King Duncan
Dr. Gregory Knox Jones tells an inspiring story about writer Frederick Buechner that should help us as we celebrate this night. Buechner was riding a train into New York City one day several years ago. It was a grey, rainy fall day. The train windows were coated with dust, but there wasn’t much to see anyway, except for the industrial wasteland that spreads out in all directions as you approach Newark, New Jersey.
After gazing out the dirty window at the ugly scenery, Buechner let his eyes come to rest on a large color photograph at the front of the coach in which he was riding. It was a cigarette ad. It showed a beautiful young woman and a handsome young man sitting next to a crystal clear mountain stream with a gorgeous blue sky overhead and a backdrop of lush green trees. It was a scene full of beauty, youth and life. And then, down in the lower left hand corner were the words of the Surgeon General: Cigarette smoking can be hazardous to your health. Buechner had seen such ads before, but for some reason, this time, it stunned him. The ad seemed to scream at him: “Buy this, it will kill you.”
And he realized that the ad wasn’t just about smoking. It proclaimed something deadly about the human race--that we are our own worst enemies. We would buy a product that would destroy us. But that is just the beginning. We stockpile new weapons and old hostilities that may end up destroying us all. We stockpile angers and jealousies and lusts that threaten to do the same thing.
As he pondered the darkness within the human heart, his train pulled into New York City. His walk from the train station to the bus terminal took him down some of the seediest blocks of the city. Triple X-rated movie houses; adult bookstores, massage parlors. Young, runaway kids prostituting themselves and bloodshot, angry drunks.
Buechner lived for years in New York City. He had walked these blocks before. But this time, pondering that ad about humanity’s bent toward self-destruction, he saw it as if for the first time. Suddenly he became aware how vulnerable all of us are to the brutality and ugliness of life. And he thought about how lost we all can be.
That same day, he boarded a bus to his present home in Vermont. He arrived late at night, but the lights were still on. His wife and daughter had waited supper for him. The cat was asleep in front of a fire burning in the wood stove. The home was filled with warmth and light and peace and love. He began to feel guilty about having such a home when there were people in the city he had left earlier in the day who would never know a home filled with love. But he realized such joys should not be a cause of guilt. Instead, they should be treasured and nurtured, because the darkness of the world is always threatening them. (1)
The darkness of the world. That is what Ash Wednesday is about. The darkness of the world with its decay and degradation. The darkness of the world with its regrets and recriminations. The darkness of the world, and most especially, the darkness within our own hearts. The darkness that threatens to take from us all that we hold dear.
We symbolize that darkness in the ashes we place on our foreheads this night. Dr. Ellsworth Kalas once put it like this, “I suspect you can go anywhere in the world and you’ll find that ashes are a symbol of loss, of despair, of heartbreak, and of repentance... No wonder, then, that our spiritual ancestors in Christendom used ashes as a symbol for the beginning of the season of repentance, and that we’ve been doing so for over a thousand years. If you feel sorry for your sins, and if it seems to you that you have burned up some of the best of life so that now all you have to show for yourself are some ashes--ah, then, ashes belong on the forehead.” (2)
I don’t want you to raise your hand, but do you know what Frederick Buechner and Ellsworth Kalas are talking about? Do you have some of the darkness of the world within your own heart? Do you have something in your life--some secret pain, some silent regret, something that you can share with no one else--that is now like ashes?
The season of Lent is a time of repentance. It is a time of letting go of that which drags us down and makes us unholy. Somewhere I read about a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada named Wabush. This is a town that, at one time, was completely isolated. But at some point a road was cut through the wilderness to reach it. Wabush now had one road leading into it, and thus, only one road leading out. If someone would travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush, there was only one way he or she could leave---by turning around. (3) That is what repentance is all about. It is turning around. Lent is the season when we reflect on our lives to determine if there is any point in our lives where we need to turn around.
In a sermon titled, “Room for Repentance,” Marjory Zoet Bankson tells about an Ann Lamott novel titled Crooked Little Heart. It is a modern parable of repentance. In this novel, a 13-year-old rising tennis player named Rosie has been cheating on close line calls to win crucial matches. Rosie’s shame grows as she is unable to stop herself. She even hurts herself in an attempt to get her mother’s attention, but she is trapped by her compulsion to win.
There is an ominous man, an outcast named Luther who comes to every tournament, watching Rosie, but he does not report her to the tennis authorities.
One day Luther says to Rosie: “I did what you did.”
“What do you mean?” Rosie asks.
Luther replies, “I cheated.”
As her secret becomes visible to both of them, Rosie calls herself a cheater.
“No,” Luther says, “you cheated.”
Then he tells her that other people cheat, too. By doing that, he invites her into the company of flawed humans. He also gives her a way to claim her identity as one who can make different choices, who can tell the truth. He makes room for her repentance to begin.
Rosie begins to change. She is reprimanded by the sportsmanship committee, but they allow her to continue playing. In the final game, she overcompensates, not calling points out because she wants to avoid even the appearance of cheating. Then she finds the courage to call a long shot correctly and Luther stands up to leave.
“Aren’t you going to stay and watch Rosie win?” her mother asks.
“I already have,” he says and disappears from the rest of the story. (4)
Anytime a person recognizes a part of his or her own character that is not right, that is in need of change, they are winning the only truly important match in life. Lent is a time for doing that. Repent. Turn around.
“Even now,” declares the LORD in the little book of Joel, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love . . .” (12-13a)
The greatest need we have is to return to God. It’s doubtful that many of us are hardened sinners. We’ve made our mistakes. We have our regrets. But compared to many, our list of sins might be quite short. But who among us would claim to live as close to God as we ought to live? While we may not be rebels, neither are we saints, not in the purest sense of that word.
You may remember a George Harrison tune from the 1970s, “My sweet Lord, I really want to see you, I really want to be with you, I really want to see you, Lord, but it takes so long, my Lord . . .” (5) That may be why you are here this evening. It may be that you are looking forward to putting the ashes on your forehead as a symbol of an inner search to draw closer to Christ. Ash Wednesday and Lent are a time for doing that as well. We submit our hearts and minds these six weeks to reflecting on the meaning of the coming of Christ for our lives. We repent of any sins that might be an impediment to our quest. By the time Good Friday comes, we are ready to receive the impact of his saving death on Calvary’s tree. This is a necessary consequence of Ash Wednesday. We reflect on the events of Good Friday.
When George Nixon Brigs was Governor of Massachusetts, three of his friends visited Palestine. While there, they climbed Golgotha’s slope. From the summit they cut a small stick to be used as a cane. On their return home they presented it to the governor and said: “We wanted you to know that when we stood on Golgotha’s mountain, we thought of you.” Accepting the gift with all due courtesy, the governor gratefully added: “But I am still more thankful, gentlemen, that there was Another who thought of me on Mount Golgotha.” (6)
We move through Lent from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday. Mindful that there is one who not only thought of us on Calvary’s tree, but gave himself in our behalf. We are renewed, refined, refocused in our spiritual journey so that on Easter Sunday we can be resurrected with him. And we discover in our resurrection experience that the darkness of the world is dispelled. The light which has come into the world has overcome it.
So receive these ashes this night. Begin the journey of repentance and renewal. Walk with Christ these next six weeks until your journey brings you to that resurrection morn when you know Christ as you have never known him before. See if the darkness in your heart is not dispelled and see if you, by the grace of God, cannot be a shining light yourself.
___________________________________
1. Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 14- 20. Cited by Dr. Gregory Knox Jones in a sermon, “A Sense of the Sacred.” http://chesterpres.org/osermons/s021801.htmhttp://chesterpres.org/osermons/s021801.htm
2. J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching the Calendar (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 30.
3. Source unknown.
4. http://www.pulpit.org/articles/room_for_repentance.asp
5. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 1970.
6. Source unknown.
Dr. Gregory Knox Jones tells an inspiring story about writer Frederick Buechner that should help us as we celebrate this night. Buechner was riding a train into New York City one day several years ago. It was a grey, rainy fall day. The train windows were coated with dust, but there wasn’t much to see anyway, except for the industrial wasteland that spreads out in all directions as you approach Newark, New Jersey.
After gazing out the dirty window at the ugly scenery, Buechner let his eyes come to rest on a large color photograph at the front of the coach in which he was riding. It was a cigarette ad. It showed a beautiful young woman and a handsome young man sitting next to a crystal clear mountain stream with a gorgeous blue sky overhead and a backdrop of lush green trees. It was a scene full of beauty, youth and life. And then, down in the lower left hand corner were the words of the Surgeon General: Cigarette smoking can be hazardous to your health. Buechner had seen such ads before, but for some reason, this time, it stunned him. The ad seemed to scream at him: “Buy this, it will kill you.”
And he realized that the ad wasn’t just about smoking. It proclaimed something deadly about the human race--that we are our own worst enemies. We would buy a product that would destroy us. But that is just the beginning. We stockpile new weapons and old hostilities that may end up destroying us all. We stockpile angers and jealousies and lusts that threaten to do the same thing.
As he pondered the darkness within the human heart, his train pulled into New York City. His walk from the train station to the bus terminal took him down some of the seediest blocks of the city. Triple X-rated movie houses; adult bookstores, massage parlors. Young, runaway kids prostituting themselves and bloodshot, angry drunks.
Buechner lived for years in New York City. He had walked these blocks before. But this time, pondering that ad about humanity’s bent toward self-destruction, he saw it as if for the first time. Suddenly he became aware how vulnerable all of us are to the brutality and ugliness of life. And he thought about how lost we all can be.
That same day, he boarded a bus to his present home in Vermont. He arrived late at night, but the lights were still on. His wife and daughter had waited supper for him. The cat was asleep in front of a fire burning in the wood stove. The home was filled with warmth and light and peace and love. He began to feel guilty about having such a home when there were people in the city he had left earlier in the day who would never know a home filled with love. But he realized such joys should not be a cause of guilt. Instead, they should be treasured and nurtured, because the darkness of the world is always threatening them. (1)
The darkness of the world. That is what Ash Wednesday is about. The darkness of the world with its decay and degradation. The darkness of the world with its regrets and recriminations. The darkness of the world, and most especially, the darkness within our own hearts. The darkness that threatens to take from us all that we hold dear.
We symbolize that darkness in the ashes we place on our foreheads this night. Dr. Ellsworth Kalas once put it like this, “I suspect you can go anywhere in the world and you’ll find that ashes are a symbol of loss, of despair, of heartbreak, and of repentance... No wonder, then, that our spiritual ancestors in Christendom used ashes as a symbol for the beginning of the season of repentance, and that we’ve been doing so for over a thousand years. If you feel sorry for your sins, and if it seems to you that you have burned up some of the best of life so that now all you have to show for yourself are some ashes--ah, then, ashes belong on the forehead.” (2)
I don’t want you to raise your hand, but do you know what Frederick Buechner and Ellsworth Kalas are talking about? Do you have some of the darkness of the world within your own heart? Do you have something in your life--some secret pain, some silent regret, something that you can share with no one else--that is now like ashes?
The season of Lent is a time of repentance. It is a time of letting go of that which drags us down and makes us unholy. Somewhere I read about a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada named Wabush. This is a town that, at one time, was completely isolated. But at some point a road was cut through the wilderness to reach it. Wabush now had one road leading into it, and thus, only one road leading out. If someone would travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush, there was only one way he or she could leave---by turning around. (3) That is what repentance is all about. It is turning around. Lent is the season when we reflect on our lives to determine if there is any point in our lives where we need to turn around.
In a sermon titled, “Room for Repentance,” Marjory Zoet Bankson tells about an Ann Lamott novel titled Crooked Little Heart. It is a modern parable of repentance. In this novel, a 13-year-old rising tennis player named Rosie has been cheating on close line calls to win crucial matches. Rosie’s shame grows as she is unable to stop herself. She even hurts herself in an attempt to get her mother’s attention, but she is trapped by her compulsion to win.
There is an ominous man, an outcast named Luther who comes to every tournament, watching Rosie, but he does not report her to the tennis authorities.
One day Luther says to Rosie: “I did what you did.”
“What do you mean?” Rosie asks.
Luther replies, “I cheated.”
As her secret becomes visible to both of them, Rosie calls herself a cheater.
“No,” Luther says, “you cheated.”
Then he tells her that other people cheat, too. By doing that, he invites her into the company of flawed humans. He also gives her a way to claim her identity as one who can make different choices, who can tell the truth. He makes room for her repentance to begin.
Rosie begins to change. She is reprimanded by the sportsmanship committee, but they allow her to continue playing. In the final game, she overcompensates, not calling points out because she wants to avoid even the appearance of cheating. Then she finds the courage to call a long shot correctly and Luther stands up to leave.
“Aren’t you going to stay and watch Rosie win?” her mother asks.
“I already have,” he says and disappears from the rest of the story. (4)
Anytime a person recognizes a part of his or her own character that is not right, that is in need of change, they are winning the only truly important match in life. Lent is a time for doing that. Repent. Turn around.
“Even now,” declares the LORD in the little book of Joel, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love . . .” (12-13a)
The greatest need we have is to return to God. It’s doubtful that many of us are hardened sinners. We’ve made our mistakes. We have our regrets. But compared to many, our list of sins might be quite short. But who among us would claim to live as close to God as we ought to live? While we may not be rebels, neither are we saints, not in the purest sense of that word.
You may remember a George Harrison tune from the 1970s, “My sweet Lord, I really want to see you, I really want to be with you, I really want to see you, Lord, but it takes so long, my Lord . . .” (5) That may be why you are here this evening. It may be that you are looking forward to putting the ashes on your forehead as a symbol of an inner search to draw closer to Christ. Ash Wednesday and Lent are a time for doing that as well. We submit our hearts and minds these six weeks to reflecting on the meaning of the coming of Christ for our lives. We repent of any sins that might be an impediment to our quest. By the time Good Friday comes, we are ready to receive the impact of his saving death on Calvary’s tree. This is a necessary consequence of Ash Wednesday. We reflect on the events of Good Friday.
When George Nixon Brigs was Governor of Massachusetts, three of his friends visited Palestine. While there, they climbed Golgotha’s slope. From the summit they cut a small stick to be used as a cane. On their return home they presented it to the governor and said: “We wanted you to know that when we stood on Golgotha’s mountain, we thought of you.” Accepting the gift with all due courtesy, the governor gratefully added: “But I am still more thankful, gentlemen, that there was Another who thought of me on Mount Golgotha.” (6)
We move through Lent from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday. Mindful that there is one who not only thought of us on Calvary’s tree, but gave himself in our behalf. We are renewed, refined, refocused in our spiritual journey so that on Easter Sunday we can be resurrected with him. And we discover in our resurrection experience that the darkness of the world is dispelled. The light which has come into the world has overcome it.
So receive these ashes this night. Begin the journey of repentance and renewal. Walk with Christ these next six weeks until your journey brings you to that resurrection morn when you know Christ as you have never known him before. See if the darkness in your heart is not dispelled and see if you, by the grace of God, cannot be a shining light yourself.
___________________________________
1. Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 14- 20. Cited by Dr. Gregory Knox Jones in a sermon, “A Sense of the Sacred.” http://chesterpres.org/osermons/s021801.htmhttp://chesterpres.org/osermons/s021801.htm
2. J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching the Calendar (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 30.
3. Source unknown.
4. http://www.pulpit.org/articles/room_for_repentance.asp
5. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 1970.
6. Source unknown.
