Ash Wednesday 2006 Joel 2:1-2, 12-17, Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 103:8-14, 2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 March 1, 2006 12:05 p.m. The Rev. J. Brian Ponder, Episcopal Chaplain The Chapel of Memories Mississippi State University In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we set out on our Lenten journey. Will it be one of fasting? … prayer? … piety? … giving something up? … taking something on? … or maybe some of all of it? … Will we see it through … or is it just fanciful? Will our pathways be gentle with the promise of hopeful horizons? … or will they take us to treacherous no-man’s-lands full of wary wanderings? … Who and what will we find? … Will we be found in it all? Today we pack for the long journey. What will we take? … What will be necessary? What will become excessive? … and with whom will we check our baggage once our packs become too heavy? … In the end, will we even desire to redeem our claim tickets at all? … or will we simply pick up just where we left off? Today we head outwards from home. Who’s got the compass? … Which way should we go? … Where are we headed? … Where will it take us? … Will we miss the turn? … Will we become disoriented? … or will we find our bearings? … our Way? Today we enter the wilderness … rich with thorns … spotted with cacti … meeting things that slither and scurry … tossed like tumbleweeds and spun about through dust storms. Will ours be a wilderness of solitude? … and loneliness? … or will it be one of exploration? … and discovery? … hope-filled with epiphany and revelation? … Where will we find our Wellspring of life? … … I’ll never forget the trek to the church that day. A number of us from the seminary had gathered in the lobby before heading out, not knowing exactly where our journey would take us, nor exactly why we were going. There was some last-minute hesitation, to call it “quits,” but we journeyed forward, each with a sense in our heart of hearts that this was something we had to or needed to do, we had to experience, something in which we wanted to participate in order for things to start making some sense again, that the numbness somehow be transformed. The day had turned crazy. It was overcast and drizzly and windy and chilly. Most of us had papers due. We were nearing our first tests of the semester. There was already a sense of being behind, needing to catch up, and around us, the city still felt strange but even more so on this day. Our pilgrimage was filled with a number of peculiar encounters with all sorts of people, mostly just usual stuff in the city. There were lots of folks out and about, despite the messy weather, and we were elbow to elbow, crammed together on the sidewalks, caught in a lock-step bustle. After schlepping our bags for seven or eight blocks, we walked another two underground. After a wait we caught a train, then transferred to another after a much longer wait, then another. And only then were we almost there. … When we finally saw the sky again, the journey had taken almost an hour and fifteen minutes, and we’d only traveled about a mile or so. … “Is this the right way?” someone asked. … “I think it’s over there,” another replied back less than wholeheartedly. And then, before we knew it, we were there. Entering the church, I was struck by the serenity of the place. The further we moved into the space, the quieter it got. The honking horns of the cabs became muffled. The click-clack of the people’s high-end soles on the slate sidewalk right outside faded away. We became more and more oblivious to the clamor of the city as the place absorbed us. We were in Trinity Church, Wall Street, and I’ll never forget that experience as long as I live. I’ll never forget the sheer number of people who made their way to that church in the heart of the financial district that day … that Ash Wednesday following September 11, 2001. … The clergy had enlisted the help of us seminarians the week before, planning ahead for the masses of people expected that day. Several had thought this would be a great learning experience, and others suspected the powerful transformation this experience might afford, still others didn’t know just why they had even signed up. We were all there for whatever the reason … on a day when we usually acknowledge that many of the things in our lives don’t make much sense. For most, if not all of the people gathered there, ashes had come to mean something much more than they had ever meant before. These folks knew about ashes and things returning to dust. They knew about dirt and grime and messiness. They knew about shattered pieces and sorrow and regret and what-could-have-beens … and longings. Most knew about things … things simple … things very complex … things that they wish they didn’t know … at least not in the ways that they had come to know them. … So do we who have gathered here … in our own ways … in our own lives. I’ll never forget the people who met there that day … corporate executives and folks who worked on the floor of the Stock Exchange, secretaries and runners, hotdog and pretzel vendors, souvenir sellers and homeless folk, firemen and police officers, EMTs and dump truck drivers, machinists and earth moving equipment operators, morgue workers and peer counselors … every color of person you could imagine … people at home … and people from all over the world … people’s whose worlds intersected, whether by trade or habitat, aspiration or rent control, hoping to strike it rich or just make ends meet, circumstance bringing our lives together. There were the most devout of Christians there and others who professed no faith, all seeking some semblance of hope and wholeness and direction, then others from other faith traditions, still needing some way to connect … themselves to one another … to the Other. On that overcast, dull, drizzly, windy and chilly Wednesday four years ago, I stood at the chancel steps of the church as a seminarian and heard the words of the day that something inside of me longed to hear, needed to hear. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” With those words I received the marking on my forehead, the touch of another on the journey, a sealing, a binding up, of everything that surely meant more at that moment than it ever had … not because I was in training to become a priest and I somehow “got it” more than ever, nor for whatever reasons had initially brought me to that place … but because of where I was in my own life at that very moment in time, because of where many of us met on that leg of the journey that day, and because things simply had to be different that day—they just had to be. After receiving the ashes, I took time to pray … to reflect … to re-member and re-gather. In the stillness, I recognized again a presence … that this wasn’t simply a process of me pulling myself back together, nor would it be for any of us seeking true reconciliation or wholeness or re-orientation for that matter. It was something else, something much larger, something much greater that was neither fully part of our being, nor completely separate from it. And I realized that this was just a beginning, a way forward with much more road to be traveled—that that day simply wouldn’t solve everything, but that it would certainly be a starting place. After praying and resting in silence in the pews for what seemed an eternity, when I found myself ready to move forward, I took my place again at the chancel steps, this time greeting others who had and would continue to flow through that space for several hours, as best they could, as they were so led, as they were so moved, simply as they were—most fragile, some shattered, all of us broken in one way or another, trying to fit the pieces back together. What I realized that day is that Ash Wednesday is not about going through the motions or simply marking things off a checklist. It’s not really about losing weight or giving up something that we’d be better off without—no caffeine, no chocolate, no cigarettes, no you-name-its. And it’s not simply about taking something on, just to take it on. … Now don’t get me wrong, those are great things if done for all the right reasons and to live a healthier life. … But Ash Wednesday and the Lent to which we are called is much more than that. They are about movement and stillness, about remembering and about being re-membered, turning towards wholeness … acknowledging that beyond every achievement or attainment, and beyond all that we may amass or cut out in this world for ourselves … we are nothing more than dust. We are dust and to dust we shall return. What I realized that day is that Ash Wednesday and Lent aren’t about getting caught up in just how weak or sinful or not-good-enough I am, or pointing fingers at others for their shortcomings. Hey, we’re human! … And that’s no excuse … it’s just fact, plain and simple. … What it’s really about is not being stuck, not getting trapped through our own inertia and depravity, not being weighted down by all the things that would, could and do otherwise hold us back in this life … from true relationship, from true life, from full humanity. Ash Wednesday is about sloughing off the unnecessary and finding somewhere in the midst of it all, that there is a restfulness in the surety that even amidst the cracks and imperfections of these mortal shells, that there’s something more, something that continues to move and live and breathe so that we have our being … that even when we become mud slingers, that even when we clutter our lives with dirt and grime, even when we shake the dust from our feet of one another and say I have no need of you, even when [and you fill in the circumstance] … even when … that beyond it, despite it, thank God for it, there’s the hand of a master potter still at work, still desiring to kiss the fullness of life into us, if we’ll just recognize it. … Today we start anew … in our own backyards … or out in the streets … earth under foot … only what’s on the horizon ahead of us … looking back only when necessary (and it may be necessary) … facing the new day … beyond the dark nights … seeking and sojourning … discerning just who and whose we are. … … May you be blessed richly on this journey. May you be blessed with a holy Lent. Amen