SPECIAL DAYS: Ash Wednesday Service
February 25, 2004 - Lessons: Psalm 51:1-17; Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
(Back
to Study Home Page) (Back
to Sermons for 2003-2004)
(Back to
Sermons Home Page) (Back
to Shultz Home Page)
INTRODUCTION:
Ring around the Rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down!
I thought of this old nursery rhyme as I thought of Ash Wednesday.
What does the rhyme mean?
Some believe that it relates to protecting or saving oneself from the plague.
Some believe that it was a way around the early Puritan prohibition against dancing.
It makes no difference.
The nursery rhyme reminds us of the brevity of life and its ashes.
(top)
(Back to Study Home Page) (Back
to Sermons for 2003-2004)
(Back to
Sermons Home Page) (Back
to Shultz Home Page)
MAIN BODY:
Ashes, just a little ashes that's all it is.
And what are ashes?
They are the product of burning something away.
They are what is left over after fire passes over or through something.
They are the waste after the heat and light are gone.
Richard J. Fairchild or Alex Stevenson, who wrote Just a little ashes, (1) remembers his child-hood.
"I remember when I was growing up and we had a fireplace. It was my job to take the ashes out. They were useless so we would dispose of them as just so much trash. Now that I am much older and live in a home with a wood stove I find myself doing the same thing I did as a child taking out the ashes and throwing them away."
So why, tonight, do some Christians have the sign of the cross marked with ashes on their foreheads?
Where did this strange tradition come from and what does it mean?
First of all, these ashes are a reminder of who we are.
The Bible tells us that we came from the dust and to the dust we shall return...
These ashes are also a sign of repentance.
Lent is a time of reflecting on our inadequacies and mis-perceptions.
It is a time when we are called to repent and change our ways...
Secondly, these ashes are a reminder of who Jesus wants us to be.
Jack London's Credo
It is not certain that he wrote this piece. He did write the first line. It all makes a lot of sense and is very appropriate for this evening.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out
in a brilliant blaze than that it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them,
I shall use my time.
To live one must be sensitive to the circumstances on which life is lived.
Jack London wrote a short story, To build a Fire about a man who did not heed the advice of an "old timer," and lost his life in the 75º below weather in which he was traveling.
His feet were wet from crossing Henderson creek where the ice was thin because of the sprigs that lay just beneath the surface.
He needed a fire but in his haste he built a fire beneath a large spruce. The fire blazed and he began to have hope that he would escape the danger. There was a loud crack, a high branch gave way and dumped its load of snow on those beneath and then with a loud plop snow fell and smothered his fire. He had the means to start another, but not the freedom nor the strength to do it.
It was not long before the cold did its work and he lay down in the warmth of hypothermia and slept out his last breath.
As London Wrote: and you can read the whole story at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/LostFace/fire.html
"He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head."
(top)
(Back to Study Home Page) (Back
to Sermons for 2003-2004)
(Back to
Sermons Home Page) (Back
to Shultz Home Page)
Jesus wants us to live.
To life intelligently.
To live a life that contributes.
To live a life that is powerful and productive.
One of the best short essays written in this century was one by Robert Test, written during his lunch break.
Test had only a high school education but felt so passionate about something that he penned this essay.
It is entitled To Remember Me. (2)
At a certain moment, a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped.
When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don't call this my deathbed. Call it my bed of life, and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.
Give my sight to someone who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of another.
Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.
Give my blood to the teenager who has been pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.
Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.
Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve so that someday a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her windows.
Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.
If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all my prejudice against my other humans.
Give my sins to the Devil. Give my soul to God. If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.
(top)
(Back to Study Home Page) (Back
to Sermons for 2003-2004)
(Back to
Sermons Home Page) (Back
to Shultz Home Page)
CONCLUSION
These ashes tonight are also meant to be for us symbols of our repentance and signs that we truly seek to follow in God's path.
We can let life turn into ashes.
We can utilize the instruction and power of Jesus to create beauty out of the ashes.
It is here that we wrote on slips of paper something for which we either wanted forgiveness or the strength to overcome. We took our slips of paper and put them in an old enameled pot filled with a few inches of sand. Once all the slips were in the pot they were lighted and the fire reduced them to ashes. The words were gone, turned to smoke, like the smoke of the sacrifice offered by the penitent on the alter of burnt offering before the tabernacle of God. We are free, if only temporally, we are free, and we will be, in Christ, always free.
1. Richard J. Fairchild and Alex Stevenson, Just a little ashes, rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/b-ashwed.html. Retrieved February 12, 1997.
2. For more copies, write the Robert Noel Test Memorial Donor Education Fund, To Remember Me, The Living Bank, P.O. Box 6725, Houston, Texas 77265.
(top)
(Back to Study Home Page) (Back
to Sermons for 2003-2004)
(Back to
Sermons Home Page) (Back
to Shultz Home Page)