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
