Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2025
“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since
God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so
that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As we work together with him, we urge
you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I
have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now
is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so
that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we
have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions,
hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless
nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of
spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons
of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and
dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet
are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are
alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing
everything.”
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I
don’t advise anybody to seek out life-threatening situations. I do advise everyone to be prepared, because
they can sneak up on you. Close
encounters with mortality are inevitable.
This
past fall, I had a suspicious growth over my right eyebrow, though, right where
I had to have a pre-cancerous spot removed a couple of years ago, so I saw my
dermatologist. She didn’t look too
worried, but offered a choice. She could
either just freeze it off, or she could cut it off and do a biopsy. I went with the biopsy option. When the results came back, they told me I
had a wart. That creeped me out in its
own way, but I felt a sense of relief that I had not expected to feel. It was minor, but it was a reminder.
Ash Wednesday is an
annual reminder: “One of these days, you’re going to die, so be prepared.”
Most
of us here tonight knew Jim Pierson. For
those who didn’t, he was a longtime member who died in 2021. He would have been 100 this year. In June of 1944, he was still a teenager when
he found himself floating on a transport boat in the English Channel just off
Normandy. He would be part of the second
day of the landings, and as I heard him tell the story of his life, it was
during that 24-hour period of waiting that he really learned to pray – his
words. That time was well-spent.
One
of the prayers that is in the funeral service in the back of the Hymnal
in front of you tonight asks,
“Speak to us once more
your solemn message of life and of
death.
Help us live as those who are prepared to die.
And when our days here are accomplished,
enable us to die as those who go
forth to live,
so that living or dying, our life may
be in you…”[1]
Being prepared to die well, whenever it may happen,
makes it possible for us to live well, as long as the Lord gives us, and then
to move on to eternal life.
Being
prepared begins with having a serious time of honest accounting of our
lives. In one of his letters to the
church in Corinth, Paul uses the word “reconciliation”, which is a term that we
use both for auditing the account books and for setting right our relationships. He says
“we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God.” [II Corinthians 5:20b]
As frightening as that sounds, God is ready to make
this a positive, helpful moment. God’s
judgement isn’t a way of trying to find out our faults – God already knows
them, even better than we do. Instead, it’s
a moment of reckoning with what God has already done to set accounts right.
“For our sake he made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As we work together with him, we urge
you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to
you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’” [II
Corinthians 5:21-6:2a]
So I’ll say the same
thing as Paul. Take the opportunity to
straighten out your relationship to God, and to let his grace even out whatever
needs to be settled, and do it now, before the inevitable surprise moment comes
along.
“See, now is the
acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”
[II Corinthians 6:2b]
The
other thing, is that having that assurance makes life a lot easier, because it
puts things in perspective. When Jim
stepped off a landing craft and faced a narrow strip of land on the edge of an
entire continent occupied by hostile forces, his soul was in a spot where he
could do what he needed to do with courage and with purpose – and what he,
along with thousands of others – had to do would not be easy for those who even
lived to attempt it.
The
life of holiness to which God calls all of his people, too, calls for us not to
dwell on our own sin and shortcoming, but on God’s salvation and his ongoing
and constant assistance. It isn’t enough
to stay on the beach, but to move inland and keep going, not for our own sakes,
but for the sake of those who await the liberty that Jesus suffered to bring
all people. He calls us to follow him
“through great endurance, in afflictions,
hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless
nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of
spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the
weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and
dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet
are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are
alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing
everything.” [II Corinthians 6:4-10]
Again, hear his word:
“…now is the acceptable
time; see, now is the day of salvation!”
[1] “A
Service of Death and Resurrection” in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1988), 871.
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