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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Today reportedly is the second of three times this century that Ash Wednesday falls on February 14th, which we otherwise might think of primarily as St. Valentine’s Day. According to tradition, Valentine was a Christian clergyman who defied the emperor’s ban on marriage (the ban was for the sake of conscription into the pagan army), and so Valentine was martyred on February 14, 270. What are said to be parts of Valentine’s body are claimed by cathedrals in five different countries; for example, Valentine’s heart is supposedly displayed in Dublin, Ireland. Valentine may have cut out heart shapes from parchment in order to remind the men he married of both God’s love and their marriage vows, and he may have written a final note to his jailer’s daughter, whose eyesight he supposedly had restored, signing it “from your Valentine”. For all of the St. Valentine’s Day emphasis on love, our tonight considering a Biblical text from Job that speaks of hate may be surprising. Job chapter 42 verse 6 records Job’s saying, “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (ESV). Considering that verse in the context of the other Readings and such for Ash Wednesday, tonight we direct our thoughts to the theme, “Do not let the ashes go to your head”. (Of course, if taken literally that theme would be too late, as we have already had the Imposition of Ashes, but the theme is meant to be taken figuratively, with the sense of not letting the use of the ashes damage or weaken your judgment.)
In the beginning, Genesis says, “the Lord God formed the [first] man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7 ESV), and the Lord God later took one of the man’s ribs and made it into a woman (Genesis 2:21-22). When the woman and the man sinned, the Lord God spoke to the man of the man’s returning to the ground, saying, as we heard when the ashes were imposed tonight, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19 ESV). Generations later, standing before God, Abraham remembered that Abraham was, Genesis says, “dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27 ESV), as the maybe roughly-contemporaneous Job repented in “dust and ashes”. The addition of the similarly-sounding Hebrew word that is usually translated “ashes” perhaps is a poetic parallel for “dust”, further stressing the speakers’ humility and rightly criticizing themselves. To be sure, the first man was not made of “ashes”—that is, of the result of burning—much less was Abraham or are we made of “ashes”, nor did they “return” to “ashes”, nor do we “return” to “ashes”, despite whatever false ideas the saying “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” wrongly might suggest (LSB:Agenda, 130). In the Bible, God’s people did not willingly cremate believers’ bodies; instead, they lovingly and respectfully buried them intact (though one or two bodies might have been embalmed first, due to unusual circumstances). “Do not let the ashes go to your head”!
For such reasons, I commented in Adult Bible Class two Sundays ago that we might do better to call today “Dust Wednesday”. As we think of them, not “ash” but “dust” is the reminder both of our dependence on God, who, through our biological parents, creates even us, and of our insignificance apart from the gift of God’s breath of life. Just before Job despised himself and repented in dust and ashes, God brought Job to realize that God acts wisely in contrast to Job’s thinking foolishly. At least by nature, you and I likewise think foolishly compared to God’s acting wisely. We may think of ourselves too highly, or, as I discussed briefly in my February newsletter article, we may think of ourselves too lowly. As Jesus condemns in tonight’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21), we may disfigure our faces hypocritically, for the purpose of other people’s seeing that we are fasting, not as an outward sign of an inward repentance over our sin. As my mother and I last week visited the cemetery where my father’s remains are, we considered the temporal death and the eternal torment that we all deserve because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin. Truly, we are dust, and to dust we shall return!
Yet, as the Lord through the prophet Joel in tonight’s Old Testament Reading called the people then, even nursing infants, to a fast and solemn assembly of repentance (Joel 2:12‑19), so the Lord calls us to a fast and solemn assembly of repentance. As we prayed in tonight’s opening Psalm (Psalm 51; antiphon: v.17), God creates in us clean hearts and renews within us right spirits. Genuinely sorry for our sins, we ask the Lord to spare us, His people, and He has pity on us, His people, forgiving us. Like Job’s repenting in dust and ashes, our repenting in dust and ashes includes both the sure and certain hope that God will forgive us and the comfort that such hope of forgiveness brings. Lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, as we prayed in the Collect of the Day, we receive from God full pardon and forgiveness—forgiveness for our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our sin might be.
We receive from God full pardon and forgiveness not because we repent, much less because we receive ashes as an outward sign of inward repentance, but we receive from God full pardon and forgiveness because Jesus died for us. Out of God’s great love and mercy, the Father gave His only Son that whoever by the power of the Holy Spirit believes in Him should not have eternal torment but have eternal life. The ashes that are a sign of our mortality and repentance in the shape of the holy cross are also a sign of our redemption in Christ. As we prayed in tonight’s “gradual” Psalm (Psalm 103:8-14), the Lord remembers that we are dust and shows compassion to us. God in human flesh, Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we deserve. In a sense, He returned to dust and was raised from it (Stuckwisch, LSB:CttS, 230; compare Psalm 16:10), as, if necessary, we will return to dust and be raised from it. The whole season of Lent is in part preparation to celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord on Easter Day and so also to celebrate our resurrections on the Last Day.
Ashes imposed on our foreheads in the shape the holy cross are an outward sign of inward repentance, but the ashes themselves do not effect anything, unlike certain other outward signs. For example, water with God’s Word in Holy Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God about Holy Baptism. Prior to being baptized, we may for the first time receive the sign of the holy cross both upon our foreheads and upon our hearts to mark us as those redeemed by Christ the crucified. Another effective sign is the pastor’s touch with God’s Word in Holy Absolution that forgives our sins even before God in heaven. And, bread and wine with God’s Word in the Holy Supper are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us and so give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. All of these are effective signs that God uses through His ministry of reconciliation, which we heard St. Paul describe in tonight’s Epistle Reading (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10).
Especially by the use of those effective signs, the season of Lent that begins tonight is the springtime of our souls. Midweek Lenten Vespers services are offered the next five Wednesdays to increase our devotion during this solemn season. As we heard in the Gospel Reading, our Lord in some sense expects us to practice disciplines such as giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting—all of which disciplines can turn us away from ourselves both toward God in faith and toward our neighbors in love. Rightly fearing and loving God, we do not think too highly or too lowly of ourselves, but we appropriately love and care for both ourselves and our neighbors. And, when we fail to do so, as we will fail, with daily contrition and repentance, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins. When God summons the souls of those we love from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven, we, as possible, lovingly and respectfully bury their bodies intact. For, those bodies have been created, redeemed, and sanctified by the Triune God, and He will raise those bodies on the Last Day and glorify them in His eternal presence.
St. Valentine, whose martyrdom preceded the observance of Ash Wednesday by hundreds of years, likely would agree that the imposition of “ashes” as “dust” has an appropriate place in our lives, as we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And, by that same grace of God, tonight and always, as we have considered, “Do not let the ashes go to your head”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +