In the late 80’s I went to one of the largest schools in the country. 7th - 12th graders in one ¼ mile long school in a rapidly developing part of Fairfax County. If every student, staff, and teacher was in the building it would have been nearly 10k people. That is bigger than most colleges. When I was in 7th grade the half of the 9th-grade biology students were given a 2-week long assignment. They had to carry around a 5lb sack of flour and attend to it as if it was a child. You had to have the sack of flour with you at all times. The sack had to make it through the two weeks mostly intact and holding most of its original contents.
Some of the students decorated their bags or drew faces on them, which you could do, but you couldn’t just put it in bubble wrap. The other half of the class were given an empty real eggshell. The rules were the same. An eggshell has slightly different challenges. Where the flour was heavy and bulky, the egg is small and forgettable. Both of which are intended to highlight the difficulties of parenting. 14-year-olds sometimes need a strong reminder that they are powerful and creative, but that they are not the center of the universe.
Self-centeredness is an important developmental stage - but it is intended to be a stage. We are not supposed to stay there. ON the last day Of the assignment In a moment of adolescent merriment and jubilance, Some of the 9th graders hurled their bags of flour or eggshells at the floor of the hallways. It was quite the mess of shell and flour and paper bag shreds. It became an utter unbelievable mess. Suffice to say we didn't get any version of this assignment two years later.
Sin is a rather misunderstood word. We are quite accomplished at it, yet we don’t quite understand what it really means. We tend to think of it as little slights and large cruelties, we may have heard that sin is about perfectionism or the letter of the law. Yet in the Old Testament sin isn’t as simple as a list of don’ts. Sin is an act or attitude that betrays God’s intentions for life together. Sin is a turning away from the covenant promises - the big ones - Love God, Love all neighbors as much as God loves you. There are a million acts and attitudes that betray God’s intentions, that rebel against God. Crookedness and abuse and gluttony and isolationism. When we say that Jesus did not sin we are not saying that he never did x y or z specifically. What we are saying is that he never turned his back on God and he never turned his back on being fully human - of practicing humanity as it was intended. It is Jesus’ life and death that exposes our unfaithfulness and sinfulness.
The sin of my older classmates wasn’t the jubilant silliness of smashing egg shells and bags of flour. It was forgetting that someone had to clean that mess up. That people put their whole lives into growing and harvesting that wheat - and it was wasted. Love all others as much as God loves you. The judgment of sin isn’t a lash It is a mirror that demands our humility That we are the creature, we are not the center, that God is God. And the well being of all is the intended center. To repent and return means we turn around from the worst of our self-centeredness And embrace the humility of putting our promises of fidelity to God and therefore neighbor at the center of our lives.
We mark our foreheads with ashes of mourning and death and destruction, But we mark them in a cross. Not the cross of cruel empire But the empty cross of Easter Because ash and sin and destruction is not the end of the story. The mess is overcome by the victory of God over death and selfishness at Easter. Our hallways are a mess of broken shells and tattered sacks and dust and dirt and muck of self-centered death and destruction.
If you feel like you are the smashed bag, the flour being walked over, or the shell that will never go back together again - your message today is that God loves you and the healing presence of the Spirit is with you, and Jesus is beside you in your grief. If you feel more like the people who made the mess The call of Ash Wednesday and Lent isn’t to wallow in the worst or shame and blame, But to see the whole picture of the goodness and to confess our personal role in the messes, pursue forgiveness and to grab a broom and a mop it up with Jesus - he is here with us, for us, in the middle of the mess.
The opposite of sin is loving God and loving all neighbors with heart and mind and soul and muscle and voices. Ashes to ashes. Flour to flour. Egg shells to egg shells. Dust and messes are not the end of the story. Eternal life turning toward the center, The love of God is the center and the start and the end of the story. God’s grace is more powerful than any mess we can make.
Ash Wednesday
2019
Grace Episcopal Church
Pemberton, New Jersey
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