Ash Wednesday Isaiah 58:1-12 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder, Episcopal Campus Chaplain MSU Chapel of Memories February 9, 2005 "Bring some good shoes." … "Don't bring your new ones. We've got a lot to do. They'll slow us down, or worse, they'll blister your feet. Then you'll be unable to get where we're going." … "Now make sure the ones you do bring fit. You don't want to come out of'em in the street." … "And, if they're not broken-in, don't bother bringin'em." … "Oh, and one last thing. Dark shoes are best. Because no matter what, they're gonna get dirty." So went my "One Thing to Know Before You Get Here" spiel to most of the folks who visited me in New York during seminary. I'm not generally a control freak, but I viewed this as a bit of practical advice coming from personal experience. Because, I don't think I'll ever forget the blisters I came home with after my initial visit there. My feet were raw from all the walking. The advice was sometimes heeded and other times … I'll just leave it at that. I won't burden you with any proscriptions here, but I do wonder, what shoes are you planning to bring on this journey? Today we set out on Lent--a journey intended to be walked, an excursion that could potentially take us many places, over many hills or mountains and much rocky terrain, and in any number of directions. The journey will probably take us through the grime and mire on the dirty streets of our lives, and it just might involve a lot of retracing our steps, backtracking again and again and again, if we're headed towards the right direction. There might even be times when we're seemingly lost, or reading the map upside down. Our travels on this pilgrimage are meant to expose our very soles/souls as we heed the invitation for study, reflection and penitence, cleansing and renewal, centering and refocusing, prayer and meditation, confession and, perhaps most importantly, understanding more fully communion with the Other. So what kind of shoes are we going to start out in today? If we're not careful, I think it might be easy to get things a little bit confused. We're hearing some really strong directives about what we're not supposed to be doing here--namely being what some might call "super" pious. Yet at the same time today, we'll be doing something quite visible, perhaps even attention-getting in the very midst of this warning. Isaiah suggests that lying in ashes and wearing sackcloth is just what we shouldn't be doing to "profess" our piety. But here we are at Ash Wednesday, when we receive the sign of the cross in ashes upon our foreheads. Here we are at the outset of Lent, when many altars will be draped in coarse linen or even burlap. And how is it that we reconcile the admonition that seems to be saying one thing and our practice which seemingly is quite different? I think where we start is in the discernment of intention over attention. Our lessons speak clearly to just what is the difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. It means one thing to profess something, to go through life in rote. It's something else to bring that profession to life, to flesh it out, to nurture it and to be agents through which such profession is ushered in to God's world. Indeed, the question remains: What shoes will we bring? Perhaps another kernel of truth from our Scriptures today comes through acknowledging the implicitness of the call for each and every one of us to live out a piety within the framework of community--the world. We see this clearly within our lessons. Piety--true piety--is about justice and righteousness. Isaiah's admonition is against the house of Jacob, because they just don't seem to get it. They are so caught up in simply going through the motions of their cultural faith and religion that they have lost all sight of any intention. And they have become so lost in the unmoving unreality of it all that they can't even see the others around them who are enslaved in injustice; those who are imprisoned in oppression; or hungry, yet not given any food; or thrown into the streets with all doors locked to them; the naked, and not simply unclothed, but worse--ignored. True piety, true just and righteous living shatters this kind of reality, because true piety is not singular at all. Rather it deals with all of humanity. This is why Matthew warns against being or becoming hypocrites. He warns against this kind of play-acting in order to be seen by others. In fact the word "hypocrite" has it's roots in Greek drama. It was originally the word for "actor" before moralists picked up the term, using it later in reference to those whose deeds don't match their words. Acts of justice, just like prayer, are between the doer and God. And if done for the right, they are never done for public approval. They're not "acts" at all--at least in the sense of being put on. Acts of justice are meant to be genuine, authentic, in-touch with reality, and done in love. Yet practicing a true piety is perhaps even more difficult than it sounds, because Paul tells us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians that we are called to endurance--indeed great endurance--in the midst of affliction, hardship, calamity, beatings … His list goes on. As Christians we are called to endure, to show forth our acts of justice--our piety--in the name of God through purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and sustained by the power of God in the midst of all that is in degradation before us. In our piety we are called to see the world around us for what it is--messy, all jumbled up, despairing, longing, broken. And the question again is: What shoes will we wear on this journey? Today we will wear ashes--not as a sign of us being "holier than thou," not simply wearing our faith lightly on our sleeves. No, today what we wear on our foreheads reminds us that of all that we do, whether done in holiness or superficiality, we are nothing more than dust. We wear ashes to remember that we are only mortal, that we are simply on this earth for a short while. And we wear ashes to remind others of that too. Shakespeare--someone who was familiar with actors and, arguably even hypocrisy--concludes The Tempest [Act IV, Sc. 1, Line 148] with these words: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted away into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-cappepd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant failed, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. I think he's on to something here, but for us this is not the whole story at all. It's not the Good News with which we are called forth from this place on this day. Because these ashes, these signifiers of our frailty, of our fallen-ness, of our weakness, and our limits--these ashes are symbolic of our hope. Yes, we wear ashes, acknowledging our mortality. But we wear ashes, too, as a profession of our faith. While the water with which we are baptized soon dries and the oil with which our baptisms are sealed is absorbed by the body, never again to be seen--while the communion in which we share is quickly received and consumed--our ashes today mark us as God's own out in the world--not just a reminder of the limit of our "little life". No, our Good News is that our ashes are a celebration of the God-given life and new life in which we share--each of us--you and me, that troubled someone in class who to now has been unapproachable, and that guy who took your parking spot this morning, and that editor who keeps riding you about the journal article that's late, and the woman who froze your MoneyMate account because of last semester's outstanding balance, and even those best friends with whom we don't yet know how to begin to share our deepest faith and beliefs. Our ashes mark us in that world out there--a world that is in need of a true piety. We find ourselves in a world that is in desperate need of the justice and righteousness and love of God that was and is offered in the person of Jesus Christ. And we are of a world that can use this message, if only as a symbol, of God's working in human life--one that symbolizes not only who but whose we are. So I ask you: Have you got your shoes on? We've got a lot of ground to cover. Our Lenten journey will be a long one. It's not about taking shortcuts; rather it's about revisiting those pathways that we've come to know and intuit and rethinking them. It's about encountering those obstacles that keep us from home or our destination and crossing through them. It's a journey that can move us and reshape us and those we encounter along the way. It's one that, if done right, will bring us closer to home than ever before. Not easy at all, but it is a journey on which we're not alone. And I am convinced that with the right shoes on from the outset, we'll be able to take them off at journey's end, knowing full and well that we're standing on holy ground. Amen.