Ash Wednesday Message - Lent Begins
During my sabbatical, I spent a week in St. Andrews Scotland, meeting with my PhD advisor and just being a student. The school and my guesthouse were a little over a mile away from the sea. So one day I decided to walk there to hang out at the ocean. The route was not clear cut; it wove through neighborhood streets, warehouse areas with no sidewalks, beside a golf course, over a grassy knoll with a meandering trail. I was on a mission – get to the beach. It was hot and not very scenic, but I was content because I had a task before me and I was accomplishing it.
When I arrived at the beach, it was lovely. The ocean waves were crashing, the sun was beaming down, people were walking along in the sand with their dogs. I sat down on a bench in satisfaction. I had arrived.
But now what? I was almost immediately restless. What was I supposed to do now? I jumped up to walk back, and realized how silly it was – I had just arrived! What would I go back to? I had finished studying for the day, I knew almost no one in town—was I going to watch Netflix on my laptop in my bedroom? I was at the beach! We don’t have ocean in Minnesota! I walked all the way here to be here! “Be here, Kara!” (I actually said that part out loud).
I sat back down and tried to watch the waves and the people. But the restlessness continued. Finally, I told myself I would stay for 10 minutes, and then I would be allowed to leave. I set the alarm on my watch for ten minutes and then settled in, trying to just be present, to appreciate where I was. An eternity went by. I checked my watch. There were seven minutes remaining on the timer. I ended up checking it twice more before the ten minutes was up and I was allowed to stand up and move on.
Sociologist Byung-Chul Han says, “"Because we look at life exclusively through the perspective of work and performance, we view inactivity as a deficiency that must be overcome as quickly as possible….We are losing a sense for the kind of inactivity that is not an incapability, but a capacity in itself.”
Inactivity is a capacity in itself. A capacity I did not have in that moment. When we think only doing matters, we measure ourselves by our doing and can feel guilty, lost or even terrified, not-doing. We lose our human being in human doing; we are alienated from God, each other, and even our own lives.
A few weeks ago, session took a retreat that began with 24 hours alone in hermitages, for silence and solitude, before we met for another day together to pray and discern where God is leading our congregation. Before you go on the retreat in these hermitages, they invite you to watch some videos about it. The man on the video says you’re going to feel like you should be doing something, this is normal, but you’re here not to do, you’re here just to be. You will feel uncomfortable and restless and keep on trying to do things. When you finally realize you’re here to not do, just to be with God, you will inevitably turn that doing energy onto God. Now God should do something for you, give you some message, teach you something. After some time, you will finally relax into time and be here with God who is being here with you. You’re listening to God listening to you. That’s it.
Inactivity rests us where we are and when we are, it moves us from the idolatry of doing to the belonging of being. It also places us squarely in time and space.
There is one more element to this, and that has to do with time. Non-stop doing puts us in a sinful relationship with time. When we’re measuring ourselves by our doing we’re not only alienated from each other, God and the world, but from time itself.
St. Augustine explained that time isn’t something that has always existed—like Tupperware God poured creation into. Time is created by God. God created time when God created the world, “there was evening, and morning, another day.” God is outside time, but made time for the purpose of love. God said, in order for things to exist, to be, in relation to me and each other and everything else, it needs space and duration, a material to exist together within. And so time was made for human beings to love and be loved within, to be cared for and care for the rest of creation. The limits and constraints of time are what gives our limited and finite selves the room to be.
And time is not static. When we are living in love, we feel time expand, we are pulled into the timelessness of God, because love is eternal and not trapped inside time like we are. We are surrendering into time’s true purpose and finding ourselves held in a reality beyond ourselves.
But when we are living in fear, scarcity and competition, closed off from God or one another, we feel time contract, and we treat our relationship with time as an aggressive battle we are almost always losing. We view time as a commodity we can use up, stretch out, kill, or make up, manage, or waste. We abuse time, and feel guilty about time, and steal time, and try to fit more actions into time than our limited selves and limited time are made for. Augustine described this as time being a fallen creature too, corrupted as we are by sin, and also in need of redemption.
Time was made by God alongside our humanity--we are given time, placed within it, to love each other, the world and our Creator. That’s it. Time is for love.
If we do not stop and actually feel time, we will forget this. Not only does Sabbath rest return us to our belonging to God and each other, it regrounds us in time. This doesn’t only happen in full sabbath days of rest. It happens every time we feel love or love one another, when we’re stopped in our tracks by beauty, when we grieve someone’s death or welcome someone new into the world, when we look at the little ones in our lives and can’t believe how fast it’s all going, and when we feel the impact of years in our own bodies. When when we’re present to each other’s humanity time seems to stand still and spread out, and we're embraced us in a generous, wide, sense of wonder, or joy, or deeper connection that pulls us into love’s timelessness.
On Ash Wednesday we mark the cross of Christ on our foreheads in ashes made of the dust of the earth, the same stuff as we are made of. This mark says to us and all who see it on us, here stands a limited, timebound, mortal creature who will die.
Being limited, our self-preserving instinct is to claim and build our own lives, to try to escape our own death. In so doing, we deny our belonging to God and each other, and we miss the joy and gift of living free inside the love and care for which we and time were created. Left to our own devices, we will continually reject God’s rule, degrade our own humanity, exploit God’s good creation, deny our mutual belonging, and undermine the belovedness of other people made in God’s image. We will try to be more or other than we are, and in so doing, we lose ourselves.
The bad news (which is really good news) is, try as we might, we cannot transcend our mortality, or our own settled place within the dynamic whole that is held by God. From dust we came and to dust we shall return. That is what this smudged cross on our foreheads silently proclaims.
At the same time, this dusty cross on our foreheads also makes visible the mark anointed upon us at our baptisms, the “tattoo of the resurrection.” It recalls what was spoken over us, You to God. Your life is for love. You are redeemed into the life of Christ that death cannot stop or hinder.
Jesus brings love’s timelessness into time. By coming from life eternal into this timebound existence where everyone dies, Jesus inhabits all the darkest places of alienation, fear and loss, invading them with love. Jesus shares our time-limited human life, drawing into his life that outlasts time.
These last few months here in our communities and neighborhoods we have felt this juxtaposition profoundly. In the midst of the blatant evil and inhumanity, underneath the breathtaking violence that has inflicted untold suffering on our human siblings and exposed our collective brokenness, we've witnessed a relentless love that binds us together, holds us up, and points us forward.
We want to be available to that love.
Which means we need to be available to our humanity.
Which means we need to live inside of our limits.
Which means we need to be.
To be in time.
To be held in time for love.
Thank God for Lent.
For the rituals that hold us and a rhythm bigger than us that return us to our limits, places before us our sin, and helps us fall back into the love of God that holds all.
Thank God for the space Lent demands to let the waiting and the doubt, the hesitation and the wondering- all those tiny pauses of inactivity that keep us human - become the goal for a while, as we hold open our own and this world’s need for salvation, to the One who dies our death to bring new life to all creation.
May this designation in time we call Lent help us release our relentless doing, and linger with God as human beings—nothing more, nothing less, and nothing other than we actually are.
Amen.
When I arrived at the beach, it was lovely. The ocean waves were crashing, the sun was beaming down, people were walking along in the sand with their dogs. I sat down on a bench in satisfaction. I had arrived.
But now what? I was almost immediately restless. What was I supposed to do now? I jumped up to walk back, and realized how silly it was – I had just arrived! What would I go back to? I had finished studying for the day, I knew almost no one in town—was I going to watch Netflix on my laptop in my bedroom? I was at the beach! We don’t have ocean in Minnesota! I walked all the way here to be here! “Be here, Kara!” (I actually said that part out loud).
I sat back down and tried to watch the waves and the people. But the restlessness continued. Finally, I told myself I would stay for 10 minutes, and then I would be allowed to leave. I set the alarm on my watch for ten minutes and then settled in, trying to just be present, to appreciate where I was. An eternity went by. I checked my watch. There were seven minutes remaining on the timer. I ended up checking it twice more before the ten minutes was up and I was allowed to stand up and move on.
Sociologist Byung-Chul Han says, “"Because we look at life exclusively through the perspective of work and performance, we view inactivity as a deficiency that must be overcome as quickly as possible….We are losing a sense for the kind of inactivity that is not an incapability, but a capacity in itself.”
Inactivity is a capacity in itself. A capacity I did not have in that moment. When we think only doing matters, we measure ourselves by our doing and can feel guilty, lost or even terrified, not-doing. We lose our human being in human doing; we are alienated from God, each other, and even our own lives.
A few weeks ago, session took a retreat that began with 24 hours alone in hermitages, for silence and solitude, before we met for another day together to pray and discern where God is leading our congregation. Before you go on the retreat in these hermitages, they invite you to watch some videos about it. The man on the video says you’re going to feel like you should be doing something, this is normal, but you’re here not to do, you’re here just to be. You will feel uncomfortable and restless and keep on trying to do things. When you finally realize you’re here to not do, just to be with God, you will inevitably turn that doing energy onto God. Now God should do something for you, give you some message, teach you something. After some time, you will finally relax into time and be here with God who is being here with you. You’re listening to God listening to you. That’s it.
Inactivity rests us where we are and when we are, it moves us from the idolatry of doing to the belonging of being. It also places us squarely in time and space.
There is one more element to this, and that has to do with time. Non-stop doing puts us in a sinful relationship with time. When we’re measuring ourselves by our doing we’re not only alienated from each other, God and the world, but from time itself.
St. Augustine explained that time isn’t something that has always existed—like Tupperware God poured creation into. Time is created by God. God created time when God created the world, “there was evening, and morning, another day.” God is outside time, but made time for the purpose of love. God said, in order for things to exist, to be, in relation to me and each other and everything else, it needs space and duration, a material to exist together within. And so time was made for human beings to love and be loved within, to be cared for and care for the rest of creation. The limits and constraints of time are what gives our limited and finite selves the room to be.
And time is not static. When we are living in love, we feel time expand, we are pulled into the timelessness of God, because love is eternal and not trapped inside time like we are. We are surrendering into time’s true purpose and finding ourselves held in a reality beyond ourselves.
But when we are living in fear, scarcity and competition, closed off from God or one another, we feel time contract, and we treat our relationship with time as an aggressive battle we are almost always losing. We view time as a commodity we can use up, stretch out, kill, or make up, manage, or waste. We abuse time, and feel guilty about time, and steal time, and try to fit more actions into time than our limited selves and limited time are made for. Augustine described this as time being a fallen creature too, corrupted as we are by sin, and also in need of redemption.
Time was made by God alongside our humanity--we are given time, placed within it, to love each other, the world and our Creator. That’s it. Time is for love.
If we do not stop and actually feel time, we will forget this. Not only does Sabbath rest return us to our belonging to God and each other, it regrounds us in time. This doesn’t only happen in full sabbath days of rest. It happens every time we feel love or love one another, when we’re stopped in our tracks by beauty, when we grieve someone’s death or welcome someone new into the world, when we look at the little ones in our lives and can’t believe how fast it’s all going, and when we feel the impact of years in our own bodies. When when we’re present to each other’s humanity time seems to stand still and spread out, and we're embraced us in a generous, wide, sense of wonder, or joy, or deeper connection that pulls us into love’s timelessness.
On Ash Wednesday we mark the cross of Christ on our foreheads in ashes made of the dust of the earth, the same stuff as we are made of. This mark says to us and all who see it on us, here stands a limited, timebound, mortal creature who will die.
Being limited, our self-preserving instinct is to claim and build our own lives, to try to escape our own death. In so doing, we deny our belonging to God and each other, and we miss the joy and gift of living free inside the love and care for which we and time were created. Left to our own devices, we will continually reject God’s rule, degrade our own humanity, exploit God’s good creation, deny our mutual belonging, and undermine the belovedness of other people made in God’s image. We will try to be more or other than we are, and in so doing, we lose ourselves.
The bad news (which is really good news) is, try as we might, we cannot transcend our mortality, or our own settled place within the dynamic whole that is held by God. From dust we came and to dust we shall return. That is what this smudged cross on our foreheads silently proclaims.
At the same time, this dusty cross on our foreheads also makes visible the mark anointed upon us at our baptisms, the “tattoo of the resurrection.” It recalls what was spoken over us, You to God. Your life is for love. You are redeemed into the life of Christ that death cannot stop or hinder.
Jesus brings love’s timelessness into time. By coming from life eternal into this timebound existence where everyone dies, Jesus inhabits all the darkest places of alienation, fear and loss, invading them with love. Jesus shares our time-limited human life, drawing into his life that outlasts time.
These last few months here in our communities and neighborhoods we have felt this juxtaposition profoundly. In the midst of the blatant evil and inhumanity, underneath the breathtaking violence that has inflicted untold suffering on our human siblings and exposed our collective brokenness, we've witnessed a relentless love that binds us together, holds us up, and points us forward.
We want to be available to that love.
Which means we need to be available to our humanity.
Which means we need to live inside of our limits.
Which means we need to be.
To be in time.
To be held in time for love.
Thank God for Lent.
For the rituals that hold us and a rhythm bigger than us that return us to our limits, places before us our sin, and helps us fall back into the love of God that holds all.
Thank God for the space Lent demands to let the waiting and the doubt, the hesitation and the wondering- all those tiny pauses of inactivity that keep us human - become the goal for a while, as we hold open our own and this world’s need for salvation, to the One who dies our death to bring new life to all creation.
May this designation in time we call Lent help us release our relentless doing, and linger with God as human beings—nothing more, nothing less, and nothing other than we actually are.
Amen.
