Ash Wednesday - Thoughts on Mortality

                Lent, like Advent, for us as believers is a season of preparation.  In December, we talk about preparing for the birth of Christ.  We prepare our hearts and minds alongside Mary and Joseph, eager for the coming miracle.  But in Lent, we prepare alongside Christ, and the preparation is different.  Because although, like Christ, we know Easter is coming, we know there is a long road between today and the empty tomb.  Between now and then… lies the tomb itself.

                And as believers, who accept the full humanity of Christ alongside his full divinity, we face that tomb, we face death and our own mortality with the same assurances and knowledge, but also with the same fears and uncertainties.  If there is one thing we fear as human beings, as Presbyterian-flavored human beings especially, it’s change.  And there’s no greater change than from life to death.

                In many ways, it is what we prepare for all our lives and that for which we feel the least prepared.  We have expressions for death.  Robin Williams, in the movie Patch Adams, reaches a patient that no one else can, a man who has become cantankerous in his own bitterness about dying.  The two of them face death together and the man regains his humanity.  His first breakthrough with the patient is when they list together all the metaphors we have for death… kicking the bucket, dirt nap, to blink for an exceptionally long time, happy hunting grounds, six feet under, the big sleep…

                Even parents seek to shield their children from the sting of death.  It’s not uncommon for parents to tell their children that a dog or cat went to live on a farm to live out their final days or to replace a beloved fish with an identical fish.  I grew up in a farming community where many kids had experienced the death of pets and livestock hundreds of times over.  They often had the most healthy attitudes about the deaths of loved ones.  It felt natural, not scary.  They would cry, but not from shock or fear.  They grieved, but not as those without hope.           

We avoid death, and even calling it death, or just  talking about death.  We love our metaphors.  They allow us to hide from our own mortality.  We don’t have “legal documents for death and illness.”  We have “living wills.”  We don’t have “death inheritance,” but “life insurance.”  We don’t have money for “body disposal,” but “coverage for final expenses.”  My father is a financial planner.  He is always going on about how many people don’t have a will or life insurance, and many because they simply don’t want to think about or discuss death.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get people to think about dying and what will happen when they do?!?!” he sometimes asks.  ;-)  I do, actually…

                In fact, that’s part of what we ask you to contemplate tonight.  You’re among the bravest just by showing up here, to have ashes imposed on your forehead as you hear the words, “from dust you have come and to dust you shall return.” With Christ, we look down that long road of 40 days and contemplate the cross, death, the tomb.  I have had the privilege and burden to look into the eyes of people whose stare suggested they could see their own cross, their own mortality with clarity, as it was looming for them.  And the truth is, and we acknowledge it on this night, ours could be as close or early as Christ’s was.

                Last week, a dear friend and colleague in ministry form North Carolina, died suddenly from complications of the flu.  As a pastor, I know her own mortality is something she discussed with her flock and with her husband, also a pastor, and her teenage kids.  I doubt that she spent last Ash Wednesday considering her own mortality so concretely.  However, I know how she lived, and like Christ, she lived with a purpose and a clear sense of being called by her creator that showed to all those around her that death was something she understood and did not worry about, no matter how much it may have scared her.

                A pastor once preached a fiery sermon to his congregation.  His refrain was, “One day, every member of this congregation is going to die!”  And a young man on the front pew snickered a little more each time he said it.  Finally, he called the young man out and asked what was so funny.  To which the young man replied, “I’m not a member of this congregation.”  When Azar Usman, the Muslim comedian we hosted a few months back was here, he told a story of prank calling the gentleman in the seat a few rows ahead of him on a plane and whispering, “You’re gonna die!”  He, of course, felt horrible… regretted it… and then regretted it because he might get caught.  Then he decided he had the perfect defense for the federal agents he was sure would drag him from the plane.  “Did you tell this man he was going to die?”  “Yes, I did.”  “Why?”  “Because he is.”  (pause)  Azar, as he said, was just doing his civic duty.  Wouldn’t want him to forget.  After all, we are all going to die.  And we laugh because it’s true.  We laugh because the threat that young man in church didn’t feel and the threat the man on the plane DID feel, are based on the same truth… death is inescapable.

                And on this night, we face that truth alongside Christ, not for a greater purpose necessarily of facing our fears and overcoming them, or for wallowing in our limitedness, our sinfulness, our brokenness.  We acknowledge it all.  And we acknowledge the miracle that we come from dust, and we return to it.  And as one author put it, “what is the first article of faith? That this is not all that we are.”

                The irony that a message of eternal life leads to his death is not lost on Jesus.   He does not spend his final days preparing for death, but preparing others for life.  Christ does not prepare for death, and so neither do we.  We hear the reminder of our mortality and are reminded to make use of the gifts we have in the time we have, to take strength from our creator and sustainer, to face what lies ahead, because all of this is a journey, and none of us is home… yet.  SO as we contemplate the cross, we contemplate more than suffering, more than death, but a step on Christ’s journey, on our journey… home.  And Lent, for us, becomes a time to prepare for that journey together, facing whatever lies ahead.  Amen.

Amendment:  I've been asked about my benediction at this service.  I more or or less said...
We are made of pretty complex stuff, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and so on.  Those elements exist nowhere in the universe except in stars.  Not just within stars, but specifically, they are made when a star dies and goes supernova.  It takes the act of the death of a sun to create the elements of life.  Our God makes us not just from dust, but from stardust.  All of you, and everyone you ever meet, is made of stardust.  And that is nothing short of amazing.  Go out into this world living as the son who died for us has called you to live, remembering who has made you of stardust.