Sermon for Ash Wednesday at Friends Congregational Church

“What Our Days Look Like”

Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Matthew 6:16-21

Did you notice anything different about today?  Aside from the weather, was anything different about today from yesterday?  For the most part everything looks the same.  Nothing changes.

Our days look like work and school.

Our days look Super Bowls and Super Tuesdays.

Our days look like Styrofoam cups of coffee and pastries du jour.

Our days look like another burrito at Freebirds and another sandwich at Blue Baker.

Our days look like another commute to the office and another walk to class.

Our days look like another stack of papers and another inbox full of emails.

Our days look like another facebook event invitation and another mailbox full of bills, credit card offers and magazines.

Our days look like anxiety about a recession and bits of news from Iraq.

Our days really don’t change much.  And so we find ourselves here in this sanctuary on Ash Wednesday: the start of our Lenten journey.  We flock to our houses of worship like so many people of faith, especially on sacred days like today, because we need a change: a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of being—some change that will enrich our relationship with Christ.

And we do change…for a little while.  We sing hymns and songs together, and we pray together, and we hear the Word of God together, and something in us might change, but for how long?  From the moment that we step off of that front porch and into the world, how long do you think it will take for the world to start looking like business as usual again?

Or I should ask, how long do you think it will take for us to shrug our shoulders out there and go with the flow, no matter how unsettling it might be?  How long will it take after we leave this room for the world to defeat us once again?

Harold Dean Trulear teaches at the Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia.  And Trulear recalls going to elementary school, and how there was a five-story high fortress-like facility that cast its shadow over the tiny schoolhouse.  And now Trulear looks at the fortress in retrospect.  The structure next to Trulear’s elementary school was encased by stone barricades, because it was the Eastern State Correctional Facility, originally known as the Eastern State Penitetiary.

The Eastern State Penitetiary was the first major penitentiary in the United States.  It came out of a philosophy back in the early 19^th century that incarceration as punishment for civil transgressions should be replaced with reflection.  A penitentiary would be a place to house the penitent; a place where criminals would be given the opportunity to change.

But that philosophy, just like debates in our country today, had supporters and detractors.  Supporters of the penitentiary thought that if you put a man in a small room with a Bible, he would repent; he would change.  Detractors thought that if you put a man in a small room with a Bible, he would go crazy!

Now, to be certain, the women and men in our country who are serving time in the prison system are going through changes that we can’t even begin to understand.  But what Trulear points out is that no change is more overwhelming for the incarcerated than the changes that are happening in the outside world that they might one day return to; a world that so often meets these women and men with a quick defeat.

Well, I want to suggest to us that the more we look at the world as the same old same old, the more we are defeated, too.  Jesus charges us to love our God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And we love our neighbors, including the incarcerated millions in our country, through Christian service.

My friends, let’s be reminded tonight that the more we allow the world to go on as it is, the more our sisters and brothers who suffer under the yoke of oppression, starvation, poverty, discrimination, violence, inequality, and injustice will be defeated.  And the more they are defeated, the more we go on being defeated, too, without even flinching.  Martin Luther King, Jr. sums it up when he says that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

It’s Ash Wednesday, and we’re here tonight to make a change, a self-reflective, inner change.  But maybe the biggest changes are going on in the world out there right now and we need to just wake up and take a good look at what God is calling us to do!

No movie sums this up better for me than Superman II.  That’s the one with the three bad guys who all have Superman’s powers: Zod, Non and the girl with the British accent.  Throughout the movie, our hero, Superman, tries to thwart the bad guys’ plans, but little by little, they back him into a corner.  The climax scene is at Superman’s home, the Fortress of Solitude, where the bad guys have hunted Superman down and forced him to surrender.  Zod tells Superman that he has to march into a small, cocoon-like compartment, wherein Superman will be drained of his powers.  So, he hangs his head and mopes into the chamber.  All appears to be lost, but little do the bad guys know that Superman has switched the machine.  While he is safely protected inside the cocoon-like chamber, the bad guys will be drained of their powers outside.

Superman sits inside this cocoon-like compartment and the entire time that he’s in there, the world around him changes.  But once he steps outside of that cocoon, he sees that his enemies are powerless, that they harbor no threat against him, and Superman saves the day.

Well, we’re in a cocoon tonight, too.  This sanctuary can seem so safe.  But Superman wasn’t protected from the changes that were going on in the world outside of his cocoon so much as he was made powerful over them, powerful enough to topple those evils before they got out of hand.

And in this place, we hear the Word of God calling us to go into the world and see it revealed to us in new ways.  We reside in here for the moment, but let us pray that when we step onto that porch tonight, we will see the world differently than we did when we walked in here.

Today may have looked as ordinary as the day before that and the day before that, but maybe we can walk out of here with the world revealed to us in new ways.  Instead of seeing things for how they usually are, let’s make an effort to see where children are going without clean drinking water.

Let’s make an effort to notice where women are being abused and neglected.

Let’s make an effort to notice that war has consumed our best judgment and our God-given understanding that all life is precious.

Let’s make an effort to notice that all of the things we take for granted in our daily lives are the Promised Land for countless billions in our world who go without.

And maybe then our days can start looking like acceptance and equality.

Maybe then our days can start looking like bread for the hungry and water for those who thirst.

Maybe then our days can start looking like comfort for the afflicted and clothing for the naked.

Maybe then our days can start looking like redemption and salvation.

Maybe then our days can start looking like the utopia blessed of God that Jesus preached about all the time; the same Jesus that we follow on this Lenten journey that leads to a cross.

With this kind of vision, we can go out into the world with the ashes of the cross on our foreheads, and every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain.  And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh—all people—shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.  Amen.