ashes to ashes ...

Ash Wednesday 2008
Feb. 6, 2008 St. Paul’s

Joel 2:1-12, 12-17 Psalm 103:8-14

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

It always seems so cold and raw at the beginning of Lent. Perhaps we are just longing for spring, for not feeling cold all the time, for seeing other than grey and white all around us. The feeling of rawness has to do, I think, with the lack of protection we feel from the elements. One week ago tonight, when it was just as cold and raw, there were 97 homeless people in Brockton: 29 on the streets, in tents, in the woods, under makeshift blankets; 68 spent the night at MainSpring, because they had no where else to go.

During the weeks of Lent, we see Jesus becoming more and more exposed and vulnerable to those who would do him in. Ultimately, of course, not even heaven can protect him -- no angels here, no trumpets, not even God comes in on a cloud.

What makes him vulnerable to these cold elements? He heals the sick, he clears the minds of the demon-possessed, he overturns the tables of money changers in the temple, he raises his friend Lazarus from the dead. He criticizes the old order, and proclaims the new one, the revealed order of the justice and mercy of God.

On this day we begin our own symbolic journey with Jesus to the cross. Lent is about turning around to face that cross, about being vulnerable as Jesus was vulnerable. This time of repentance, of turning around, means facing squarely the things that are wrong with our own lives, our own personal selves. It also means, as it did for Jesus, seeing and, if possible, confronting the things that are wrong in the world around us. Twenty-nine people on the street on a winter night, 68 people in a shelter because they have no where else to go – that is something that is wrong with the world around us.

Ash Wednesday is a good time to be reminded that that repentance, that turning around, on the macro, as well as the micro level, happens one person at a time. One heart at a time is turned toward God, and the way God would have us live.

We often have students who volunteer at St. Paul’s Table; listen to this story about how one heart was turned around:

The first question my mom asked me when I got home … was, “What is something you learned?” Without any hesitation I responded, “Even when your back is against the wall, know that God IS that wall supporting you and will always support you no matter what.” “Great advice,” my mom replied. “Who did you learn that from?” “Maxine, a woman who is homeless. I had the pleasure of eating lunch with her at St. Paul’s Table.

This student came to help here through My Brother’s Keeper, and in her letter she goes on to thank them for allowing her the opportunity to work with them, and with us, for a week. She goes on:

If you had asked me to describe the “poor” before …, I can guarantee I would have said something along the lines of individuals who are lazy and wasteful. I thank God I was able to see beyond my pre-existing stereotypes. Before, I was typecasting individuals such as Sam … as something he wasn’t. I realized he is a hard-working dad, grandfather, and husband trying to make ends meet after recently being laid off and sent to live in a shelter.

The experience brought to the student’s mind all those holiday canned food and toiletry drives she had been required to do. “Although I know these items make a huge difference in people’s lives,” she wrote, “I did it simply to go through the motions.” Now, she said, all those people have faces, lives, stories, realities.

… when I donate in the future I can say more than, “This soup can is for the poor.” Instead I can say, “This soup can is going to make sure little girls like Tracy are able to have something to eat so that they can perform well in school.

When problems are immense, we are often paralyzed, not knowing what to do next, not knowing how to take the first step. Those problems can be just our own, deeply personal ones, or they can be the ones on the large social scale that we face every day at St. Paul’s Table, the kind of problems that that student volunteer saw for the first time this winter. What are we to do next? Just keep handing out soup?

I have a friend who visited Africa as part of Episcopal Relief and Development. She learned this from an African woman she worked with there: When the mess around me is very big, very chaotic, I take my broom and start sweeping here, just around my feet. I can do no more than clean one small area at a time.

Ash Wednesday is the day we turn to face the cross, and take up our brooms and start sweeping, clearing out the dust from around our feet. It is winter. It is cold and wet. There are people sleeping out in the woods tonight. There are dark and cold spots in our hearts. Jesus calls us, to turn around.