The Sermon of the Ashes

[Below is the live stream video of the Ash Wednesday worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, along with the message shared during the service.]



Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Tonight, friends, Jesus tells us not to engage in religious activity that calls attention to us.

Also tonight, we have received the mark of the cross on our foreheads which, if we stop by a store or a filling station on the way home, will be noticed by everyone who sees us.

Are we violating the very commands Jesus gives us in tonight’s Gospel lesson? Let’s talk about that.

The Imposition of Ashes isn’t you being a religious show-off. It’s something else altogether.

As good Lutherans, you know that every sermon, in order for it to be faithful to God, must include both Law and Gospel.

Law and Gospel are the two ways speaks to us in His Word.

It’s God’s Law that convicts us of our sin, showing us that, from the moment we’re conceived, despite God’s good will for us, we are in rebellion against God and we are indifferent to others. This means that we deserve death, condemnation, and everlasting separation from God and from others.

It’s God’s Gospel that comes to us through the crucified and risen Jesus assuring us that, despite our sins, we are justified, made eternally right with God, because, by the power of God’s Spirit-borne Word, we believe Jesus Christ gave His sinless life to cover even our sins on a cross for us.

Paul summarizes the Gospel about Jesus Christ when he says in Romans: “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

Because on this side of our own death and resurrection, when Jesus will call believers in Him from the dead to live with Him forever, we who have been made saints by God’s grace through faith in Christ will keep needing to hear God’s Law and Gospel again and again. As Martin Luther noted, “We need to hear the Gospel all the time because we forget it all the time.” And, as we forget that Gospel, we slip back into a reliance on our good deeds or personal goodness to save us. That course is the way to death.

We don’t receive ashes on our foreheads tonight in order to impress people.

Given current attitudes toward Christian faith, people who see us are more likely to think we’re weirdos than to be impressed with our spirituality or our devotion to Christ.

The ashes are meant to be a sermon to and for those of us who receive them and not for anyone who may see us wearing them.

But what is the content of this sermon in ashes?

After Adam had fallen into sin in the garden of Eden, God told him, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19, ESV)

This is the Law and God spoke it to us again tonight. Like Adam, we have failed to keep God’s Law or live with righteousness. We know this because of the Ten Commandments, the distillation of all of God’s moral law for us, which we constantly fail to obey.

And you never get so old or so advanced in the faith as to not need to be catechized again. So, let me do it for you once again tonight.

God says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Yet, we’re constantly worshiping other things: youth, health, success, and so on, chasing after them as though they were the end-all and be-all, as they could justify our existences.

God says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Yet, even while using God’s name to pray for our needs and the needs of others, as well as to praise and thank God, we use His name as a punchline or to curse or swear or mislead others.

God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” a command all about gladly receiving the Word of God. But our Bibles often grow dusty. And we look at our watches on Super Bowl Sundays, wanting to be sure that the service won’t eat into our pre-pre-pre-game viewing.

God says, “Honor your father and your mother,” meaning to honor those in authority, yet we tend to believe that anyone in authority over us is a liar, a thief, an incompetent, or all of the above. Because we want to be God, we’re always sure we could do better than anyone else that God places in authority over us.

God says, “You shall not kill (or murder),” which Jesus says includes not just killing people physically, but also not killing them in psyche or spirit by denigrating them, berating them, or labeling them. We violate this command all the time, it seems!

God says, “You shall not commit adultery,” yet our brains are often a maelstrom of lustful thoughts.

God says, “You shall not steal,” yet we justify conniving to get something for nothing because, after all, “it’s a dog-eat-dog world.”

God says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” yet gossip is our favorite indoor sport.

God says, “You shall not covet,” yet our envy of others’ success, possessions, status, or achievements ruins our moods and our relationships with them and with God. I’ve seen more families destroyed by greed and resentment than by dishonoring parents, adultery, and theft combined!

When the world preaches a cheap gospel, telling us that God doesn’t really care if we heed His commands to love God or love our neighbor or to honor the will of God, the ash on our foreheads is a sermon from God telling us: This is who you are, a dust-bound sinner who can’t keep My Law and because you cannot keep My Law, you deserve damnation.

But there is Gospel–good news–in these ashes too!

The mark on your foreheads is meant to be in the form of the cross.

This is the part of the sermon meant to tell you that while there is nothing you can do to set yourself free of the death sentence you deserve for sin, Jesus Christ, God the Son, has already acted to set you free from that condemnation. Now and for all eternity!

As you’ve heard me say a zillion times before and I will keep saying it as long as I have breath in my body, when Jesus Christ said, “It is finished,” He meant it!

And He meant it for you.

Jesus took the punishment He didn’t deserve to spare us the punishment we do deserve.

Peter, a man who knew what it meant to be caught by God dead-to-rights in his sin and unrighteousness, declares, “Christ…suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)

And the apostle Paul who knew the power of the crucified Christ to save enemies of God and to save sinners from condemnation and to make them righteous in the eyes of God, says: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” (Romans 5:8-9)

And Jesus, Who would soon be going to His cross to win everlasting life for us, told His grieving friend Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26) That is what the cross means for us!

That smudgy cross on your forehead is the Gospel Word–the Good News Word–from God to you.

The psalmist wrote centuries before Jesus’ birth: “As a father has compassion on his children…[God] remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)

What a promise! God grades us on a curve…the Christ curve…the grace curve.

There’s a great scene in the movie, Jesus of Nazareth. Simon Peter is portrayed of being very critical of Levi, Matthew, the tax collector. And in this telling of Jesus’ story, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, the tale of the notorious sinner who comes back to the father. After telling it, Jesus looks at Peter, who begins to weep. Peter says, “Forgive me, Master. I’m just a stupid man.” He may as well have said, “I’m just dust.”

God never forgets that about us. He was the One Who formed you from dust. He is the One Who chose to give you life. And He’s the One Who chose to take on dust for Himself and go to a cross to save you from yourself. The cross on your forehead is a proclamation of the Gospel from Jesus’ cross for you!

Jesus Christ, God the Son, died and rose to set sinners free from condemnation and separation from God. We don’t have to do it with our little religious works that we try to tout during Lent. Things like, “I’m going to give up chocolate.” God doesn’t care if you give up chocolate!

God wants you! He wants you! And He saved you! The call of Lent is to turn as He calls you to follow Him and receive life from Him.

So, when the world, the devil, and our sinful selves want to preach only Law to us, damning us, discouraging us, miring us in hopelessness and futility, setting us off on some spiritual self-improvement program designed to prove ourselves worthy of God’s favor, an effort that will always fail, we can say with confidence and hope, “But Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus has done everything needed to make me righteous, to give me life, to make me commendable in the eyes of God. Because of Jesus and because I take refuge in Him alone as my God and Savior, when God looks at me, He doesn’t see my sins, failings, and unrighteousness; He sees only the sinless Jesus Who graciously covers me in His righteousness!”

This dust will live forever with God not because of anything I do or ever will do, but solely, completely, totally because of what Jesus has already done for me at the cross and the empty tomb! I have been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. And I will be made holy, righteous, and acceptable to God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

The ashes preach Law and Gospel to us. And the Gospel of salvation of new and everlasting life in Christ will have the final word over the lives and eternal destinies of all who acknowledge their sin and take trusting refuge in Jesus Christ! 

Ann and I bought our gravesites a few years ago. Our ashes will be buried at Sunset Cemetery, just west of Columbus. The thing I love about that is that the day I am raised, I am going to see all the people from the west side of Columbus I knew and loved and shared faith in Jesus with. And then I’m going to look you all up. And we will party for all eternity.

I pray that the sermon preached by the ashes on your forehead is one you hear tonight and always! Amen

Motivation

[This was the message for this evening's Ash Wednesday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Tonight’s gospel lesson is Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21. Here, Jesus tells us things like, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them…” (Matthew 6:1). 

And, “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets...But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.” (Matthew 6:2-4) And, “when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others...But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen…” (Matthew 6:5-6). 

And “[w]hen you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do...But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting…” (Matthew 6:16-18)

Now, if we read Jesus’ words superficially, we might think that He’s contradicting something He said to His followers--including you and me--just one chapter earlier. There, Jesus says, “...let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16) In this verse, Jesus is telling us to live our faith in Him and our love for Him out loud, “let-everyone-see-the-good-we-do-in-His-name” loud. 

Yet, in tonight’s lesson, He tells us to: give to help the poor, just don’t announce it to the world; live with a right respect for the God Who saves us by grace through faith in Jesus, just don’t call attention to your righteousness; pray for everyone, just don’t call attention to your praying; fast, just don’t let anyone see what you’re sacrificing. 

So, which is it: Live your faith loudly in the public square or refuse to call attention to your own faithfulness?

The answer, friends, is both. 

We are to live out our faith in Jesus out loud for all the world to see. As Jesus says elsewhere, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32) 

That means living our gratitude to God for saving us from sin and death by the faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ that His Holy Spirit and His Word have created within us. 

It means trusting in Christ to love God completely, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, to love each other in the Church with the same devotion Christ showed for us on the cross, to live each day in the light of Jesus’ resurrection promise. 

And it will mean giving to the poor, praying for others--including our enemies, fasting from--that is avoiding--those things that can get in the way of our relationship with Jesus, and telling others about the good news--the gospel--of new and everlasting life for all who follow Jesus.

But we also are not to live out our faith to call attention to ourselves. When I’m out to dinner and I pray over my meal--and I realize that at the Famous Restaurant in Centerville last night, sitting there in my clerical collar, I forgot to pray--but when I do pray over my meal in a public place, I’m to do it not for any audience around me, but for an audience of One: the God I know in Jesus. When I fast, I'm not to do it so that I can create an impression on others. When I give to the poor, I'm not to do it with an eye to how good it makes me look to the world, only to honor the God Who gives me everything I have.

It all boils down to motivation. 

Do we do the things that Jesus commands--things like love God, love neighbor, make disciples, worship with God’s people every week--to point to Jesus or to point to ourselves? 

Do we do the things that Jesus commends--things like praying, giving to the poor, fasting--to give Jesus control over our lives or just to control what others think of us? 

Listen: You can get the whole world convinced that you are the most wonderful, devoted, loving, faithful follower of Jesus by doing the kinds of play-acting Jesus condemns in tonight’s lesson. You can be known for your generosity, your beautiful-sounding prayers, your notorious fasting from the pleasures of the world. But if your motive in all these and other religious acts is anything other than honoring the God Who saves you through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, God is not impressed. 

In fact, God will condemn us for using Him to build up our reputations at Christ’s expense. Hebrews 4:13 reminds us, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” 

You cannot fool God! That’s why our motivation is so important.

Let’s be honest though. 

None of us acts from purely pristine or holy motives. My sinful nature reminds me that when I pray in a restaurant, others may see me doing it. As long as I live on this earth, the old Adam in me will try to mess up everything. 

Compelled by Jesus’ grace love and empowered by the Holy Spirit, I’ll do something for another person without a thought of how it may look to others...until later, I think, “That’s a really good thing I did.” 

And it happens to preachers too. In the weeks before virtually every Sunday for the past thirty-five-plus years, Ann can tell you, I have agonized over what God wanted me to say in my sermons. Deep inside, I know that I have nothing to say. I offer up desperate, pleading prayers to God to help me discern what I should tell you about His Word for that week. God has always been faithful; He has always given me what I should say, even when I get in God's way while I preach. I always thank God for giving me a sermon. But it takes just one person to tell me, "Good sermon," and I'm thinking to myself, "Wow! I really am good."

So, our motives for doing the things God calls us to do always get clouded by our sinful selves.

But just because the devil, the world, and our sinful selves constantly remind us that our motives aren’t totally pure doesn’t mean that we should refrain from living our faith in Jesus for all the world to see.

Don’t be afraid to live your faith out loud! 

Don’t be afraid tonight to stop at a store or somewhere else with the ashy cross still on your forehead. 

The apostle Peter tells Christians, “...in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15)

As we begin Lent on this Ash Wednesday, 2020, I’d like to ask you to consider doing the following things, not as works to earn God's favor, but as ways to open your heart and life to Jesus working and living within you. 

• 1. Ask Jesus to help you follow Him more closely. 
• 2. Ask Jesus to help you live for Him more devotedly and openly.
• 3. Ask Jesus to keep your motives for your acts of devotion focused on Him and not on yourself, to grow closer to Him and not to impress others. 
• 4. Ask Jesus for forgiveness and help when you see your motives turn selfish. 
• 5. As you repent and put yourself in Jesus’ hands, know that you belong to God, not because of anything you do, but totally because of what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. 
• 6. Ask God to daily remind you that, by grace through faith in Christ, You belong to the God Whose opinion of you is infinitely and eternally more important than what anyone else may think of you! (Even more important than what you think of you.)

At the end of our lesson for tonight, Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21) 

In this Lenten season, may God plant within each of us a deepened desire to honor Him Who, in Jesus Christ, has given us everlasting life with God, a treasure greater than anything--including the good opinions of others--that this dying universe could ever give us. 

May we repent and trust in Jesus in response to the Word and the Sacraments and may we learn to trust Jesus always. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Ash Wednesday: Free in Christ (AUDIO)

Here.

Ash Wednesday: Free in Christ

[This message was shared during this evening's Ash Wednesday worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
In our gospel lesson for tonight, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21, Jesus warns believers: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” 

He goes on to say that when we give to the needy, we should seek to keep it quiet. If our aim is to impress others with our giving, the greatest reward we can expect is the applause of a dead world. If our aim is to honor God, our reward will be all the gifts an eternal God can give. 

When we offer prayers only to be seen by others, we may impress a dying world. But that won’t help us in eternity, where God gives eternal rewards. We should pray to connect with, confess sin to, give praise to, and seek help from God. 

When we fast, it should be done for the purpose of emptying ourselves of sin or to listen to God. If we fast to get spiritual brownie points from the people before whom we play out our religious shows, those brownie points, which have zero value in this world or the next, will have to suffice as our reward.

In other words, the question of motivation is important to Christians, even on Ash Wednesday. If we come to this service, receive the mark of the cross, sing the hymns, or partake of the body and blood of Jesus to impress other people or climb a religious ladder, we may receive some earthly rewards. People in the congregation may be impressed that you came to worship on a Wednesday night. People may see you at a grocery or convenience store you stop at on the way home and, noticing the cross on your forehead, think well of you or ill of themselves because of your piety.

But Jesus says that the only reward a Christian disciple should seek is the reward Jesus Himself won for us on the cross, the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God that belongs to all who believe in Him.

Jesus’ warning to watch our motives for things like giving to the poor, fasting, or praying raises another issue for some Christians, though. It subjects them to what has been called the paralysis of self-analysis. 

There’s a story told of two actors, one a seasoned veteran with many credits, the other a celebrated up-and-comer. There was a brief scene in which these two were to appear together. The older one sat in a room. The younger was to enter the room through one door and exit through another. It would take all of five seconds. But rehearsal ground to a stop when the younger actor couldn’t figure out how to “play” the scene. “What’s my motivation for walking in and out of that room at that moment?” he asked. “What has my character been doing? What is he going to do? Why does he have to go through that room to do it?” Finally, the veteran actor had enough. “Your motivation,” he shouted, “is to walk through the room and get on with the scene!”

The younger actor was paralyzed from doing anything because he obsessed over whether he had the right motivation. Listen: Our motivations matter. But if we Christians wait to do anything before we’re certain that our motives are absolutely pure, we won’t do anything for God at all. 

Remember how the apostle Paul wrestled with his own sinfulness? “...I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Romans 7:21-23) Despite knowing that his motivations were adulterated by his sinful human nature, Paul continued to do the right thing he thought God was calling him to do.

Paul recognized that every baptized Christian, even the most seasoned and exemplary, has several things in common. First, we are all sinners. Second, we are all saints. We are sinners made saints not by what we do or by the pure motives with which we do them, but solely by God’s grace given to us through faith in Jesus Christ.

As we trust Christ and live in daily relationship with Him and His Church, God is transforming us. We can trust in that. He works within us as we turn to Him in daily repentance and renewal so that the sinner in us is daily subjected to death and the new us--the new you and me--is raised. 

This is an ongoing process in the lives of believers in Jesus. It's called sanctification. But the final purification will only happen after we have physically died and been raised by God and we see Jesus face to face. The apostle John tells us, “Dear friends, now [today, although we’re still imperfect] we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

Ultimately, Jesus’ call to us in our gospel lesson tonight and in the season of Lent is simple: To get our minds off of ourselves and onto Him as the only one Who can give us life, forgiveness, purpose, and the desire to do things for His glory, not our own. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” Galatians 5:1 tells us. And Colossians 3:23-24 puts it all succinctly: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

When we know that we have been saved from sin, death, darkness, and worry over ourselves through Christ, we are set free! We’re free to stop taking ourselves so seriously while taking our Savior’s call to love God, love neighbor, and love fellow believers with the utmost seriousness. We learn to be unafraid of death (even if we’re still afraid of the process of dying), unafraid of whether the world rewards us or not. Death and the opinions of us held by the world can make the final judgments over our lives only if we refuse to trust in Jesus.

Our freedom in Christ may be expressed in many ways, including, as Jesus discussed tonight, in giving to the poor, fasting, and praying. In fact, Jesus takes it as a matter of course that they will be expressed in these ways, since He says of them, “When you give, when you fast, when you pray.” 

But through Jesus, we’re free from the have tos, the musts, and gotta do its of the world, the religious hoops we think we have to negotiate in order to please God (and impress others). In Jesus, we get to love. We get to be the people Christ sets us free to be. We get to live our lives in God’s charity, His grace, not by the world’s punishing standards. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” Jesus says (Mark 16:16).

You may do a spiritual discipline for Lent, something you give up or add to your life. If that’s true, try not to tell anyone about it. Seek to do it not for yourself--there are few things more boring or spiritually pointless than a discipline adopted to bring self-improvement. Do it for Christ. Do it for God’s glory. And if you do it imperfectly, talk it over with God and don’t stew about it. Christ didn’t die for perfect people. He died for you and me, mortals created by God from ashes and dust, but mortals who, as we trust in Christ, have the reward no mortal could ever earn or deserve, eternity with God. There’s freedom in that, freedom from playing to the crowd, freeing from worrying over whether we’re good enough or worthy, freedom from sin, freedom from self. Jesus gives freedom. Sisters and brothers in Christ, live in that freedom!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]