Episodes
Wednesday Feb 10, 2016
Telling the Truth
Wednesday Feb 10, 2016
Wednesday Feb 10, 2016
A homily preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, February 10, 2016, Ash Wednesday.
Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
I remember one day, as a child, when I decided it would be a good idea to lie to my mother. The particular details of the lie have been lost to time, but what I remember is this self-satisfied feeling that I had gotten away with it—whatever “it” was. The feeling didn’t last long, however, because somehow Mom found me out. I can see myself standing in the utility room in that white cardigan between the deep freeze and the clothes washer and dryer, her question stinging like a slap: “What made you think it was OK to lie?” I had no answer. For a moment my little 7 year old self had thought she was so clever… but this feeling was awful. What did make me think it was OK to lie? Did I really think that deceit would bring about something good?
I would guess that most of us know the perils of lying, but that doesn’t keep us from doing it. At their worst, lies become tools of greed or lust—to get something we want, to get someone we want, to steal, to hoard, to intentionally deceive someone for our own selfish ends. But there can be times when a lie is at least well-intended. Sometimes, the lies are truly to protect ourselves or someone we love from harm. Some among us have experienced the unwritten rule to keep the family secret—which means that lies of omission or misdirection become requirements. Sometimes we lie because we are ashamed of something we have done. And it’s not just to other people that we lie. We lie to ourselves about any number of things—we tell ourselves we’re OK when we’re not or that we can manage alone when we cannot that what we’ve done is really not so bad and other self-deceptions too numerous to recount. // We lie as individuals…we also lie as a collective, as a culture. Splattered across the media in myriad forms are lies like these: You can outrun death! It’s all about you! The one with the most toys wins! And collective lies also show up in the ways we pretend. For example, we pretend that the environment isn’t critically injured, we pretend that “The American Dream” is equally accessible to all people regardless of race or class…Even if we know better, so often our daily lives and actions simply get carried along by the current of the collective fiction and hypocrisy.
Falsehood and deceit ensnare us all in one way or another as human beings—and it’s been true from generation to generation from the beginning of time. But this day, Ash Wednesday, is about telling the truth. To “sit” in or be marked with ashes has been, since ancient times, a sign of repentance and of grief. Today marks our entry into the season of Lent during which we are challenged to take an honest look at our lives, to get real about what is going on in and around us, to tell the truth about our need to repent and to acknowledge our grief and allow it space to be expressed. Telling the truth can be so hard. You know what they say—the truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable… Because it often means we will have to contend with new challenges or changes, to give something up or take something on. Telling the truth means seeing parts of ourselves we don’t or can’t easily see.
What is the truth that you need to tell? Some of us here today need to be honest about the way that pride and ego have ahold of us. Others will need to acknowledge the tendency to belittle ourselves, the ways we surrender our agency and responsibility. The truth for some is that you can no longer pretend that the addiction is not real or that you can manage it alone. Others will need to get real about a situation of abuse and the need to find support. Some of us need to tell the truth about a betrayal. Hatred, resentment, selfishness, hypocrisy, luke-warm faith, abusing or neglecting our bodies, tendencies to laziness and boredom… The truth you need to tell will likely be different from your neighbor. But we all are given the opportunity on this day to tell the truth about how our relationships are broken—our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with persons in our lives, our relationship with the larger community. The ashes we receive are a sign of our willingness to try to be honest, to tell the truth even when it is hard in the hope that freedom will follow…
And thanks be to God that hope is not in vain. The truth we tell on Ash Wednesday isn’t just about our human frailty and tendency to live in various states of denial and brokenness. The more profound truth that we proclaim today can be summed up in the words uttered as the ashes are placed upon your forehead: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” At first glance this may seem like one more depressing truth. But the sentiment is not only that you are mortal and limited and finite, but also that you are a creation of a God who loves you, who forms you from dust and breathes life into your frame and wills that you should live and move and have your being in the context of this beautiful world that we share, a world that is infused with the goodness and grace of the Creator. Your beginning and your ending is held in the loving hands of a merciful God, a God who sees you and knows all your secrets and all your hopes and fears and desires and who longs for your wholeness and for your freedom. The truth we proclaim today is that we are not self-sufficient, we can’t resist evil, injustice, and oppression—the tempting falsehoods of our culture and the subtle lies and hypocrisy within our own hearts—without God’s help. And so we are marked with the ashes that remind us that we are dependent upon God, that we need God, and that God has been with us from the moment we came to be and will be with us when we return to dust. From beginning to end God holds us together, holds us close, cheers us on, calls us out, encourages us and gives us grace to become more humble, more brave, more healthy, more whole, more free.
Blessing
the Dust
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
All those days you felt
like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars
that blaze in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
- Jan L. Richardson
http://www.paintedprayerbook.com/
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