Category: Uncategorized

A sermon for Ash Wednesday
March 2, 2022

Hello. My name is Mark. And I am a sinner. (It is at this point you all say, “hi, Mark.”)

You no doubt recognized that opening. Hello. My name is ___. And I am a ___. This phrase, first made popular by Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, has now spread to various other support groups using the same twelve steps. There are support groups for all kinds of folks, struggling, like all of us, with some sort of demon, a vice that has them in its hold. And the first thing those groups do is confess. I am a ____. Then they tell their story. The story that they all share. The story of how they started spinning out of control. We know about this format from our popular culture–TV, movies. Perhaps we also know from participating in one such group, working out those twelve steps ourselves. 

Oftentimes, these stories, testimonies really, will end something like this: “I knew I was out of control, and I needed help. So I came here.” We all know the saying, the first step toward solving a problem is recognizing you have one. Joining a support group like AA is not a failure; the exact opposite actually. It is a victory. It is a shout of defiance against our spinning out of control. It’s grabbing a lifeline when we find ourselves in the depths.

That is, in a sense, what we’re doing here today. We are coming together to start a holy Lent with confession and penitence. Together we confess that we are sinners. That our sin spins out of control. That we can’t do it on our own. That we need help, a lifeline. And that’s not a failure–by no means. It is a victory. For it is a shout of defiance against our sin spinning out of control, if we take it seriously. 

In our reading from Second Corinthians, St. Paul is entreating us to be reconciled to God. Reconciled: it means to be reconnected, to remove the barriers that divide. We are separated from God because of our sin. God never lets go of us, but we let go of God. We turn away from God and look to ourselves, to our own way, to our own desires and wills. And we begin to spin out of control. Our sin gets the best of us. We harm others. We harm ourselves. We lift ourselves up as gods and forget the One who made us. We become addicted to greed, to pride, to sloth, to lust, to envy, to gluttony, to wrath. We put up a front so no one sees what’s really under the surface, but we know the chaos within. And we spin, deeper and deeper, into the depths. 

Through it all, God has not let go of us. We feel like we’ve gone so far, like who we are and what we’ve done cannot be reconciled to God. Like God has given up on us. Perhaps we have given up on ourselves. But if we look, there’s a lifeline. There is the very hand of God, in the middle of the depths of our despair, and that hand is reaching out for you, waiting for you to grasp it. A lifeline. 

“Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.” So says St. Paul. Your lifeline is right there. What are you waiting for? 

That lifeline looks like Christ showing up in our world, to live among us, to die for us, and to rise again so that we might rise to newness of life in him. Christ shows up in the middle of our chaos of our sin, in the middle of our spinning out of control, and he says the our storm within, “Peace! Be still.” 

What does grabbing that lifeline look like? It looks like confession. “Hello. My name is Mark. God knows that I am a sinner.” It looks like acknowledging we have fallen short. It looks like asking God for help. It looks like turning to God–that’s what “repentance” literally means, turning–to look at the loving gaze of Christ, full of love and mercy and grace and forgiveness. For you. 

In a few moments we will put ashes on our foreheads. Ashes are the traditional sign of repentance and grief. They are a reminder that we are mortals and we will die: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” More than that, they are a reminder that though we are mortals, sinners; and though we are spinning out of control, we are holding on to the One who is immortal, who calms our storm and pulls us up, who loves us and forgives us, our Lifeline. 

We learn what all of those folks in support groups know; we can’t do this on our own. We need Christ, who has given us himself for our sin, that we might become the righteousness of God, clothed in Christ’s own righteousness given for us. We need that Lifeline. We need him. And we need his Church, this Body of Christ. So we turn. We confess. We remember that we are mortals and we need God. We remember we cannot do this on our own. 

And we remember that we don’t have to do this on our own. We don’t have to pretend we have it all together. We don’t have to pretend we’re perfect. We don’t have to pretend that we aren’t spinning out of control and that we are not beset by the weightiness of our sin. We don’t have to pretend. For Christ knows. And Christ has done all that needs to be done, for us. And he is reaching out to us today: sinners, whom he loves more than anything else.  

It hit me all of a sudden, like when you wake up one ordinary day and realize it’s already Spring. I realized that my relationship with Molly had transformed my prayer life.

Molly and I have always lived at some distance from one another. As our relationship moved from friendship to romantic love, I was aware that we were in for a challenge. Because I’m a nerd, I had read some research literature on the topic. There’s a summary of this research on fivethirtyeight.com. Briefly, long-distance relationships, while not doomed to fail, tend to be shorter and more prone to idealization–or making the partner into some idealized version of herself, which, as you might guess, is not good if you’re going for a healthy relationship.

But here we are, getting married this week! I’ve chalked this up generally to our communication habits. To get more specific, there are several things that have not only kept us together, but have also strengthened my relationship with God.

Number 1: Take time to let your relationship grow.  

A seminary dean once told a group of fresh seminarians that the best relationships are Crockpot relationships. Ditch the microwave approach and take the time to grow into stable and strong relationships together.

Molly and I met several years ago and eventually became best friends. Only then did we become romantically involved. Obviously that does not happen with everyone, but it worked for us. We grew with each other through undergrad, then grad school, and during my first year of seminary, along the way unfolding ourselves bit by bit. It has been such a gift to grow in that way.

Our relationships with God take time, too. Of course, we are known completely to God; God knows us better than we know ourselves. But like any relationship, we grow into the mystery of who God is. We learn to trust God over time as we face the joys and struggles of life. And with each day, each month, each year, we are building our house on the Rock.

Number 2: Be jealous of your talking time. 

On weekdays, Molly and I talked briefly in the morning before class, in the afternoon, and every night at 10:15 or 10:30. Sometimes we talked more than that, but we tried to keep that structure.

It was hard sometimes. Because the seminary does not get good cell reception, I would typically go outside to call. Sometimes it was cold or hot. Other times I was facing a deadline and needed to do work. And at night, engagements would have to end at 10:00 or so. That meant leaving parties early, or planning study time with that deadline in mind. The same was true on Molly’s end.

I’ve learned that carving out time to talk to God throughout the day is important. In the Anglican tradition, we have morning prayer, noonday prayer, evening prayer, and compline. Our day is structured around prayer, which has the effect of sanctifying time. It centers our days around God.

But sometimes it is not convenient to pray at those times–just as it was not always convenient to talk to Molly at our appointed times. One has to be intentional about preserving that block of time, or it will begin to erode away to make room for lesser things.

Number 3: Share the big things and the little things.

What a thing! Molly wants to know all about my life, and I want to know all about hers. Both the big things and the little things. That’s what relationships are all about–sharing all of life.

But I’m sometimes tempted to withhold things from God. Even so, God invites us into complete relationship–which means sharing all of ourselves, the good, the bad, and the ugly. God wants the real us, not our fake news. And the world needs genuine, real, honest, vulnerable Christians, not the holier-than-thou variety we too often project because of our fear of being who we really are.

Number 4: Remember love is not all about the emotions. 

Of course, emotions are very important. All emotions should be recognized as important, not just the more pleasant ones. And a great gift of our especially close relationships is that we can share all of those emotions, even the ones we would rather not show others like anger or shame or sadness.

But emotions are not everything. Moreover, making love emotion-centric can lead to problems because we can reduce love to an emotion only. And if love is just an emotion, it can be manipulated and abandoned. No, love is more than that. It is devotion and faithfulness despite our feelings or circumstances or whatever.

Likewise, our prayers are not always laden with strong emotions. Sometimes we may not “feel” anything, but we pray on because it is time to be with God. We pray out of devotion and duty and love. We pray because we are Christians.

Number 5: Say the words that need to be said, especially on your worst days. 

Don’t forget to say “I love you,” and “thank you,” and “please,” and “I couldn’t do this without you,” and all the other small-big things that are too easily forgotten. I’m especially bound to forget these things when I’m upset or frustrated. But our words matter, and we need to tell our loved one certain things–even if, and especially if, we just aren’t feeling it that day. (This goes back to point 4: sometimes you have to put your emotions aside.)

There are days I don’t feel like praying. Or if I do pray, I am tempted to rush through the Lord’s Prayer or the collect for the day–I know these prayers so well that it’s easy to rush through without thinking. But it’s important to say those prayers daily.

Why? Because our words matter. Our words, repeated day after day, form us at a deep level. The more we say, give us this day our daily bread, the more we remember that we really do depend on God for our daily strength. The more we say, I love you, the more we recall how much we love God or that special someone in our lives.

I’m so thankful to Molly for these lessons. Our relationship has indeed drawn us closer to God. And that’s what marriage is supposed to be about. Marriage is a reflection of the love of Christ for the Church and a foreshadowing of the Last Day when that union will be made complete. The love of marriage, then, should draw us into the depthless love of God. As we grow closer to our partner, we grow closer to our Maker.

Thanks be to God for Molly Hayden.