Ash Wednesday​ (Joel 2.1-2,12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21)

Ash Wednesday
​(Joel 2.1-2,12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21)

In the Ash Wednesday gospel lesson, Jesus sounds like he is teaching us how to observe this Lenten season. Don’t give alms to show off. Don’t pray in public to look holy. Don’t make yourself look miserable when you fast. Instead, give alms in secret. Pray in secret. Fast in secret. Rather than storing treasures on earth, store them in heaven. Rather than seeking fame, honor, and glory from people, seek the kingdom of God. It is clear what kind of behavior and attitude Jesus expects his disciples to have.

His teaching on almsgiving, prayer, fasting, and financial management sounds a lot like a to-do list. Don’t do this, but do that. Especially hearing this teaching on Ash Wednesday, it sets up this strict mood of doing pious things right. Not just about what we do, but how we do it in the right manner. We’re expected to give alms, pray, fast in secret, and think about what to store in heaven.

Already in our Christian culture, Lent is so focused on doing things right with a right attitude as Jesus instructed us. I wonder if the most common question Christians around the world ask during this Lenten season would be ‘What are you giving up?’ This emphasis on doing is often manifested in Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Tuesday) or Mardi Gras (meaning ‘Fat Tuesday’). Before giving up anything, we might want to indulge in food or party hard. What distinguishes Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras from Ash Wednesday is what you’ve done or what you’ll do. Again, so much about doing.

I would like to call to mind that we’re human beings, not human doings. This teaching of Jesus on doing things right in God’s eyes first calls us to reflect on who we are and whose we are. The question about Jesus’ teaching is not so much about how do we do things right in God’s eyes during this Lent but is essentially about what makes us move from one behavior to the other? What is it that makes us give alms, pray, and fast in secret? What is it that makes us feel content with storing treasures in heaven?

Jesus’ teaching in the gospel lesson invites us to journey from this behavior driven by ego to the holy living born out of our renewed selves through baptism. In other words, Lent is not the season that we prove ourselves to be good or to do good before God. If that’s the intention of observing this season, then that’s the ego speaking, not the baptized self. Lent is the journey in which we are reminded of our mortality through this deep symbolism of ashes. In doing so, it prepares us to revisit, return, renew, and restore our baptized selves. Easter then is the journey of that return, recovery, and rediscovery of the new life in Jesus Christ.

On this first day of Lent, I ask all of us to join this journey of return, recovery, and rediscovery of the new life in Christ. I’m not suggesting that we should feel guilty of what we have done or what we have left undone. I’m not pushing us to feel ashamed of who we are. I’m inviting us to dig deep inside our hearts and face our existential emptiness we experience and we like to deny. This might sound a bit odd but we as Christians are the people who confess what St. Augustine confessed sixteen centuries ago, “...our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Confessions, I.i.(1)) Fr. Alexander Schmemann calls this “the feeling of alienation from God, from the joy of communion with God, from the real life as created and given by God.” (Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, p. 21) Without this feeling discovered in our hearts, it is impossible that we long for God’s presence. There’s no yearning for God’s mercy and compassion. How can you anticipate something that you don’t have a desperate desire for?

Ashes symbolize mortality, void, emptiness, nothingness, or what the writer of Ecclesiastes calls “vanity of vanities.” As ashes are imposed in our foreheads, let’s face not only our mortality but also admit this feeling of alienation from God that our heart is restless until it rests in God. And remember Jesus who came into the very heart of our experience of alienation, abandonment, or even rejection through the cross. Remember his resurrection. Only in this sense, do we find the true meaning of Lent. This is why Lent is also called the season of the “bright sadness” or “sorrowful joy.”

John introduced to me this beautiful hymn called ‘Ashes.’ I think this hymn summarizes the essence of my homily. I would like us to learn and sing along together as a reminder that not only do we remember we are dust and to dust we shall return but also we remember we rise from ashes through Jesus Christ. It is my prayer that we experience our return to God or rather God’s return to us in which we rise again from ashes, especially those who are suffering here and now. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.