Clinging Ashes
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
Last Wednesday we received the ashes to mark the beginning of our Lenten journey. Ashes are a very powerful symbol in ancient Israel and for us today. For the ancients ashes were a sign of mourning and repentance. They symbolized the finite quality of life and our utter dependence on grace for life.
For people today ashes often represent the residue of what has been lost – a home destroyed by fire, a relationship spoiled, a life of regret. We can sometimes feel as though the stain of our ashes will be permanent – marking us forever with the destruction of the past and unable to create something new.
Our text tonight encourages us to look at the things that “cling” to our lives and offers a way to free ourselves from those parts of life that weigh us down. Yes, the truth from the past that has stained our present can be real, difficult or painful. Still it is only part of the truth. Though we are still in process in learning what it means to be whole, healthy, free and fully authentic – part of that process is learning to see ourselves from a new vantage point. Listen again to how 2 Corinthians put it:
We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited.
Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
The faithful life is found in the “and yet” of our experience. “Genuine, yet regarded as imposters; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
This shift in perspective helps us see these clinging ashes for what they are and releases us from giving them power.
Lent calls us to see the world from a new perspective. We get an idea of how different things can look when we allow God’s grace to wash away the stain of the ashes that cling to us.
As we ponder these truths for our own lives, we have a video of Il Divo, an internationally-composed four-man group. As we prepare to come to the table for communion, let us open ourselves to God’s transforming grace in our hearts and lives that allows us to let go of the clinging ashes.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Bill Me Later, March 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtrnB4FZ-yc Il Divo “Amazing Grace”