliation and forgiveness happen, where we can forgive rather than keep counting the sins that we do to one another. We can be signs of hope and welcome as we work to end violence and revenge as a way to deal with our differences.

 

      We are God’s people, marked with the sign of the cross in ashes who remember who we are, but who also remember that we are sent as God’s forgiven and forgiving people to a world crying out for healing that God is doing through Jesus Christ. We are willing to slow down, stop and kneel to the needs of people whom God loves; sent to heal and forgive, and be signs of the memory of God’s love to all the world.