This sermon was preached at Glenwood Lutheran Church, Decorah, Iowa on February 26, 2020, Ash Wednesday. It’s based on Isaiah 58:1-12 and 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson.
Isaiah 58:1-12
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
6 As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2 For he says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! 3 We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7 truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
When I unlocked the front doors this afternoon in preparation for tonight’s worship service, I was taken back to a Wednesday evening during last year’s season of Lent. I went to that same door at the end of a midweek worship service and I stood in awe of the sunset’s brilliant orange glow and a gentle breeze that carried the promise of spring. I remember it was March 13, the night before my brother’s birthday. Mike should have been turning 40. Instead, he was lying deep under the earth, returned to the dust from which he was created in the beginning—earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This week I asked a friend for her take on a recent conversation of which we had both been a part. She said it felt like Groundhog Day. She was referencing the Bill Murray movie where the same day—Groundhog Day—is repeated over and over and over again until finally Bill Murray’s character figures out what life is all about. The conversation felt to my friend like a conversation we’d had before—a conversation we keep having, over and over and over again, with little to nothing to show for our efforts. When will we figure out how to move the conversation forward? How to make real, substantive change?
Tonight I’m feeling like this Ash Wednesday might as well be Groundhog Day. We stand at the beginning of our Lenten journey again. Will anything change this time around? Will we be any different when we reach the journey’s end? Will we be any more peaceful? Any kinder? Any gentler with ourselves and with one another? Will our world be any safer? Any more welcoming to diversity of thought and experience, culture and religion? Will we live anything more like God intends for us to live?
Our reading from Isaiah does not hold back. God trumpets truth—harsh truth—through the prophet Isaiah. Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. As if they actually cared what I have to say. As if they actually wanted what I want.
The people think God will be pleased with bowed heads, sackcloth and ashes—outward signs of repentance easily put on for the sake of appearances, for the sake of trying but not really trying to change. And what God wants is none of that. What God wants is action that makes a difference in the lives of others: Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
How often have we read these words and let them bounce off of us without sticking? How often have our congregations and our communities and our nation deemed them too hard? Too expensive? Unreasonable? Unfair?
When will we live as God intends for us to live?
I can’t say that I always find hope in Paul’s words, but tonight there’s so much grace in them. On this Groundhog Day-ish Ash Wednesday, there is a word here in his second letter to the Corinthians that draws me out of this circle of despair and gives me a bird’s eye view of life in God. And that word is see. See, now is the acceptable time. See, now is the day of salvation.
As Paul goes on, I get the impression that there were days when even he felt like it was Groundhog Day over and over and over again. He talks about afflictions, hardships, sleepless nights. This servant of God business is hard. Even when we know the journey ultimately leads to abundant life, Easter morning, victory over sin and death in all its many forms…we toss and turn, we lose sleep, we lose hope.
So what does Paul say gets us through? Patience. Kindness. Genuine love. Truthful speech. And the power of God.
I honestly can’t remember how Bill Murray escapes Groundhog Day because I tend to fall asleep during that movie, but I’m pretty sure (though it’s not said in so many words) it’s the power of God at work in his life that makes the difference. And I know, without a doubt, that it’s the power of God that moves us, that changes us, that transforms us to see the world as God sees it and to live lives that embody that love that has saved us.
As Paul concludes this section that we read tonight, he contrasts how we are perceived and how things really are. We are perceived—and may even see ourselves—as dying. But see—we are alive.
We are alive. Our congregations are alive. Our communities are alive. Our nation is alive.
God is here.
See, we are not stuck in a holding pattern unable to break free. Jesus Christ has intervened on our behalf, broken into the world and done a new thing, died to conquer death, lived that we might live.
See. We are alive!
On Ash Wednesday, the cross that claimed us in baptism is visible and unmistakable. We don’t need a special day to see how broken we are—how mortal and fallible. But we do need a day—this day—to show us that in that brokenness we are still whole. We are healed. We are loved with a love that will never leave us, a love that journeys with us to the grave and beyond.
Out of the ashes of our lives—the times of suffering and doubt, the places of fear and deep hurt, the Groundhog Day moments that make us feel as though nothing will ever change, the moments that cause us to lift our hands in surrender, admitting our ultimate inability to make anything right on our own—out of these ashes springs forth life on this night.
See, we are alive.
Amen.