Speaker 1: Good evening everybody.
Speaker 1: How are you tonight?
Speaker 1: Happy Valen, ash Day, huh, yeah, see how I did that.
Speaker 1: It's that traditional Valentine's Ash Wednesday day that we Lotharans love so much.
Speaker 1: It's the day that we love to die, right?
Speaker 1: Who else thinks it's a bit contradictory to have Valentine's Day, the day of love, on Ash Wednesday, the day of death, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well done, ben.
Speaker 1: I kind of think Jesus was probably supposed to be in that jar, not Mickey Mouse, but I mean, it tells us who you are, right.
Speaker 1: So, anyway, we are going to love death today and, whether you like it or not that this is the day that we're sharing Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday, it's probably something that we could all argue that death of oneself is fitting to the love of Jesus.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: So, either way, today we celebrate love and death and, if you so desire, before you leave today, I've already smeared my ashes.
Speaker 1: So if you want, ryan and I could stand at the back of the door and we can move your crops into a heart.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, we're not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: I want you to all go to dinner tonight with the cross on your forehead, because it opens up these opportunities to have conversations about Jesus and about ashes and about death, amen.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to pour tonight or you're going to some other restaurant tonight, I expect you to take the crosses, wear them proudly.
Speaker 1: That's when I did when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, we would go to Ash Wednesday early morning.
Speaker 1: A we get to skip school and then B, I got to go to school and part my bangs so everybody could see my tattooed cross on my forehead.
Speaker 1: And I was one of those kids that was super proud of like yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus, that's right.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and ask me about my Ascuse.
Speaker 1: I was that kid kind of nerdy, but I love Jesus in the day, so good for me.
Speaker 1: Not only is it Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday, but how many of you noticed that our remodel project started?
Speaker 1: Did you get on the hallway?
Speaker 1: Super cool.
Speaker 1: There's a new false wall there that you can't walk through.
Speaker 1: And, by the way, right behind Ross Ross point to the door for me over there.
Speaker 1: That is a door that we shouldn't be using unless it's an exit emergency.
Speaker 1: So, like fire on a Sunday morning or today, go ahead and use that door, otherwise you're gonna be walking into the newly remodeled area.
Speaker 1: It's also the time, as Ryan mentioned, that we're starting the Lenten season.
Speaker 1: I think it's super appropriate that we're doing the remodel project during the Lenten season.
Speaker 1: After all, as he mentioned, it's this time of change in our lives.
Speaker 1: It's this time when we want to change who we are.
Speaker 1: We want to change and be the people that we want to be.
Speaker 1: We want to change and be the people that Jesus calls us to be.
Speaker 1: We want to change and be the people that our social status tells everybody else that we are right.
Speaker 1: So the remodel project is very fitting for this time.
Speaker 1: So, in other words, we have a lot going on during this Lenten season.
Speaker 1: As Ryan mentioned, lent is a 40 day season design to correlate with the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and praying and being tempted.
Speaker 1: It's a season designed to turn our lives around and to fully live God's intent for us, and it all starts today with Ash Wednesday, with these ashes that remind us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
Speaker 1: It encourages us to die to ourselves and our ways, and it suggests, often in the traditional churches, to give up something that we're holding on to to allow ourselves to feel the emotions and the sacrifices that Jesus gave up for us, which, by the way, the Lenten season's theme is called giving up.
Speaker 1: So please join us in the next six weeks and be a part of that.
Speaker 1: Now, in theory, this idea of giving up is great, but I'm not convinced that the 40 day challenge is what Jesus intended while he suffered in the desert or on the cross.
Speaker 1: For me, giving up caffeine or chocolate, to be honest with you, made me a little bit ornery in the past during those 40 days.
Speaker 1: I asked my husband at any time, and I tended to take my calendar out during the 40 days and I would mark it like oh, four more days, oh, you know, three more days left.
Speaker 1: And by day 40, who's looking for the chocolate?
Speaker 1: So I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot about sacrificing.
Speaker 1: So in theory, this is great, but it didn't work for me and it kind of makes me feel like we tend to water down the deeper meaning so we can manage and can control the things that we are willing to give up and sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Now don't get me wrong again.
Speaker 1: I think the theory is great, but when I Googled the most common things to sacrifice for Lent this year, the things that are supposed to turn our lives back to Jesus.
Speaker 1: Right, this is what I found Social media, coffee or caffeine, heat styling your hair, skipping appointments think about that clutter, video games and online shopping.
Speaker 1: Really, you're going to give up skipping appointments?
Speaker 1: Isn't that kind of a responsibility?
Speaker 1: You're going to give up heat styling your hair?
Speaker 1: Does anyone else look at that list and think, wow, these are things that probably mask other things, other issues, and yet I would bet that we probably all of us could check something off on that list.
Speaker 1: Those are easy things to go to that can say I can give that up for 40 days.
Speaker 1: But there's gotta be a deeper meaning for all of us to truly turn our lives around towards Jesus.
Speaker 1: What if we truly, in this season, sacrificed with the intent to change our way of life and we gave up things that actually grew us deeper and taught us to lean on Jesus more, such as expectations or control, such as unhealthy relationships or holding grudges, such as power or insecurities?
Speaker 1: Uftah, those are kind of big things, right.
Speaker 1: And what if the sacrifice, the fasting, lasted more than 40 days?
Speaker 1: What would our lives look like?
Speaker 1: What would this world look like?
Speaker 1: Well, let's explore that a little bit together, but first let's pray Father, we thank you for this Lenten season, for these ashes that remind us that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.
Speaker 1: And this evening I asked that you would use my words and my thoughts to change how we look at this Lenten season and the sacrifices that you've made for us.
Speaker 1: Father, I ask you that you challenge our minds.
Speaker 1: You would challenge our hearts to give up the things that truly will change our hearts and our lives and your kingdom, into the plan that you've laid out for all of us.
Speaker 1: We love you, jesus.
Speaker 1: In your name, we pray amen.
Speaker 1: So a few weeks ago my husband and I returned from a hiking trip that we had been planning with our kids to Utah, and we've been planning it for several, several months Now.
Speaker 1: If you know me, you know that I love hiking, I love the outdoors, I love my children, I love my granddaughter I talk about her a lot.
Speaker 1: So we were over the top excited to go on this trip.
Speaker 1: But the week before we were ready to leave, just shy of that, my son called us and said mom, we're not gonna be able to go, for many understandable reasons.
Speaker 1: So in our attempt to not do the trip alone which I don't have a problem going with my husband alone, but I'm like, let's invite some friends Now, keep in mind, we only had a week left to go.
Speaker 1: So I called up two friends of ours who are fairly new, in a deep relationship with us, and I said you know, I know you're probably gonna say no, but I'm just gonna throw this out to you and I'm gonna be super transparent.
Speaker 1: We're inviting you to go with us for nine days.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go hiking.
Speaker 1: I know you don't really hike, I know you have to change your schedule and I was expecting a big no from him.
Speaker 1: But they said we'll talk about it and then we'll let you know the very next day.
Speaker 1: So Friday morning came along and guess what?
Speaker 1: They said yes, we were so excited.
Speaker 1: They said yes to all of the crazy ideas that we had and before you knew it, we were on the road and we're traveling to Utah together.
Speaker 1: In this road trip.
Speaker 1: They had very little time to plan, very little time to pack or shop, because they weren't hikers, but my friend's a good shopper and they said yes and we went anyway.
Speaker 1: They said yes to all of our crazy hikes and they're not hikers.
Speaker 1: They said yes to all of the crazy challenges and come to find out.
Speaker 1: They have some fears.
Speaker 1: They don't like heights, but we're climbing mountains.
Speaker 1: They said yes to living in the moment of the unexpected change.
Speaker 1: In fact, they said yes with very little hesitation and before they knew it, we had them hiking in frigid water in the Narrows of Zion.
Speaker 1: We had them hiking up a mountainside to Angels Landing and they were hiking switchbacks in the snow in Bryce Canyon.
Speaker 1: It was an amazing trip, filled with joy, yes, in the hikes, but truly I found joy for me, in seeing nature and God's beauties.
Speaker 1: Through their eyes and through their words, I can't tell you how many times my friend said, oh my gosh, every time she turned the corner and saw a mountain.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, look at that cliff.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: It was like time and time again.
Speaker 1: I found joy in every twist and turn that we made with them, and all because they were willing to live in the feast, a feast that I hope we can all live in this Lenten season, when we challenge ourselves to reflect and change the ways of our lives.
Speaker 1: That will give us life beyond our expectations.
Speaker 1: Verona read about this festival, the feast in First Corinthians, when she shared with us earlier Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened For Christ.
Speaker 1: Our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
Speaker 1: Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Speaker 1: This reading comes to us as Paul is using bread metaphors to help us understand why we must remove our old ways to live in the ways Jesus intended and sacrificed for us.
Speaker 1: He says we must clean out all of our old yeast and make new unleavened dough.
Speaker 1: He then continues to say something surprising.
Speaker 1: He says we are already the unleavened dough, and this is true because Christ was sacrificed on the cross to pay for our sins and our ways of life.
Speaker 1: The leaven has already been removed from us.
Speaker 1: So Paul is urging us to live up to what we already are the forgiven and set apart people of Christ.
Speaker 1: So why would we not live in the feast that was already offered for us?
Speaker 1: Or, to put it in another way, why do we allow the sins of the world to deliberately be practiced in our lives when a feast, something better, is waiting for us?
Speaker 1: Our friends that we vacationed with found a feast when they stepped away from their plans, their schedules and their lives, and they stepped into the unexpected with trust and deliberation to try something new.
Speaker 1: So many times on our trip I found myself looking back and smiling at them and wondering if this was how Jesus feels when we step away from our sins, our ways in this world, and finally turn our eyes on Him and the feasts that he is waiting for us, a feast that starts with death, the end of ourselves, and leads to new life.
Speaker 1: Ryan Sermon last week spoke to me and to this subject, and I found myself after Sunday asking what changes are needed in my life that will direct me to the feast.
Speaker 1: What things do I need to give up?
Speaker 1: What things need to die so I can have the new life that God planned for me through His sacrifices?
Speaker 1: What might be in the box that is needed to be worked on that blocks me from the plans?
Speaker 1: Who was here Sunday and remembers the box?
Speaker 1: And in the box is what it is our wounds, it is our trauma, it is our stuff.
Speaker 1: I would go so far to say it is the old yeast that makes us up, that tends to keep us from a better life, or the festival, when I think of my wounds and the box that I carry.
Speaker 1: I think of ruins.
Speaker 1: I took this picture in Israel last year.
Speaker 1: About a year ago, there was a group of us from central that went to Israel and this is one of the sites that we saw.
Speaker 1: That is called Bet-Chan.
Speaker 1: It is one of the most historical sites with the most ruins around that area.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating.
Speaker 1: All the ruins that we saw were fascinating, but what kind of resonated with me with these ruins is that they are just built on top of or over or mounding one another.
Speaker 1: In fact, most of Jerusalem is just one mound.
Speaker 1: So when they are building new construction sites there, they have to be very careful when they are unearthing the ruins, because they never know what they are going to find.
Speaker 1: My box is full of ruins that have been covered up from my past that I have rarely unearthed or picked through.
Speaker 1: When I think of the feast that I am missing out on, the feast that God has planned for me, I need to open that box and unearth the ruins that are camouflaged or covered up by such things as control or expectations or unnecessary affirmation.
Speaker 1: Now I know that God wants me to come to the feast, but to do that I need to get rid of the old yeast and I need to recognize that Jesus has already died and sacrificed himself for me.
Speaker 1: So I am the unleavened dough just waiting to rise, but because of my ruins, I have held back from the festival.
Speaker 1: I have allowed my ruins to define me, to disguise me and to lead my life which is unhealthy and is not of God.
Speaker 1: It is unhealthy for all of us.
Speaker 1: We all have old yeast that needs to go so we can make changes for his kingdom that we live in together, which means, then, that we need to unlearn what we think, we know about ourselves, about our past and our response to the world.
Speaker 1: We need to give up those areas of our life that draw us away from Jesus and his plans for us.
Speaker 1: Terry Walling, an author and spiritual coach, shared in his book Unlikely Nomads unlearning is the call to rethink all of what we do in light of the disciples we are called to become, and he continues with the posture of unlearning is the call to untangle some of the thinking, the beliefs, the methods and preferences from our past, as well as some of the most treasured traditions that have become enmeshed with the truth of Christ's kingdom.
Speaker 1: Unlearning, friends, is hard work.
Speaker 1: It takes courage to leave behind what you've known most of your life and to adopt new beliefs.
Speaker 1: It takes courage to catch yourself every time your mind turns to the default.
Speaker 1: I've spent many times trying to unlearn things in my life, some things that are very hard, some things that are very easy.
Speaker 1: I grew up my whole life thinking my name was Sonia Lynn Hanover, lynn L-Y-N-N.
Speaker 1: In my mid-40s I was updating my passport and I had to bring my birth certificate in, and on my birth certificate it says L-Y-N.
Speaker 1: I'm like what?
Speaker 1: No, my name is Lynn L-Y-N-N.
Speaker 1: No, it's L-Y-N, but my license says L-Y-N-N and my old passport says L-Y-N-N.
Speaker 1: I called my mom and I'm like Mom, my middle name is L-Y-N-N.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, so it's mine.
Speaker 1: I said well, look at your passport.
Speaker 1: I was named after her.
Speaker 1: Hers was L-Y-N as well.
Speaker 1: She had been spelling her name incorrectly.
Speaker 1: I had been spelling my name correctly and to this day, I have a hard time reteaching myself how to spell my name.
Speaker 1: Unlearning is hard thing but it's an art and the way you grow into the better artist is to work on your art and the way you grow into a better person is for you to work on unlearning unhealthy beliefs of yourself and others.
Speaker 1: Jesus himself alluded to this very pastor of unlearning in the teaching he delivered on the Sermon and the Mount.
Speaker 1: He began with the phrase you have heard what was said, referring to the popular interpretation of the law, and then he declared but I will tell you, as he offered a new paradigm and a better way, and that better way starts with the ashes of death and finding new life.
Speaker 1: New life that springs from hard places and in our boxes filled with ruins.
Speaker 1: And often in those hard places it feels lonely and it feels isolated.
Speaker 1: But the good news and all of that for us is we are not alone.
Speaker 1: Look around, look at the person sitting next to you and look at their forehead.
Speaker 1: They have ruins, just like you and just like me, and they, just like you and just like me, need new life.
Speaker 1: When we were in Utah with our friends, we saw new life sprouting.
Speaker 1: In the oddest places Most of the mountains there are rock formations, but look on top of the rock there's a tree and there's a tree and there's a tree.
Speaker 1: And my friends Chris, nikki and myself would be like how does that tree grow up there?
Speaker 1: It's a rock and my husband would say a bird flew by and pooped out a seed, I'm like, oh wow, isn't that symbolic of our life?
Speaker 1: Sometimes our life feels like bird poop, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: And yet new life can come out of the waste, even when our lives feel like it.
Speaker 1: New life can sprout in the darkest and in the hardest places, where rebirth and repentance begins an outward journey of transformation and takes us outside of ourselves and into a world around us that is filled with boxes of ruins, like suffering and hungry, boxes of division and devastation, boxes of hurt and sorrow and abuse and addiction, boxes that push back on God in his ways, boxes that often tell us that you need to do life alone, we don't need other people, and you surely don't need Jesus, until the tidal wave comes crashing down around us and we all know that what we have been taught and what we have been doing in our lives is no longer working and we're drowning.
Speaker 1: And so we seek a better way through new life in Jesus and through our faith.
Speaker 1: Mark four shares a story of a better way when Jesus was in the stern of a boat and a big storm was coming around and he was sleeping on a cushion and the disciples woke him and they said to him teacher, don't you care if we drown?
Speaker 1: And he got up and he rebuked the wind and he said to the waves quiet, be still.
Speaker 1: And then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
Speaker 1: And he said to his disciples why are you so afraid?
Speaker 1: Do you still have no faith?
Speaker 1: And they were terrified and they asked each other who is this?
Speaker 1: Even the wind and the waves obey him and that, my friends, is the power of him over our ruins, in our lives.
Speaker 1: He waves his hands and he demands quietness and he demands stillness.
Speaker 1: The disciples unlearned their ways and they leaned into Jesus for their salvation.
Speaker 1: They gave up all they knew, their control and their knowledge, and they trusted their father as only they could do.
Speaker 1: And isn't that the kingdom and its best at its work, giving up on the things that block us from him, the hard things that matter, so we can depend on his ways, central.
Speaker 1: It's time to start giving up.
Speaker 1: We are in a place in our lives, in this world and in the church that needs change.
Speaker 1: Let this Lenten season be a season of that change for all of us.
Speaker 1: Unlearn what, the things that have a hold on you, that are in your box and in your ruins, so we can be cleansed from the old yeast and enjoy together the feasts that he plans for us.
Speaker 1: And then, and only then, can we die to ourselves.
Speaker 1: Come to the feast.
Speaker 1: All are welcome, amen.