Look
at the person nearest to you—at their brow in particular.
Nothing?
No smudge,
no black spot, no dust and ash cross on their forehead?
Well,
the wild thing is that it is already there
—that ash
—that ash is
already there on their forehead and upon your own as well.
You
are dust and to dust shall you return—that’s an obvious truth, we are mortal,
we’re confined to a particular time and place. Our bodies break down and things
fall apart,
to quote
both William Falkner and the Buddha,
“All things impermanent.”
That’s
already the case.
“All things
impermanent,” is a reality whether I put ash upon your brow or not…
but when I
do, this hidden truth is made plain,
it becomes
obvious,
it comes to
the forefront of our lives. What was hidden is revealed. The invisible is made
visible.
And,
very briefly, because the ritual actions we do this night speak more powerfully
than any words I can come up with,
I would
like to talk to you about the power of hidden, invisible, things.
Prayer
In
today’s Gospel we read of hidden things—Hidden Alms, Hidden Prayers, and Hidden
Fasting.
These
are of course things we, as people of faith, do.
Things we
as children of our Heavenly Father do, not to be seen, not to be honored,
but because of the wondrous grace we’ve received
and continue to receive from God.
These
hidden things—
-giving of
our possessions to those in need,
-praying to
God that the reality of Heaven might break into our lives and into the lives of
both friends and enemies,
-and
consuming less, so that others might have enough
are all
practices of the Christian Church
—I could, I
believe, name times when each one of you have done things that fit within these
broad categories,
Alms,
Prayer, and Fasting.
And
it is during the season of Lent—these 40 days leading up to Easter—when we make
obvious these actions, when we afford ourselves extra opportunities for these
practices.
These
things we as God’s people do in secret, are made more obvious in Lent.
Like that
hidden dust that is already on your brow, yet will be revealed shortly
—the hidden
piety of the people of God is revealed in Lent.
Jesus
speaks of hidden deeds, and Paul speaks of a hidden triumph, a hidden kingdom, and
a hidden citizenship.
Not
to get too deep into the geopolitical mud, but look at what the country of
Russia is claiming and doing. They’re claiming a right to defend Ethnic
Russians, no matter what country they live in, and they’re giving Russian
passports to Ethnic Russians who are citizens of Ukraine.
It
is as if these Ukrainians are secret Russians, they have a secondary, invisible,
citizenship.
And
that is what Paul is pointing to today, an invisible citizenship that motivates
the Christian life.
Through
Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection we can say:
-now is the acceptable time,
-now is the
day of salvation. We know his death, and our own, is ultimately a triumph,
taking the dark no of mortality/ and redeeming it with the overshadowing mercy
of God’s Yes for us.
We’ve
found a second citizenship—an invisible one, the Kingdom of Heaven.
And
we are ambassadors for that Kingdom, for that Good News.
We’re
freed to live out that calling, which may bring about hardships of all sorts…
yet we
struggle to respond with goodness in all things,
finding
ourselves held taut by that tension
“treated as imposters, yet in truth,
true/ dying, and yet see! we are alive.”
Yes,
look to your sister or your brother,
at their
forehead,
their brow,
their
mortality is there,
“All things
impermanent.”
--but so
too is Alms, Prayer, and Fasting
—so too is
Christ’s triumph and their citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Amen.
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