"You hate nothing you have made": Sermon for Ash Wednesday 2019

Sermon for Ash Wednesday 2019

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger

Photo credit: Ben Gray/ELCJHL

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Almighty and ever-living God, you hate nothing you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent. Create in us new and honest hearts, so that, truly repenting of our sins, we may receive from you, the God of all mercy, full pardon and forgiveness through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Friends, I can confidently say I have never before preached a sermon on the collect, aka the prayer of the day. I can also confidently say that my preaching professors would not approve. But you know, here it is. It turns out the Good News of Jesus is not bound by liturgical rules or traditions, and the Holy Spirit is a notorious troublemaker. Amen!

This Ash Wednesday collect was penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the 1500s and has been included in the Lutheran prayerbook since 1888. It’s been described as “a prayer of rare beauty and balance…a prayer which is one of the gems of collect literature.” It is drawn in part from the antiphon of the Introit of the Mass for Ash Wednesday (Misereris omnium) and from the book of Wisdom 11:24, 23, 26:

“You love all things that exist, and detest none of the things you have made. You overlook people’s sins, so that they may repent, and spare all things, O Lord.”  (Pfatteicher p. 145)

But listen: These footnotes are only my attempt at justification for the fact that these words from Cranmer have simply latched on to me all week:

Almighty and ever-living God, you hate nothing you have made.

You hate nothing you have made.

You hate nothing you have made! 

This is an astounding proclamation in the world today, which seems to delight in dividing us between the loved and the unloved,

between the righteous and unrighteous,

between the acceptable and the unacceptable.

This is an astounding proclamation also in the church today, as we enter the Lenten season and its disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving,  which are intended to bring us closer to God, closer to the source of all love and mercy and forgiveness, 

but which we humans all too often receive and undertake with very different purposes.

Lenten disciplines like prayer and giving and changing habits can be excellent ways to clear our heads and our life routines, making space for listening to the voice of God calling us beloved.

But I wonder how often we undertake such disciplines (particularly those around food and drink) as a way of actually affirming our hatred of ourselves and our bodies, and reinforcing what we assume is God’s hatred of us and our bodies.

For example: How many of us have fasted from chocolate or alcohol or coffee, knowing that they truly have become problematic for us spiritually,

But underneath that choice of spiritual discipline is the thought that if I succeed in this for 40 days,

If I do not eat any sugar,

If I do not drink any coffee,

If I do not eat any meat,

If I lose a few kilos,

I might feel closer to God,

But more importantly, I will become more lovable to God.

If I fast, my body will be thinner,

If I fast, I will like my body more,

And God will like my body more, too.

If I fast,

If I give more,

If I smile more,

If I pray more,

If I win at Lent,

Then I will be more lovable.

When I was in Egypt a few weeks ago, I stayed at a retreat center called Anaphora, just about an hour from Cairo. It was a beautiful, holy, ecumenical place, with a very unusual worship space. The simple chapel was built in the round, out of the dust of the earth, and was filled with colorful rag carpets where worshipers could sit and pray on the floor. There were wooden stools, close to the ground, for those who chose to kneel.

Small round windows dotted the walls and let the morning light in.

At the front of the sanctuary were two large icons – one of Jesus and one of Mary—and an oddly-shaped tree stump which had been fashioned into the altar.

And just above the altar was a massive colorful skylight—in the shape of an eye.

I admit, this eye really freaked me out.

To me, it seemed like a reminder of the God I grew up knowing—the God who was always watching, “Sting-style”—every breath I take, every move I make.

Or maybe Santa-style: “He knows when you’ve been naughty, he knows when you’ve been nice." 

I even thought of the “Handmaid's Tale” and the imposed greeting in Gilead. “Under his eye” say the women in the red cloaks.

Ewww!

 I didn’t like it, at all. It was creepy to me. Whose idea was it to put Father God’s all-seeing patriarchal eye above us when we pray? Yuck.

But near the end of our time at Anaphora, one of the religious sisters took us to the chapel to explain the symbolism of the architecture. The eye window, she said, is not intended as a symbol of God spying on us. Rather, it serves as a reminder for us to see ourselves—and others—the way God the Loving Creator sees us.

And how does God see us?

God sees us as God’s children. As beloved. As worthy.

Worthy of rest.

Worthy of respect.

Worthy of dignity.

Worthy of forgiveness.

Worthy of love.

Sitting in the chapel that morning, with the Sister standing under that massive glass eye, I felt a wave of that love, flowing from the altar and from the cross. I remembered that the messages of unworthiness I’ve received haven’t ever come from God, or from Jesus, crucified and risen, but rather from society, and church culture, and all too often from the institutional church.

It’s easy to forget—perhaps especially during Lent—that while we often have to jump through hoops for the neighborhood and the culture and for the institution to love and accept us,

we don’t need to do anything for God to love us.

God loved dust.

God loved dust so much that God took that dust in God’s hands and formed it into you. 

God formed it into me.

For this reason, these 40 days are not about making ourselves better so we will become more lovable to God. That is a futile task, a pointless discipline. This work has already been done! We have already been fashioned and formed and made in God’s image from beloved, holy dust. We are already beautifully and wonderfully made.

Lenten disciplines, then, are instead about clearing away the crap in our lives so we can truly feel and live into God’s embrace of our whole selves—and others.

Lenten disciples are about clearing away the crap so we can truly love every body—even those bodies which seem to exist in opposition to ours.

A few years ago—I think it was during the 2015-2016 so-called “stabbing intifada” – I found myself having truly problematic thoughts towards Israeli soldiers. At one time I counted and estimated that I see 33 soldiers armed with automatic weapons on my daily commute.

33 – ironically the number of years Jesus is said to have lived on this earth.

I found myself each day walking past them and feeling my body tensing up, my breath seizing up, my mind going to negative spaces. I didn’t like the feelings. I didn’t like the soldiers! I certainly didn’t love them. I wanted them simply to disappear.

It was understandable, perhaps, based on what was happening to the Palestinian members of my community due to their skin color and ethnicity only—daily arrests and harassment, fear and persecution.

And yet…I knew it wasn’t right. I could feel that these feelings of distrust were leading me to feelings of hatred. Of prejudice. Of dehumanization.

And it was almost Lent.

And so, that year, instead of giving up coffee or sugar, I took on the discipline of praying for the soldiers each morning when I saw them.

I prayed for them as sons and daughters of women like me.

I prayed for them as 18-20 year old young people, still able to be formed in a different way, as my teenage sons were.

I prayed for them as fellow dust, beloved by God, shaped and formed and fashioned by the culture and society they grew up in, but still of the same dust of creation as I am.

I prayed (and LOOOO it was hard, my friends) until soon it became easier for me to remember that yes:

They are loved by God. And so am I.

The chapel at Anaphora, Egypt

I prayed until I could see them as if through that eye in the ceiling of the retreat center in Egypt: as beloved children, dust of the same dust, children of the same Father, broken as I am broken,

Redeemed as I am redeemed,

Loved as I am loved.

Listen, that was the hardest Lenten discipline I’ve ever undertaken.

It felt terrible. I hated it!

And it was one of the most transformative.

The truth is, the more I allowed dehumanizing, prejudicial thoughts to take root in my head and settle in my heart, the further away I traveled from knowing the love God has for me. The more I allowed myself to consider that these humans were unlovable, un-redeemable, and wrong somehow in their being, the more I could believe that I, too, might be unlovable, unedeemable, and wrong somehow in my own being.

Dear siblings in Christ, hear the Good News:

We are all made from the same dust of creation. And God does not hate dust.

God formed dust into you and me! God breathed life into dust.

God allowed God’s Son to become a creature of dust and breath, sweat and sorrow, so that we would know we are not alone.

Therefore, on this day when we gather to receive crosses of ash and dust on our foreheads, remember that this is not some morbid expression of death and its inevitability.

We are marked today not for death, but for life.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. From dust you have been made, and to dust you shall return.”

Yes, you will return to dust, as will every human on this earth—soldiers, settlers, neighbors, friends, pastors, children, lovers, politicians, celebrities, strangers.

But we are marked this day not to remember death. Rather we are marked to remember we are alive.

We are perishable, we have an expiration date,

But today, because Christ is crucified and risen: we are alive.

We are alive and well

We are alive and kicking

We are existing and resisting.

We are alive, and we are loved.

For the almighty and living God hates nothing God has made. 

The almighty and ever-living God creates in us new and honest hearts, that we may live fully, love fully, and serve our neighbor fully, thereby building up the kingdom of love, grace, justice, reconciliation, and mercy of whom Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.

I’ll end today with a favorite quote from Father Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013), priest and chef and food writer:

 “Trust him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting - no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and sadness your lapses, vices, indispositions, and bratty whining may cause you - you believe simply that Somebody Else, by his death and resurrection, has made it all right, and you just say thank you and shut up. The whole slop-closet full of mildewed performances (which is all you have to offer) is simply your death; it is Jesus who is your life. If he refused to condemn you because your works were rotten, he certainly isn't going to flunk you because your faith isn't so hot. You can fail utterly, therefore, and still live the life of grace. You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead - and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea.”

― Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace

May the peace of God which passes all understanding  keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.