February 13, 2013 | 7:30 p.m. | Ash Wednesday

An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 51
Isaiah 58:1–11
Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21

I wonder if you remember the nursery rhyme “Ring around the rosie, a pocketful of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down”?

One explanation of the origin of this nursery rhyme connects it with the bubonic plague, a deadly plague during the Elizabethan era in England. People were succumbing to the plague by the thousands every day. Drawings and other art from that era include pictures of dead bodies being loaded up on carts or wagons. The art portrayed the reality during the plague. The rationale for connecting the nursery rhyme with the plague stems from the fact that one of the symptoms of the plague was a red rash, which was often found in circles on the body, ring around the rosie. There was widespread thought that the plague came from bad smell that existed everywhere, and so people, or maybe just children, would carry packets filled with posies to ward off the smell. “Ring around the rosie, a pocketful of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down” was simply a description of what was happening every day, all the time. People were dying. “Ring around the rosie, a pocketful of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

Most scholars think this explanation for the origin of this nursery rhyme is hogwash. I believe the scholars, but the story that has built up around this rhyme fascinates me. It’s intriguing. Tonight the ending of the rhyme conveys the sense of our observance of the beginning of the Lenten season. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Ashes, ashes, we all succumb to death at some point. We prefer to dance around the roses. Why wouldn’t that be our preference? To choose life. We do everything we can to avoid death. We have our own ways of carrying packets of posies to ward off the smell of death, but in the end, each one of us will succumb. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Tonight you’ll be invited to come forward to receive the sign of ashes on your forehead, a sign that will be made with ashes that were made from the burning of Palm Sunday palms. The words you’ll hear as you receive the ashes, if you choose to come forward—and that is your choice, your decision—the words those who come forward will hear, as the ashes are placed on their foreheads in the sign of the cross, are “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Some would say this is depressing. It can be. But the words are meant to remind us of the temporary nature of life. The words are meant to sound the trumpet for us—the loud alarm—the announcement that life, our lives, don’t last forever. We are formed from dust, and one day we will all return to dust. To remember that our lives are temporary is to remember to use them well. A prayer in our funeral liturgy asks God to help us live as those prepared to die, and when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying our life may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Powerful words: “Help us to live as those prepared to die and enable us to die as those who go forth to live.”

The words from Isaiah speak about fasting and instruct us about the kind of fast God desires from us. The people in Isaiah’s day are grumbling to God. Look, they say, we’re fasting; why aren’t you noticing? And God, through the mouth of Isaiah, replies to them that they might be fasting, but they are also still simultaneously oppressing their workers. The words from Isaiah are a call to line up our actions and ways of living with our religious practices—a pretty daunting task.

One phrase that has popped out to me from this piece of scripture, a directive within the long list of Isaiah’s definition of the fast God prefers, is the directive “not to hide yourself from your own kin.” Not to hide oneself from our kin is to let ourselves be known and available; what we do in our religious practices, prayer, worship, and making of offerings should have some impact on the people around us. Morton Kelsey, an Episcopal priest, once said that if our time in prayer doesn’t result in someone in our lives being loved more by us, then the time in prayer is wasted. Not to hide ourselves from our kin, from our human kin, is to be sure that we are used in the world and to hope that our religious practices have an impact on how we are available to our kin.

Matthew says the same thing in different ways. Get integrated. Bring the disparate parts of yourselves together. The words in Matthew’s Gospel call us out on our tendency toward hypocrisy. Jesus’ instruction about prayer, like so much of what Jesus says, is hyperbole—exaggerated to make the point. His point is not to put down the act of praying in public but to correct those who use prayer to pretend they are religious and to help themselves believe they are faithful. And so Jesus says, “You might be better off, giving up the showmanship and becoming humble and doing the very hard work of prayer, the hard work of daily prayer, in a closet.” He is speaking, like Isaiah was speaking, to the issue of hypocrisy and superficiality.

I suspect that each one of us has come to this Ash Wednesday service for different reasons, but all of us looking for something. Perhaps for a definite start to the Lenten Season, a way to set the season apart and to be aware. Others perhaps have come for inspiration and ideas. Some of you might be seeking a chance to think, to get centered, to decide —will you give something up or will you take something up? Others come to services like this to try to get closer to Jesus. To try to identify with what he experienced. My hope for all of us is that no matter what we do this Lenten season, we will try to get honest—honest with ourselves and honest with God and honest with one another. It’s honesty, shedding our pretenses and the ways in which we fool even ourselves, that will be an antidote to our individual and collective hypocrisy.

This morning John Boyle’s devotion spoke about David’s psalm, Psalm 51, which you will read later in the service. Dr. Boyle speaks about David’s remorse for the sin of intentionally sending Bathsheba’s husband off to battle so that he will be killed and so that Bathsheba can be his. John Boyle points out that David’s confession seems to imply that his offense is only against God and not against his fellow human being. Even so, to the best of David’s ability, his confession is honest. He admits his brokenness. He allows himself to be humbled. Dr. Boyle says, “Repentance, honesty, and transparency are hard to come by when the temptation is strong to be in denial and deceive oneself.”

Regardless of what you choose to do as you observe this Lenten season, I hope you and I will strive to be honest—with ourselves, with God, and with one another.

The ashes we will receive on our foreheads can be a reminder of our honesty. They can remind us that we are human and in the end our struggles and sins and accomplishments and skills will turn to dust. We are mortal and we easily sin. The shape of the cross that will be made from the ashes will also be imperfect. A pretty cross of ash is hard to make with our thumbs and forefingers on a variety of foreheads. And so the crosses will be imperfect too, because we are human, but the crosses will remind us that despite our sin, despite our humanness, we are sons and daughters of God, forgiven and freed from the weight of our failings. Forgiven and loved in our ordinariness. Loved and welcomed in our honesty.