WEBVTT 00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:03.839 At our first Ash Wednesday service. 00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:09.919 Before we move into the homily, there's a I always want to recommend resources. 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:14.800 I know for some of you, this is your first Ash Wednesday service, not just for our church. 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:17.600 For some of you, this is old school. 00:00:18.239 --> 00:00:22.960 But for whoever you are, I have two Lenten uh resources I want to recommend to you. 00:00:23.039 --> 00:00:28.800 The first is a daily devotional by Henry Nallon called Show Me the Way. 00:00:29.039 --> 00:00:30.000 It's excellent. 00:00:30.079 --> 00:00:34.079 I've I've probably gone through that four or five times over the years. 00:00:34.880 --> 00:00:38.159 The second one is new to me this year. 00:00:38.240 --> 00:00:41.359 It was published a year or two ago by Esau McCaulay. 00:00:41.439 --> 00:00:44.479 It's called Lent, the Season of Repentance and Renewal. 00:00:44.719 --> 00:00:46.240 Also a great resource. 00:00:46.399 --> 00:00:53.200 If you're curious, we want to know more about this season of the church calendar, or just be refreshed and renewed. 00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:56.640 All right, Ash Wednesday. 00:00:56.880 --> 00:00:58.000 What is it? 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:01.600 Why do we come to church on this Wednesday night? 00:01:01.679 --> 00:01:03.520 We're not Baptists, you know. 00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:13.200 Some of you guys are either twitching or your heart's kind of like strangely warmed that we're here on a Wednesday night. 00:01:14.879 --> 00:01:16.079 You know, good news. 00:01:16.319 --> 00:01:18.480 Ash Wednesday is about death. 00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:22.319 There's no two ways about it. 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:29.920 Um the service is is known for uh ashes and and getting ashes, the imposition of ashes on the forehead. 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:36.799 In fact, I had a lunch or a breakfast meeting this morning at 7:30, and you know, I knew it would happen. 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:43.439 Five minutes after I sat down, a guy walked in with his daughter and and he had ashes on his forehead. 00:01:43.680 --> 00:01:51.040 Uh we see it uh throughout um throughout this time of year, ashes on the forehead. 00:01:51.200 --> 00:01:52.879 And we'll do that at the end of the service. 00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:55.040 If you're not comfortable with that, it's fine. 00:01:55.200 --> 00:02:00.159 If you if you just want to stay in your seats, um, but you're invited to participate. 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:12.719 The the purpose of the ashes and the purpose of Ash Wednesday is to pause in our busy lives and to remember our mortality, to remember our death. 00:02:13.599 --> 00:02:21.039 When we receive the ashes later, I will say to you, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:27.439 And I'm asking you to think tonight uh about your death, whenever it may be. 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:46.560 I remember uh in our church in East Atlanta, um, this may have even been in Decatur before that, uh, but one of my first Ash Wednesday services uh as a pastor, and uh Stacy brought our kids, uh, whichever ones were born at that point, up with her, and they received the ashes. 00:02:46.639 --> 00:02:56.080 And I remember just kind of being jolted that I'm putting ashes on my own child's forehead, and I am saying to them, You are dust, and to dust you shall return. 00:02:56.159 --> 00:03:01.120 It rocked me in that moment, and I had to hold it together. 00:03:02.159 --> 00:03:10.560 Um again, Ash Wednesday and Lent invite us to pause and to part ponder our mortality. 00:03:10.639 --> 00:03:18.560 We we live in a culture and we probably actively participate in a culture that hides from death, that pushes it away. 00:03:18.879 --> 00:03:28.960 We color our hair, we get corrective eye surgery, perhaps plastic surgery, all trying to hide from the fact that we are aging. 00:03:29.840 --> 00:03:38.319 But Jesus tells us that if we are his disciples, then we are to take up our own crosses and to follow him into death. 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:54.560 Yes, it's a spiritual death, and yes, it will be a physical death one day, but the reason is because paradoxically, because of the gospel, it is through death and only through death that true life and eternal life comes. 00:03:55.680 --> 00:04:12.240 So for our meditation tonight, we're gonna look at and hopefully have a little image of this ashen cross that we'll receive on our foreheads, and we're gonna unpack briefly the story that this symbol tells. 00:04:13.919 --> 00:04:18.560 First, ashes are a sign of mourning and repentance. 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:20.720 This is true throughout the scriptures. 00:04:20.879 --> 00:04:31.120 When King Xerxes uh sends out a command that all the Jews are to be killed in his kingdom in the book of Esther, this is how the Jews respond. 00:04:32.319 --> 00:04:44.800 That in every province, wherever the king's command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes. 00:04:45.279 --> 00:04:52.240 Ashes have always been a symbol of repentance, of mourning, of crying out to the Lord. 00:04:52.399 --> 00:04:54.720 Jesus spoke about ashes in a similar way. 00:04:54.959 --> 00:05:02.800 When the Jews refused to heed his words, he said to them, Woe to you, Khorzin, woe to you, Beth Seda. 00:05:03.839 --> 00:05:12.560 For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 00:05:13.519 --> 00:05:24.480 When we receive this symbol of ashes on our foreheads, it's a symbol of us mourning over our own sin, our own need, our own loss. 00:05:25.519 --> 00:05:31.680 It brings us back to perhaps our own conversions, if you can remember that. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:37.439 The first time you repented of your sins and received Jesus as your Lord and Savior. 00:05:38.319 --> 00:05:45.199 It also brings us back to the many times, perhaps daily, the times we've had to come and repent again. 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:48.240 To mourn our loss, to hate our sin. 00:05:49.199 --> 00:05:54.720 How many times have you said, like I have, I can't believe I did that again? 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:57.360 Lord help. 00:05:59.279 --> 00:06:03.839 Second, ashes are a symbol of sin and death. 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:06.800 More than just our mourning and repentance. 00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:11.680 These ashes take us back to the origin of all of our pain. 00:06:12.800 --> 00:06:14.800 The fall of our first parents. 00:06:14.879 --> 00:06:20.000 When God said to Adam and Eve, You are dust, and to dust you shall return. 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:38.000 You see, Lent and Ash Wednesday, they're not about the general reality of our sadness and the fallness of the world, or even the inevitability of our own death, but they point us explicitly to the cause of death, which is sin. 00:06:39.439 --> 00:06:52.079 We sin and we die and we suffer because our first parents disobeyed God, rebelled against God, wanted to be their own gods, turned their own way. 00:06:52.399 --> 00:06:56.959 Sin and death were not a part of God's good creation. 00:06:57.199 --> 00:07:04.560 Death is a foreign invader, and the Bible tells us that death is an enemy to be defeated. 00:07:06.079 --> 00:07:17.519 On Ash Wednesday, we remember that we will die because of Adam and Eve's first sin and because of our own sin that we have participated in willfully. 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:28.959 But this is not a sense of grim acceptance, as if this is simply the way the story ends, but with we do it with a sense that death will not have the last word. 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:30.879 Amen. 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:33.120 All right, come on, Baptists. 00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:34.079 Let's go. 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:40.800 Scripture tells us that we sin and die because of Adam and Seed. 00:07:40.959 --> 00:07:43.600 Adam and Eve wanted to be their own God. 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:45.279 They wanted to go their own way. 00:07:45.439 --> 00:07:53.360 And this sin from that very moment in history rippled like a stone thrown into a calm pond. 00:07:53.439 --> 00:07:57.360 And it has rippled out throughout history to this very day. 00:07:57.439 --> 00:08:06.639 And it puts us at odds with one another, family members, people in our communities, people in other nations. 00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:13.279 It puts us at odd at odds with God and it puts us at odds with ourselves. 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:20.319 The imposition of ashes reminds us that sin and death can't be separated. 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:28.240 Because we participate in our parents' first parents' sin, we too seek to go our own way. 00:08:28.399 --> 00:08:32.240 We listen to our own lies and the lies of the evil one. 00:08:32.399 --> 00:08:34.399 We are part of this whole mess. 00:08:34.639 --> 00:08:39.600 And these ashes remind us that we cannot save ourselves. 00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:55.120 But that brings us to the third and most hopeful point of all: that these ashes are in the sign of the cross, and they tell a story of God's triumph over our sin and death, and all of sin and death. 00:08:55.919 --> 00:09:07.039 It is this symbol of the cross that we receive in ash tells an entire story of the foundation of all human hope. 00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:10.480 It's the story of loss and gain. 00:09:10.720 --> 00:09:20.480 It's the story of the incarnation of the Son of God and his glorious victory over sin and death through his life, death, and resurrection. 00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:31.279 In the garden, after the first great disobedience, God did not immediately carry out the sentence of death, did he? 00:09:49.519 --> 00:09:56.879 He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. 00:09:57.279 --> 00:10:02.000 He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel. 00:10:03.039 --> 00:10:10.399 We now read this and recognize it as the gospel told far in advance, in seed form. 00:10:10.639 --> 00:10:16.879 Christians have called this the proto-uangelium, the first proclamation of the gospel. 00:10:17.679 --> 00:10:29.440 Jesus is the one born of a woman who crushes the head of the serpent, even as his heel is bruised, and he brings salvation to all of humanity. 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:44.320 The cross on our foreheads reminds us that even as we continue this slow march toward death, we serve the one who has already defeated this enemy who continues to stalk us. 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:53.600 Truly, we can say with the generations of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, death is swallowed up in victory. 00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:57.519 O death, where is your victory? 00:10:57.759 --> 00:11:00.080 O death, where is your sting? 00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:05.039 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 00:11:05.279 --> 00:11:10.240 But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 00:11:11.759 --> 00:11:13.039 I love this image. 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:14.879 Perhaps you have seen it before. 00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:19.600 It's the picture of Mary and Eve. 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:24.960 It was done by Sister Grace Remington. 00:11:25.600 --> 00:11:31.919 She is a Cistercian nun who just did this in her meditation. 00:11:32.080 --> 00:11:35.919 I read an article, an interview with her today. 00:11:36.879 --> 00:11:40.159 It's actually Mary comforting Eve. 00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:46.000 She wrote it or drew it during the Advent season, and they sent it out on their Christmas cards. 00:11:46.399 --> 00:11:50.799 You can see Eve holding the fruit, the apple, the symbol of her sin. 00:11:50.960 --> 00:12:02.159 We see the serpent wrapped around her leg and Mary's foot crushing his head, symbolizing what her son would later do on the cross. 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:13.039 There's a note in that interview, she said that what she thought was so beautiful about this was that Jesus is there in the center of the picture. 00:12:22.559 --> 00:12:28.000 When the interviewer asked her what she hopes people will see in her drawing, she said this. 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:51.120 One of the things I was pondering as I drew this picture was the question of why Eve said no to God and Mary said yes. 00:12:51.519 --> 00:12:58.879 I started to think about how Eve had no idea what it would mean to live in a fallen world, to be separated from God. 00:12:59.519 --> 00:13:04.879 Whatever purity of soul Mary had, Eve had in her creation too. 00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:12.480 And yet, whatever innocence Mary had, she was not spared the experience of living in a fallen world. 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:16.240 First century Palestine was no Garden of Eden. 00:13:16.639 --> 00:13:23.519 I wondered whether Mary was able to give her yes precisely because she knew the pain of life. 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:26.960 She knew how desperately we needed God. 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:29.120 Her eyes were open. 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:33.919 This was the part of what I see in her compassion for Eve in this picture. 00:13:34.240 --> 00:13:38.240 She's not standing with folded arms on a pedestal above Eve. 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:44.480 She is standing with Eve, touching Eve, seeing her deeply. 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:49.120 She knows the gift she is carrying is for Eve as much it is for herself. 00:13:49.440 --> 00:13:57.840 She does not need Eve to get herself together or even to drop the apple before inviting her in. 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:02.879 This is the message of Ash Wednesday in Lent. 00:14:03.039 --> 00:14:09.759 If we take Eve out of the picture, we have a beautiful picture of pregnant Mary. 00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:13.360 It's a beautiful, tender, touching picture. 00:14:13.519 --> 00:14:15.440 A new baby is coming into the world. 00:14:15.679 --> 00:14:20.720 But with Mary and Eve together, we get the whole story. 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:23.919 Something much deeper is happening. 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:27.039 The stakes are far higher. 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:35.759 The sin and death and evil that has covered the world is being defeated, overcome, and redeemed. 00:14:36.159 --> 00:14:44.159 So too for us, Easter without Ash Wednesday and Lent can become a celebration without stakes. 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:48.000 We can think that God loves us because he should. 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:49.840 That's his job. 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:53.120 We're just good upstanding people, aren't we? 00:14:53.759 --> 00:15:10.159 But when we remember sin and our sin, when we remember death and our death, and then we remember Jesus' death and resurrection and promise of our resurrection. 00:15:11.279 --> 00:15:14.559 We remember all that he had to overcome. 00:15:15.440 --> 00:15:18.639 We have real reason to celebrate. 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:21.200 Beloved, let's pray. 00:15:23.120 --> 00:15:30.240 Our Father and our God, Lord, um it is not fun to think about death. 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:41.519 Some of us in this world, we are in this room, we have experienced death uh far, far very closely in our lives. 00:15:41.679 --> 00:15:49.200 Some of us, it's still a distant idea, but it's it's not something that we enjoy. 00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:53.200 And yet, Lord, you call us to this place because it is here. 00:15:53.279 --> 00:15:56.320 It is it was through your death that you brought life. 00:15:57.279 --> 00:16:05.919 You had to go to the cross in order to get to the resurrection, to defeat sin and death and to bring new life, eternal life. 00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:08.639 And so, Lord, walk with us, we pray. 00:16:08.799 --> 00:16:18.639 We invite you as you invite us, walk with us this Lenten season so that this Easter may be one of the most joyous in our lives. 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:21.440 We pray in Jesus' name. 00:16:21.759 --> 00:16:22.399 Amen. 00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:28.080 So now we move into the imposition of ashes. 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:31.919 What we're gonna do, this is a small room, a tight room, and lots of us in here. 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:35.440 So what we're gonna do is we're gonna come down this aisle. 00:16:35.679 --> 00:16:40.559 Um we're not gonna get come when you're led, prepared, and ready. 00:16:40.639 --> 00:16:41.679 We're gonna come. 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:45.919 You're free to stay in your seat, no problem at all. 00:16:46.159 --> 00:16:49.039 But let's uh let's start with the front row. 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:50.480 We'll come down to the center. 00:16:50.559 --> 00:16:55.039 I'll I'll put the ashes on you and um then return this way. 00:16:55.279 --> 00:16:56.000 Make sense? 00:16:56.240 --> 00:16:59.039 And if we uh if we have a traffic jam, no problem. 00:16:59.360 --> 00:16:59.679 Okay. 00:17:01.039 --> 00:17:04.799 We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes. 00:17:05.119 --> 00:17:14.640 This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life, calls us to heartfelt repentance, and urges us to place our hope in God alone. 00:17:15.279 --> 00:17:18.720 Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth. 00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:30.960 May these ashes remind us of our mortality and penitence, and teach us again that only by your gracious gift are we given everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord. 00:17:31.279 --> 00:17:31.920 Amen.