A Fourth Church Sermon by Dana Ferguson

February 13, 2002 | Ash Wednesday

What It’s All About

Dana Ferguson
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 6: 1–6, 16–21

I have a big fold-out file folder that I bought in an effort to organize my greeting cards. I’ve labeled the sections according to occasion—sympathy, thank you, birthday—and then just a general category. When I bought it, the hope was that it would transform me into a truly thoughtful person. You know the kind. It’s what pastors should be. They never miss a birthday. Always send the “thinking of you” card at just the right time. I’m still waiting for the organizer to take effect, but I haven’t given up yet. It has only been a couple of years since I bought it! In the section titled “General” is my all-time favorite card. It’s one of those that’s blank inside. On the cover is a great picture of a dancing figure and it reads, “What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it’s all about?” I love it. It makes me laugh every time I read it. No fail. The humor seems to command a dismissal of those things that we can get really overworked about but at the end of the day aren’t really that important after all. And, yet the question does invoke some reflection. It couldn’t really all be about the Hokey Pokey. So if not, then what?

It’s about what’s laid out in front of us: Lent. The journey. Jerusalem. The betrayal. The cross. The resurrection. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about this season that is ahead of us.

It’s a long journey and a dark one, filled with ashes, pain, anguish, betrayal, death. And one that requires discipline and sacrifice: the discipline of giving things up so that we can recognize our need for God.

It’s the way it happens year after year, every year. But this year, I find myself wanting to jump to the end of the story. I want to leap right over Lent to Easter. After the darkness of recent months in this nation, the journey of Lent seems darker and longer than ever before. This past Advent seemed forever coming and more than ever longed for—for the season of expectancy and joy. After months of intense grief and pain and uncertainty, Advent seemed like a life raft ready to rescue us from drowning in the darkness around us.

And, now, we’re asked to leave it, to march on away from the glow of Christmastide and Epiphany and enter into the season of darkness. After such intense pain—the loss of life and security and assumptions—could we really be up to the task of Lent?

Here’s what it requires: Acceptance. Repentance. Reconciliation. First, the acceptance of the inevitability of human death. And therefore the need for repentance: the reflection on our sinfulness, our wrongdoings and shortcomings, and the sacrifices, to symbolize our regret, our sorrow for that which has gone awry. It’s a risky business fraught with temptations: the temptation to do it for the benefit of others. It’s what the Gospel writer warns of.

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.” And then, the next temptation: if not for others, maybe for ourselves. There’s the temptation to imagine that all the repentance and sorrow that’s expected of us might actually benefit us. If we give up enough, if we sacrifice enough, we could actually earn what’s ahead? If we do Lent right, we could be first in line when the resurrection happens. Those are big temptations. A long journey. A heavy burden.

Repentance and reconciliation. It all reminds us just how awful we can be. But that isn’t the whole story. It isn’t just about us. It’s also about how good God is. So good that no matter what we do God waits, waits to welcome us home again with open arms.

Tonight you will have the opportunity to participate in the imposition of ashes. You will hear these words, “From dust you have come. To dust you will return.” As morbid as it sounds, there is good news in it. It does remind us that, as has been quoted from this pulpit before and as author Anne Lamont puts it, “we are all terminal on this bus.” But that’s not the whole story. The rest of the story is about a loving God from whom we came and to whom we will return, no matter what. Nothing we do can change it. God’s love is a love that has birthed us, a love that stands with us through all days, even the darkest of them; a love that abides with us through all eternity. This is the love that journeys ahead with us and calls us in these 40 days to reconcile ourselves.

Not just to God, but to one another. This dreaded 40 days might not be so bad after all. There is no enemy to fight. Only our hearts to open—to open and recognize our sins and then to recognize that we can’t fix it; only God can do that. We can’t earn what’s ahead—only want it, only claim our need for it, and then go out to share it.

When I was rummaging through my card file for the Hokey Pokey card, I also found a Christmas card that I had only just recently put away. It’s another I haven’t been able to actually send to anyone else because I like it so much. Here’s what’s on the cover: “This Christmas why not mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Find the time. Forgive an enemy. Apologize if you were wrong. Think first of someone else. Speak love. Speak it again. Speak it still once more.”

That journey sounds like a good one to me. And now that I read it in Lent, it seems more like a Lent card than a Christmas card, for that is what this season is about: making it right, opening our hearts, seeking forgiveness, and giving it. Turning around. Turning away from our sins. Turning towards God. Turning towards reconciliation with God, with neighbor, with friend, with foe. Not just giving things up, but also taking in—drawing in and drawing close to the love of God, realizing that we can’t earn it or design it or command it. All we can do is simply accept it and share, turn towards it. And that’s a task that indeed we are up for this year.

It’s a task that is actually inviting after recent events have made us realize that the good around us is ever precious and that all around us is not good, that the moment of now matters and that old quarrels don’t matter so much, that faith and friends and family are our treasure. After recent events, I believe without a doubt that we are up to the task of Lent. And so it’s time to walk boldly into the journey ahead. It’s time to turn our selves around—to God, to hope, to one another, to love. And, as I say it, I wonder if you’re thinking what I’m thinking: The Hokey Pokey may just be what it’s all about after all. For you turn yourself around and that’s what it’s all about!

A year ago, right at this time, the mother of a college friend sent me an article that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Her daughter Jenny was the author. She wrote about a secret her great-grandmother, Gigi, shared with her. “She picked up my hand at dinner one night when I was seven years old.” she wrote. “We held hands for a moment and, squeezing mine three times, she turned to me and said: ‘Sometimes this is how Bapa and I show we love one another. One of us squeezes the other’s hand three short times.’ Squeeze-squeeze-squeeze, Gigi demonstrated, clasping my hands. She confided, ‘This means: “I Love You.” To secretly tell someone you love them, just pick up their hand wherever you are and squeeze it three times.

“‘They will squeeze back, and that means they love you too.’ At that young age, I didn’t understand the importance of what Gigi had taught me. Only later in life would I realize the significance it would have for me and the one who also knew its secret.”

Jenny continues, “The relationship between my sister Bitsy and me was often tumultuous. In our teens and early 20s, our sisterhood was damaged by competitiveness and criticism, jealousy and judgment. When I saw other sisters sharing secrets and hugs, I felt bitter that we traded jabs and silence instead. I wondered if someday we would break through the wall between us. Old habits die hard; it seemed doubtful. I even wondered at times if we loved one another.

“At age 31, Bitsy was diagnosed with brain cancer. Three hard years of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy followed.” As her disease progressed, “not only was the tumor limiting her lifetime, but stealing her ability to express her thoughts. It caused Bitsy’s words to appear in broken shapes when writing and in odd fragments when speaking. The words she wished to say to us were tortuously trapped inside her and caused all of us—mostly herself—utter frustration.”

Jenny then writes about one of her visits with Bitsy as she neared the end of her life. “She was piecing words together, but they came out jumbled, and I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She reached over and took my hand.

“Bitsy and I rarely offered each other more than a perfunctory hug or kiss. So I was surprised at the tenderness she showed as she wrapped her fingers around mine. I didn’t know what to do except let her hold them. To bridge the awkward silence, I tried to finish her sentences, but then it hit me that I should just keep quiet. She looked at me with sleepy eyes and murmured: ‘I . . . something . . . for you.’ Bewildered, I looked around her bedroom and thought, ‘There is nothing in here for Bitsy to give me.’ But she held my hand tight. A small smile crossed her lips as she pressed my hand three times. I paused, puzzled, in the stillness of the moment. She squeezed again—three squeezes. Three distinct squeezes!

“Like a thunderbolt it struck me: she was silently signaling her love for me. I squeezed her hand back three times to return the gift. Our encounter lasted less than a minute, yet in that whisper of grace, I understood that love transcends pain and hurt.”

And, that my friends is what this is all about: about a love that transcends all, a love that no matter how much pain and hurt, sin and wrongdoing, has been done stands ready to receive us, ready to redeem us. It stretches out ahead of us—the journey of accepting this love. Ours is not to earn it. Only to receive it and to live it.

So go out now to receive the love of God—to rend your hearts open, to look upon what you wish hadn’t been, that you wish you could take back, that you wish you had known some other way to do. Go out to claim it all and to claim the love of God. Rend your hearts open wide—open wide to be healed, to heal old wounds and have old wounds healed.

Up to the task of Lent we are, my friends. And so journey on to Jerusalem and Golgotha not only to repent but also to receive from a God with outstretched arms waiting to receive us, waiting to love us, waiting to redeem us. Go out now to turn yourselves around. For that is what it’s all about! All to God’s glory and honor and praise. Amen.