κήρυξον τὸν λόγον

The sound of ripping cloth is harsh. It often comes suddenly, sharply. It is a sound of destruction. It can create feelings of stress and nervousness, anger and annoyance. And ... sometimes ... it’s oddly satisfying.  For centuries, the ripping of cloth was a sign of mourning ... grief ... loss. Whenever the people of Israel were in great emotional pain, they ripped their clothes and mourned. Joshua tore his clothes when he realized the Israelites had been faithless while attacking the city of Ai. Jacob tore his clothes as he mourned the loss of his son Joseph, who had been cast aside by the sin of his brothers. The people of Nineveh tore their clothes when they heard their great city would be overthrown for worshiping a god other than YHWH. Even King Ahab tore his clothes when he realized how evil he had become.  Tonight marks the start of our 40-day season of repentance, fasting, and prayer. The ashes you wear are a simple mark of mourning and mortality ... a simple expressi...

Today is Ash Wednesday. For years, I have been hearing the same question leading up to tonight’s service: Pastor, are we going to have ashes ? Granted, I’ve been your pastor for only four years now, but even when we lived in Peoria, which has a huge Roman Catholic and Lutheran population, you’d see people everywhere bearing the sign of repentance: an ashen cross on their forehead. They too asked the same question: Pastor, are we going to have ashes ?  Have you ever wondered why we do this? I finally did during my fourth year of seminary.  Pastor , I asked that year, are we going to have ashes?   To my surprise, he said, no.  Really? Why? I inquired.  Read the Gospel for today , he said. So I did. ... [Jesus said:] And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces in order that their fasting may be seen by others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, in...

1. God made you out of dust and dirt. It’s easy to say something like that on Ash Wednesday. It’s easier still to see and know it after a body, like one of ours, dies and decays ... though you can get the general idea when you see roadkill decaying along our roadways. But the fact remains that all of your complex DNA, cell structure, and brain activity is a miraculous transformation of dirt. God made you out of dust and dirt. He altered the properties of dust and dirt to become soft tissue and hard bones. You are, in a most literal way, a clay figure that moves and thinks and feels. 2. This clay structure ... all of us who have descended from The Adam who was made from a pile of Eden dust and dirt ... remains human flesh as long as God preserves it.  Without blood, without the life in the blood sustaining each cell, the body quickly returns to dust and dirt. That’s why a dead body, left to itself ... left to what nature does on its own ... deteriorates even more quickly after it di...

  Joel 2:12-19; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 What the Lord God said to Adam in Genesis 3:19, he also said to all of us this evening at the imposition of ashes: You Are Dust . . . and to dust you shall return. We’ve entered the season of Lent. Lent is a holy season of prayerful and penitential reflection which begins with today’s solemn Ash Wednesday assembly. Ashes ... just like my crucifix ... visually confess that the wages of sin is death .  We die because we are sinners, who are corrupt through and through, body and soul.  We die because we are sinners.  Sin sticks to us. Unlike these ashes, we are not able to wash them away. We are not able to make ourselves clean. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We are born that way. Sin is a total corruption that leads to all kinds of unfaithfulness, unrighteousness, deceit, immorality, ruin, and misery.  Our sin is blacker than these ashes. We are like the diseased tree...