Day: March 5, 2014

Sermons

Meditation for Ash Wednesday

“Remember, O man that thou art dust and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Dust and ashes. These are the symbols that mark the beginning of the pilgrimage of love. For that is the deep meaning of Lent. It is all about the renewal of love in our souls and lives, a renewing in us of the divine image in which we are made. That there can be a journey, a pilgrimage, is itself the great good news for our world, weary and in disarray.

T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday, explores the ambiguities of our modern world, our uncertainties and hesitations, the ambiguities and the confusions of our desires.  “Because I do not hope to turn again,” it begins, a phrase which functions as a kind of mantra, and one which captures so much of the despair and uncertainty of our world and day. The despair and uncertainty is in ourselves. And yet, hope against hope constantly breaks through as counter to our despair. There is a yearning, a desire for something more. There is prayer. “Teach us to care and not to care/ Teach us to sit still,” echoing the psalm prayer, “be still and know that I am God,” (Psalm 46.10). Eliot’s poem ends with a prayer from the liturgy and which is included in the Penitential Service of our Prayer Book (BCP, p. 614). And let my cry come unto thee.” Hope breaks through and seeks its voice, the voice of prayer.

Dust and ashes. They are the profound symbols that recall us to the truth of our humanity. Dust recalls us to creation, specifically to our human creation as the dust into which God has breathed his spirit, the concrete expression of our uniqueness as being made in the image of God, but as well having a connection to everything else in the created order. We are not the authors of our own being. “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves,” as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 100). The dust is a strong reminder of our origins, of the truth of our being. “Remember, O man, that thou art dust.” It is something inescapable, something which can only be forgotten at our peril, for “unto dust shalt thou return.” We cannot escape our creatureliness. Denial is the folly of despair. No. The struggle must be to reclaim our being as made in the image of God.

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Sermons

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

“Repent ye”

It will not do, especially on Ash Wednesday, to begin with anything less than the Scriptures. Oh, I know, doesn’t every preacher begin with a text from Scripture? To ask the question is to beg the question, on the one hand, and, on the other, to suggest that there is a problem. What scripture text and for what purpose, we might ask? We may realize that there are often other purposes or agendas that have precious little to do with any sort of biblical wisdom.

Ah, biblical wisdom! What is that? Does it exist? Can we speak of the Bible in any meaningful sense at all? And what does it have to do with Ash Wednesday? Because everything about this day and the season to which it invites makes no sense apart from the pageant of Scripture and, to push the point out into the open more fully, the pageant of Scripture doctrinally, that is to say, creedally, understood. That’s a tall order and yet one of the greatest importance. It is about reclaiming the very nature of our life in Christ. It belongs, we might say, to the very purpose of Lent.

Repentance. Impossible without a sense of God, the one very thing that contemporary culture within and without the Church insists on denying. Ash Wednesday is the wake-up call to what cannot be denied. It is not about some masochistic (or sadistic) way of beating up upon ourselves and others. It is about our acknowledgement of the grace of God which truly defines, governs, and rules our lives, the God “in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is [our] perfect freedom.” Not just any freedom but perfect freedom! This is the daily prayer of the praying Church and yet we are often oblivious to its power and truth.

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Events

Lent at Christ Church, 2014

Lenten Programmes & Events
at Christ Church

On Tuesday evenings throughout Lent, there will be special Lenten Services of Holy Communion with reflections on the Beatitudes in Dante’s Purgatorio. The services are at 7:00pm on the following Tuesday evenings:

Tuesday, March 18th 7:00pm
Tuesday, March 25th 7:00pm
Tuesday, April 1st 7:00pm

The Lenten Journey

The season of Lent concentrates the meaning of the Christian pilgrimage to God and with God into a span of forty days (excluding Sundays!). It is really the journey of the soul in love; the love of God and that love as moving more and more within us.

We go up to Jerusalem, Jesus tells the disciples on Quinquagesima Sunday, the Sunday before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. We go up with Jesus and we go up in the increasing and growing awareness of what Jerusalem means. A journey in love, to be sure, but one in which we confront all the forms of our unloveliness. Ultimately, the divine love bears all our unloveliness on the Cross of Christ Crucified. What really is our unloveliness? Sin, in all its endless forms, to be sure, but there is more to the journey than just the unloveliness of our sins. There is also the transforming power of love which seeks to make us lovely. Dante’s Purgatorio presents the programme of grace perfecting our humanity, “to decline from sin, and incline to virtue” as the Penitential Service in the Prayer Book puts it.

It will be our challenge this Lent to contemplate the Beatitudes from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as employed by Dante in his Purgatorio and as illustrating the idea of grace perfecting nature.

It shall be for us, I pray, the occasions of the deepening of our penitential adoration; our love for God borne out of his deep love for us signaled so powerfully in the crucifixion of Christ, the place, as it were, where sin and love meet and where love triumphs and reigns.

It is really all a question about the direction of our loves and our lives. We begin, to be sure, with the dust and ashes of Ash Wednesday, but only to embark upon the upward path of grace transforming and perfecting our hearts and souls.

“Lord, for thy tender mercies’ sake, lay not our sins to our charge; But forgive that is past, and give us grace to amend our sinful lives; To decline from sin, and incline to virtue; That we may walk with a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore” (BCP, p. 614).

Fr. Curry

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Prayers and liturgy

Ash Wednesday

The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

El Greco, St Peter in PenitenceALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

Artwork: El Greco, St Peter in Penitence, c. 1605. Oil on canvas, Hospital Tavera, Toledo.

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