Sermon: “Spring Heart-Cleaning”

25 February 2009

Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

Ash Wednesday
February 25, 2009

“Spring Heart-Cleaning”

Psalm 51
Matthew 6:5-15

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our minds and hearts here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

My husband John went out to the grocery store around lunchtime today, and when he came back he and saw me sitting there writing this sermon, he said, “There sure were a lot of people out there with dirty black smudges on their foreheads.  You’ll have a lot of work to do tonight if you want to catch up to St. Joe’s.”  Now that’s just his way of poking fun at me – former Catholic to Protestant – but if there’s one thing that this passage from Matthew’s Gospel makes clear, repentance is not a competitive public sport.  We don’t come to church on Ash Wednesday because we can’t wait to stop by Shop-Rite on the way home, so that our piety can be admired by the check-out lady.  We come because of our own spiritual need, or because Toni said we had to be here, or else!

I’ve always appreciated the timing of Ash Wednesday, because whether Lent begins early or late in the winter, it seems to come at a particularly good time of the year.  By now, we’ve had just enough time to have tried and failed a few times at our New Year’s resolutions.  We may be just about ready to attempt that all-important first step of basic Christian practice – which is also the first step of all the 12-step recovery programs:  “We admitted we were powerless over the effects of our sinful nature – that our lives had become unmanageable.”  The repentance of Ash Wednesday begins with an honest recognition that we will never be able to perfect ourselves through our will power alone. 

I think one reason that this service is not particularly popular with people is that in this modern age, “sin” and “repentance” are such gloomy and old-fashioned words, we are tempted to cast them aside like a pair of dark and dusty Victorian draperies.  And yet, just think about it:  How many hours do we spend watching Dr. Phil and Oprah and other self-help shows on TV?  And how much money do we Americans spend on self-help programs and products each year?  One recent book[1] estimates it’s more than $8 billion!  We may not go for the language of old-time religion, but we seem to be endlessly striving after the concept of perfecting ourselves through personal transformation.

What if God could create in each one of us a clean heart?  What if God could put a new and right spirit within us?  What if, as Jesus suggests, we could go into our room and shut the door and pray in secret; and God would give us what we ask?  What if we could just die to our sinful natures and rise again in Christ, as new creatures, born again of the Holy Spirit?  What then?  Well, I guess I’d be out of a job.  There’d be no need for church at all.  That would be a miracle so amazing – it would be a treasure worth at least $19.99, right?  At least more than any self-help book!  It would be a pearl without price – it might be news good enough to launch an entire religion… Christianity maybe.

So if that’s all true – and God’s promises that say it IS true – why would we want to come together in worship to ask God for help tonight, or at any other time?  After all, Jesus says our Heavenly Father knows what we need even before we ask – so why should we offer any prayers in the first place?  Why do we have this need to confess together, or smudge ourselves with the traditional ashes of repentance?  Is it a kind of magic? 

Confession for us Protestants – whether public or private – is not a sacrament, but we might very well say it is essential to our salvation, because without it we cannot make room for God’s grace to do its work.  Smudging with ashes is a rite that, like a sacrament, is “an outward and visible sign” of our taking that all-important first step in submitting our souls for transformation by the spirit of the living Christ, which is found here in his church.  When most of us go through baptism, we are too young to confess anything.  But when we join the church, and bind our covenant, I love that we unite our voices in this one line: “We confess our sin and are made whole solely by the grace of God in Christ.”  That phrase brings us back to our Reformation roots in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, where he makes his passionate case for salvation by God’s grace alone, instead of through “works” of righteousness.  As a reformed Pharisee, Paul was all too aware of that first of the 12 steps – that his soul was broken beyond repair.  He admitted that he was powerless over his own sinful nature and that his life had become unmanageable.  It was then that he freely submitted his own strong will to Christ and found salvation. 

I always appreciate the opportunity we have each Lent to come forward and receive the ashes, because it gives us a chance to recommit ourselves to Christ.  In fact, I love the invitation to return to some traditional faith practices to “clean house” spiritually.  I always look forward to tracking my progress through Jen’s Lenten Health and Wellness Challenge – which she’s placed on the little table by the door to the Church Office – because without it, I know I would have no discipline on my own.  United with others in the church, I feel Christ’s body supporting me and giving me new strength. We may offer a hand or forehead to be smudged on Ash Wednesday, but what we are really doing is submitting our hearts for purification by a power much greater than ours.  As St. Peter did, we are asking our Lord to not just wash our feet, but to clean our whole selves -- to take our sin-stained souls and soak and scrub and rinse and repeat in a thorough spring-cleaning. 

You know, psychologists say that often when we dream of house-cleaning – especially closets, basements, and attics – it is often a sign we are doing important work of mental health.  We are mucking out the dusty corners of our psyche – which is the Greek word for “soul” – and making room for things that are new and good and beautiful to move inside, like the Holy Spirit.   As we enter now into our period of prayer, I would invite you to join me in a time of silence for some personal reflection and meditation.  Ask God for help with this.  Allow your Savior to do some saving.  Invite Jesus – like a kind of holy closet-organizer – to open the door to your darkest and most cluttered places and begin the process.  Ask him to help you sort through and discard those things – bad habits, dark secrets, old hurts, festering grudges – those are things you can do without. 

Remember, if you don’t think you’re strong enough to lift it or move it, remember he is also much stronger than we are. It’s like that line in “Jesus Loves Me” – “we are weak but he is strong.”  Even the so-called 2,000-pound elephant in the room can be squeezed out your door by Jesus.  Remember the camel that had such a hard time passing through the eye of the needle?  Yes, it’s daunting, but Jesus promised it could be done.  He says, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”[2]

Let us still our hearts now in prayer and allow our Lord a few minutes to come inside and roll up his sleeves, and begin some heavy spring cleaning for us, for Lent ….


 

[1] Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, by Steve Salerno
(Crown Publishers, 2005).

[2] Mark 10:27


 

 

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