Journey through Lent
- pastorparisw
- Mar 2, 2020
- 7 min read
This post is made up of a mash-up between Ash Wednesday worship (Feb. 26th) and Lent 1 worship (March 1st).
Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
On Ash Wed. God tells us to sound the trumpet, gather all people old and young, demand a fast and request a holy assembly! Gather around! Worship God tearing open your hearts for the One who is merciful and compassionate, patient, forgiving and full of faithful love. Gather ‘round and turn your hearts to God, be reconciled to your Maker. Who made you out of dirt! Adam, the first human, is taken from the Hebrew word “adamah” for “earth.” In Genesis 2, the second creation account, the Lord God formed ‘Adam’ from the dust of the ground, and breathed the breath of life into the ‘Adam’s’ nostrils and the ‘Adam,’ ‘the dirt creature,’ became a living being (Gen. 2:7).
We are dust/dirt/earth creatures! We are God’s dirt creatures, called to tend to the very dirt we are made out of. The earth, like us, belongs to God and through it we are fed and nourished. All that we are, all the we eat, all that sustains us is of the very earth created by God. We are humbled in the face of our Maker, whom we gather here to worship and praise. We are humbled to be reminded where we come from, what we’re made of.. but let me remind you, as C.S. Lewis so beautifully described, that to be humbled is ‘not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less.’ God does not call you here to remind you that you are dust as if to say you are nothing! God calls you here to remind you that God personally formed you, breathed the breath of life into your very lungs, and called you good.. and that, my friend, is everything.
On Sunday morning, we heard in Genesis that the Lord God put the dirt creature in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the dirt creature, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen. 2:15-17). This reminds me of some scripture passages we’ve heard in the last few weeks leading up to Lent about choosing life over death; ultimately choosing God - who IS life. God tells the dirt creatures they shall die if they eat fruit from the tree of knowledge.. but they didn’t die did they? They ate from that tree and yet they lived and went on to create all of humanity. In this we see God’s mercy and love. God chose to forgive and let God’s creatures live.. but death certainly did come from that choice, even if it wasn’t mortality (the moment their hearts stopped beating). Death still came.
In that moment, they chose death over life, they chose self over God. They were tempted by the idea of power and control, of being like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5). That choice did not only affect them either; that choice of death then had repercussions on the life around them. When that fruit was eaten, the dirt creatures’ eyes were indeed opened and they realized they were naked and death did come, to the animal which they killed in order to make themselves loincloths. From that day forward we have continued to exploit nature, think of ourselves as gods, and use and use and use until there is nothing left to use anymore. We have created a system where only we humans matter and everything else is here to serve us, forgetting we were made to serve it.
God created the dirt creature to till and keep the very earth it was made of.. and in this act of defiance the relationship between humans and the earth was forever altered. God tells us here that we are made to till and keep the earth, which we are so intimately related to. In Hebrew the word for till is ‘`abad,’ which is more often translated ‘to serve’ or ‘to be a slave of.’ The Hebrew word here for keep is ‘shamar,’ which is more often translated ‘to preserve’ or ‘to protect.’ Us dirt creatures were made with purpose, to serve and preserve the earth, the creation we share.
We, like the first dirt creatures and like Jesus in the wilderness, have been tempted.. Tempted to choose death over life. Whether it’s the serpent or the devil or whatever face you want to put onto temptation, temptation is a very real and prominent part of our lives, especially today. In today’s world we are constantly distracted, constantly tempted away from God and neighbor. We don’t have to trust in God; we are in control and we have it all figured out. This is the blessing and the curse of our freedom. God gave us freedom, but not without limit. “Dirt creature, all is yours to till and keep, just don’t eat from that ONE tree, okay?” Freedom.. with boundaries.
We violate these boundaries with a snare as if we are being caged in, unwilling to see how such boundaries are placed with love. As a child my parents would tell me that I was not allowed to eat a cookie, or cake, or dessert for breakfast, even though I reaaaally wanted it. As an adult I am free to cross that boundary, no one is there to tell me I can’t eat cake for breakfast! But still I live within that boundary realizing it was placed in love. If I ate an entire cake for breakfast I would be sick. And if I insisted on doing so daily, I would be extremely unhealthy and very likely to shorten my quality of life and possibly my lifespan. God gave us freedom. And in order for ALL to thrive – God also gave us boundaries.
Martin Luther famously said, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant, subject to all.” We are free, but we are not free to exploit or violate our neighbors or the very earth we were created from. When Jesus was out in the desert, he was tempted. Tempted by the fear of scarcity, wondering what he would eat. Tempted to choose earthly kingdoms, power, glory, and control. But Jesus used one tool to cast temptation away. Jesus stood on the solid foundation that trust, power, control, all of it.. all of it belongs to God alone.
Jesus’ temptation, his time in the wilderness, was a time to solidify for himself and for all people WHO he was and what he was on earth to do. And I love this quote from Pastor Patrick Willson, he says, “Jesus refuses to be who WE want him to be. He will NOT turn our stones to bread; he will NOT PROVE God to us; he will NOT turn from GOD to embrace the kinds of success WE would recognize and applaud. He remains maddeningly himself. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he remains steadfastly God’s.”
This lent, in the wilderness, you may wrestle with yourself, who you are and what your purpose is.. may you remember you never journey alone. God has been there. God has been to such vulnerable places - places of pain, fear, hunger, and death and transformed them into places life. Wilderness places or times in our lives often feel like death – like crumbling, falling apart, being scorched by the sun, left out to dry in the valley of the dry bones.. but wilderness places are also places in our lives we meet God face to face. Places we can find freedom and new life. When we crack and break under the weight of the world and it’s temptations, we are reminded we are not God.. and in this there is freedom. In this time in the desert, may you find yourself letting go of control, putting the power back into God’s hands, who had it all along. May you find yourself freeing yourself from fear, insecurities, greed, addiction… May you find the courage to uncover those unpleasant things, the things of death in your life, so that you can name it, claim it, and leave it there. Leave it all out in the wilderness and come into Easter morn free from death, born anew in resurrection life.
You may always be tempted away from your identity and purpose. You may always be tempted and lured by the false powers that be.. but you will also always be in God’s presence.
God, who meets our weakness with strength.
God who meets our distrust, disobedience, and estrangement with unlimited mercy, grace, forgiveness and love.
Do not fear the temptations. Look them dead in the eye and announce to them who you are.
You are God’s and you were created for life, not death.
Life, for you, for your neighbor, and for all of creation.
Amen.
An Ash Wednesday/Lenten Poem by the amazing Jan Richardson:
“All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial –
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.”
Jan Richardson
