[Propertalk] Ash Wednesday

[Robert P Morrison]

At the end of a long but fun day with lots of activites, here's what's going to be printed out for delivery on Wednesday!

Peace and happy smudging!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY       ASH WEDNESDAY  B RCL
JOEL 2:1-2, 12-17	                25th FEBRUARY, 2009       
2 CORINTHIANS 5:20b - 6:10           PSALM 51:1-17
MATTHEW 6:1-6, 16-21

	“Because I do not hope to turn again
	Because I do not hope
	Because I do not hope to turn … ” 1
	T.S. Eliot’s poem always brings me up short. It’s packed with so much emotion, so much self-examination, so much honesty, that it can rub one’s soul raw just reading it.
	It’s not that Eliot was being pessimistic - not unduly so, anyway. He was simply expressing his own feelings about life and the way in which he found that he couldn’t always count on himself to do the right thing, to live as he wanted to or knew that he ought to - if not for those around him, then at least for himself. But then, although I haven’t read much of Eliot, what I have read seems to describe someone who wouldn’t let himself off the hook easily.
	But “ease” is NOT what we’re about on this day. Honesty is. Careful scrutiny is. Thoughtfulness and awareness, these all are called to be the mark of this day.
	However we may feel about the outcome of the recent national elections and the inauguration of a new President, I doubt if there’s anyone who doesn’t sense the potential for turning right now. I’ve just returned from the East Coast, among other things from spending a few days with my son-in-law and daughter, in Philadelphia. The city - the whole city and the county encapsulating it - is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Yet people still get up in the morning and go to their work, and, from what I saw, they engage the challenges with a good spirit. It’s not to say they don’t feel their hearts wrenched when people lose their jobs, or homelessness and hunger build up. But the people seem determined to face the situations in which they find themselves, the particular part of God’s creation in which they can have an impact, and they determine to DO something. No matter what the state of the economy, or the deterioration of the structures around them, these people WILL build on what has worked; and they’ll sweep away the things that have hindered the growth of community. It seems less of a time of dissention and recrimination, which one might expect, as it is of the potential for growth.
	The major reason for my being on the East Coast can be seen in the same way. Most of the senior-year students’ exams which we evaluated were at least passable. Not all were - that would be too much to expect - but no matter how the essays turned out, there was a sense that something can be built on what even the most difficult or problematical response may present. If honesty, thoughtfulness, self-awareness can all be brought to play on the situations in the students’ lives, or the lives of Philadelphians, there WILL be hope to sustain people and set them on to a productive and responsive path once again.
	That’s what Joel hopes to draw forth from us today. He calls us to be realistic. He calls us to ask ourselves what it is that drives our lives. He asks us to be honest about our failures and our weaknesses, not only in our relationships with one another - the way we disappoint or even injure one another, deliberately or unknowingly. But Joel also asks us to think about how we have interacted with God; how we’ve perceived our conversations with God; how we thank we’ve heard God respond.
	Joel is brutally frank. The prophet KNOWS we’ve fallen short so often. The prophet is aware of how much God’s hopes have been dashed. Yet even as we’re called to account, we discover that there IS a reason why we should turn, again and again, to face God and to ask for that Spirit which will enable us to live out each day with a hope-filled honesty, not only for the sake of our own little corner of creation, but for the WHOLE of creation.
	“Teach us to care and not to care
	Teach us to sit still” wrote Eliot of God.
	A week or so ago, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Canon Kenneth Kearon wrote: “I want to bring to your attention the request of the Primates and Moderators of the Anglican Communion, at their recent meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, that Anglican Churches world-wide observe 25th February, Ash Wednesday, as a day of prayer and solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe. 
 	“The primates and Moderators also requested that parishes throughout the Anglican Communion give aid to enable food and other material aid for Zimbabwe for distribution through the dioceses of the Church of the Province of Central Africa.” 2
	The Archbishop of Southern Africa talked about “the total collapse of the economy and socio-political infrastructure - and appealed to the primates to assist in whatever humanitarian needs they could provide to Zimbabwe.
 	“If we don't intervene we will be failing God in terms of ‘when I was 
hungry you fed me and when I was poor you cared for my needs,’ said Archbishop Makgoba. 
	It doesn’t really seem to matter whether we’re talking about the struggles facing restaurants, or galleries, or gift shops, or motels here; or about the business, and industry, and living situation in Philadelphia; or of the students dealing with exams and their on-going classes; or deterioration, disease and despair in Zimbabwe: we’re called to be honest about what we’re learning to understand about how God wants our world to be.
	No one can make the decision for us in terms of how we respond to God. We each have to respond on our own. Therefore “parading” our “marks” around, while witnessing to an act of contrition and faith, is NOT done as a recruiting tactic. I see wearing the ashen cross on our foreheads as a way of saying that we’re beginning once again to take seriously how we’re related to God and to one another. 
	In receiving the mark of the ash on the same spot where we received the water of baptism and the oil of the Spirit’s anointing at our re-birth we’re saying to everyone in Lincoln City, in the State of Oregon, in this whole nation, even to those in Zimbabwe, whether or not they se us or hear of us, we’re saying I CAN and I WILL turn - for God, and for you, my sisters and my brothers.
	And, yes, ease DOES come, at the end of this liturgy, as at the end of the day, as we find in our open admission of who we are and whose we are; as we find what things can make it so difficult for us to maintain our honesty and our love; and as we discover the patience of God - not for our sinfulness, but for the hope we have that no matter what goes wrong in our lives, we can still talk to God, knowing, as Eliot pleads at the close of his poem, that our cry, along with that of all God’s children, WILL come to God.
	And that’s enough to celebrate today.

NOTES:
1	“Ash-Wednesday “ by T.S. Eliot Opening of Part i
2	Anglican Communion joins Prayers for Zimbabwe on Ash Wednesday Posted On: February 12, 2009 12:28 PM | Posted By : Webmaster ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/2/12/ACNS4578 
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Robert P. Morrison
The Episcopal Parish of St James,
PO Box 789
Lincoln City, Oregon, 97367

541-994-2426 (Church)