Sermon for Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:12-19 + Matthew 6:16-21
There is little room for Ash Wednesday in our world. It presupposes the existence of God. And not just any God, but the God of the Bible who commands, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” It presupposes that God’s laws are still in effect, that He still expects His commandments to be fully and continually obeyed. It presumes that to disobey God’s commands is sinful, that there is shame and guilt in sinning, that God is righteous when He punishes sin. It presupposes that all people are sinners who need to repent, first by being converted to the Christian faith, and then by daily contrition and repentance in all those who profess the Christian faith as we journey through this life to our heavenly home, constantly wrestling with the sin that still clings to us and that so easily entangles.
There is little room for Ash Wednesday in the world, because the world rejects most or all of these things. And yet here we are, celebrating it again as Christians, because while we are in the world, we are not of the world. As those who are in the world, we still have a sinful flesh that produces sinful thoughts, words and deeds, and so we still celebrate Ash Wednesday with repentance and confession of sins. More importantly, we celebrate Ash Wednesday with Holy Absolution and with the Sacrament that gives us Christ’s very body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. We celebrate Ash Wednesday, but without ashes. We have something more meaningful than ashes.
A brief word about ashes is in order. Ashes on the head once served a very useful purpose. In the Old Testament, people would sometimes throw ashes on their heads or sit in a pile of ashes as a demonstration of their sadness, including the sadness that goes along with the recognition of sins and with repentance. They wore ashes on their heads in fear of the stern judgment of God they had earned with their sins.
It was never really about ashes, of course. Rend your hearts and not your garments, Joel declared. God wasn’t at all interested in outward displays of contrition or repentance. God was interested in repentance. God was looking for people to grieve over the sins they had committed against Him and against their neighbor and to turn from their sins—to turn to Him for healing, for forgiveness. Ashes were never the goal. The goal was for God to turn away from His fierce anger and to spare His people. The goal was the forgiveness of sins, the washing away of the ashes and the restoration of the sinner.
Meanwhile, there was yet another use of ashes in the OT that we do well to consider. A very special animal—a red heifer—was to be sought and killed and burned up, and then its ashes were to be mixed with water for all purification ceremonies God commanded throughout the year. As you heard this evening from Psalm 51, “Purge me with hyssop…” That’s referring to the hyssop—the brush that was dipped in that purifying mixture of water and ashes and then sprinkled on the sinner, a ceremony that pointed ahead to Christ crucified, whose death is mingled with the water in Holy Baptism to provide purification from sin.
Everything pointed to Christ. He changed everything. Listen to this prophecy from Isaiah, which Jesus once read aloud in a synagogue and declared that these words were fulfilled by Him.
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.” (Epiphany 1)
In the kingdom of heaven, in the Church of Christ, ashes are replaced with beauty, and mourning is replaced by joy. Here there is absolution for the penitent, the forgiveness of sins for the contrite in heart. Here there are baptismal waters that wash away the ashes and that purify the penitent and give entrance into the kingdom of God.
Here there is daily and ongoing repentance on the part of the faithful, because, if you believe you are sinner and if you believe in Christ Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, then you must also believe that sin is a bad thing and you must want to get rid of it from your life, right? But what do you find? Don’t you find, with the Apostle Paul, that sin is always there, wanting to take over? Pride is always there, wanting to show itself. Self-concern is always there, raging against the Spirit. That’s why the Christian lives in daily repentance for such sins of weakness and of ignorance. You don’t fall away from faith and from God’s grace whenever you sin. If you did, you wouldn’t spend a moment being in God’s grace.
Now, in the early Christian Church, ashes again served a very useful purpose in that regard. Because sometimes, Christians do fall away. Sometimes, Christians commit mortal sin, that is sin that leads to death, sins of rebellion for which they don’t repent. They tragically turn away from God and commit sin intentionally and continue to live in it or continue to justify it or make excuses for it. They grieve the Holy Spirit with such mortal sin, and they do fall back under God’s righteous wrath.
What did the early Church do with such public sinners? They were called to repent, and if they wouldn’t, they were excommunicated. But some of them did finally repent and confessed their sins to the minister and received Holy Absolution. They were readmitted to the fellowship of the Church. But how were the rest of the members to know that the public sinner had repented and belonged back in the fellowship of the forgiven? In some cases, the Church imposed ashes on those public sinners as a sign to the rest of the members that this sinner was indeed sorry for his or her sins, and, even though they had left the kingdom of God for a time, through repentance, they were now welcomed back into the communion of saints.
That use of ashes as a public testimony to the repentance of a public sinner served several good purposes. (1) It warned Christians to take care not to fall into mortal sin. (2) It assured Christians that sins were being taken seriously by the Church, and that the Church wasn’t just ignoring those public sins or winking at them or sweeping them under the rug. They had been dealt with, through confession and absolution. And finally (3) it offered comfort to everyone, because they could see that the grace of God and the forgiveness of sins were freely handed out to all who repent and turn to Christ for forgiveness, even the worst of sinners. That’s how the Christian Church originally used ashes, not at God’s command, but in their Christian freedom.
Unfortunately, not too long before the days of Luther, that use of ashes was replaced with an imposition of ashes on all Christians. It became symbolic of…what exactly? It depends on whom you ask. In any case, the Lutheran Reformers saw it as a public spectacle that wasn’t worth preserving in their churches. Some have tried to bring it back into Lutheran use over the past 20 or 30 years, making it a voluntary thing, of course, and explaining it in a more evangelical way. But we won’t do that here.
Even if you asked me, I wouldn’t paint ashes on your forehead. I have no call or command from God to do that, and no word from God promising any sort of benefit for it. Instead, I have something more meaningful than ashes to give you. Instead of reminding you of your sins with an ashen cross, I’ll simply preach God’s Law to you and teach you His commandments. Instead of symbolizing the death of Christ on your forehead, I’ll simply preach Christ crucified to you, whose mark has truly been placed on you already in Holy Baptism. Instead of reminding you of your mortality with this symbol of death, well, do you really need to be reminded that you are mortal and that death is all around us? Instead of symbolizing the death you died to sin when you were baptized and the new life you were raised to live, I’ll simply remind you often of your Baptism, and I’ll give you the true treasure, the body and blood of your Savior, by which you proclaim His death until He comes, and by which you are actually strengthened and made victorious in your daily struggle against sin, death, and the devil. And instead of marking you with a smudge on the forehead that is supposed to advertise something or other to the world about your faith (depending on how those who seek you interpret it), I’ll urge you to let your light shine in the world with your good deeds of love and service to your neighbor, so that men may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven.
There is little room for Ash Wednesday in our world. But for Christians, it’s yet another opportunity to receive something more meaningful than ashes: to hear the word of Christ, to hear God’s call to repent and believe the good news, to come before God in confession, in humility and sincerity of heart, and to receive the benefits of Christ in Word and Sacrament, even the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Amen.
