"Be reconciled"-Sermon for Ash Wednesday, II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
As some of you may know, I was bitten by a rattle snake while on a dove hunt in college. Now that’s a great first line for a sermon…don’t you think! What followed was a scary rush to the emergency room in Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic, a week in the hospital, two surgeries, and 6 weeks on crutches. Perhaps, needless to say, I now live with a small phobia of snakes. I’m just not their biggest fan. And this harrowing experience from my past came to mind of all times when the Rt. Rev. David Bailey, Bishop of Navajoland, was with us the first Sunday of February. During his sermon that day, he mentioned that most, if not all, of the dozens of traditional Navajo spiritual ceremonies are intended at their core, in their essence, to restore harmony and balance in the life of the person who is receiving the blessings and prayers offered in the ceremony. For the Navajo believe that when one experiences illness or misfortune or calamity or some other form of dis-ease or disease, it is the result of being out of harmony or balance with the created world…that is out of harmony with the God of sky and earth, or with another person, or with other creatures who we share a life with in this profoundly interconnected world.
And, I remember specifically a ceremony that was happening for a Navajo man while we were actually in Navajoland on one of our pilgrimages several years ago. I was not actually in attendance at the ceremony but was told of it by one of our clergy friends there who said that the man was suffering from some illness, and, that before becoming sick, he had killed, of all things, a snake. The man was receiving modern medical care for the illness, but he was also undergoing a spiritual ceremony offered by a traditional Navajo medicine man, again, to seek a restoration of harmony, balance, and forgiveness for taking the life of one of God’s own creatures that, despite my own feelings about snakes, is a part of God’s created and intended order. For snakes have a place in the biological ecosystems that are essential to the thriving of all living things. Snakes keep the world from being overrun by rodents, and snakes are food that sustain other sorts of animals. And, I am certain a biologist could educate us in great and surprising depths as to the importance of snakes in the various habitats where they make their homes. Thus, this man, whether his killing of the snake was actually linked to his illness or not, sought to make amends…acknowledge the God created life he ended…seek forgiveness…give thanks for the life he took…and do whatever he could to reconstitute the order, balance, and harmony needed for his own thriving and health and that of the community of living things in which he lives, moves and has his being. As a Navajo, I believe this man saw this spiritual work of restoring balance and harmony as essential to his own healing…in body, mind, and spirit. And, I believe there is wisdom here for us all to learn from.
Which, believe it or not, takes me to Lent…this 40-day journey we begin, again, together today. I have often said that Lent is the Church’s annual call to take our spiritual lives seriously…but we do so…to a particular end and for a particular purpose. And I believe that purpose is, in part, to restore balance and harmony in our lives, when we find ourselves all out of sorts…with our God…with our world…with other people…and within the tensions that exist in our own souls.
And, this good spiritual work begins today, right now, on Ash Wednesday. Specifically, in our acknowledgment of our fragility…our mortality…our imperfection…our inability to control our ultimate outcome…our inability to survive on our own…that we are all, without distinction, at the most basic, elemental level, just ash and dust. For by acknowledging our mortality and weakness, we are necessarily led to this conclusion…that we are all utterly dependent on our fellow humans’ mutual toil and the abundance of a healthy earth…to literally live…to be productive and find meaning. And, even more wondrously, we discover that we are all utterly dependent on God in Christ…whose love is as necessary for the life we live as food and water. For God’s love is the very air we breathe that sustains us both on this side of glory and the next. Our fragile human nature, that we all share, is the very thing the ashes we wear today are to remind us of. And this remembrance is not to lead us to despair…but to gratitude…gratitude first for the love of God that provides us the power to transcend the realities of sin and death…and gratitude second for the life we share with each other on this planet…our relationships with each other that are the primary conduits of God’s love in our lives, including, even our relationship with the earth, with the created order, that provides the literal fuel that fires the lives we live. So, we begin Lent, on this day, with ashes, with dust that reminds us of our blessed dependence on God, the people of God, and this world that God so lovingly fashioned.
And what then follows, it seems to me, which is the very intention and purpose of the Season of Lent, is to seek with all our heart, soul and mind…harmony and balance…again, with God, the people of God, and this world that God so lovingly created…that altogether infuses our own, dust filled lives, with meaning and purpose and direction…lives that are by God’s grace, indeed, eternal and everlasting. And that good spiritual work of seeking balance and harmony begins with taking an inventory…doing the Lent like work of honest self-examination. As twelve-step spirituality has taught us, this is the work of naming where we are out of balance…where there is disruption in our lives rather harmony. For we may or may not have literally killed a snake…but we have, at times, allowed our reptilian brains to take over. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We do harbor unhelpful prejudices of those different from us. We have put our own needs before others. We have used words that hurt and harm. We have not always helped when we could have helped. We are not always good stewards of the natural world that God has blessed us to live in and live with. We have not always loved God and tended to our spiritual lives as we ought…making prayer and worship and bible study the last thing…rather than the first…that is if there is any time left for a last thing. And, I believe these choices, that we are often not even conscious of, do impact our health in body, mind and spirit. They impact our mental well-being and our experience of happiness and joy…they limit our ability to make a difference. And, these choices, which I am just as prone to as anyone, also most assuredly impact other’s health and well-being…in our profoundly interconnected world.
Thus, Lent is, again, our chance to name those areas in our lives, and they will be different for each of us, where we are all out of sorts, out of balance, out of harmony with the love of God and all the places and people in whom we experience that love in our own lives. So, as we begin this holy season together, I invite us over the next few days to do that good spiritual work of self-examination and identify just one or two ways you want to intentionally restore balance and harmony to your life and the communities in which you live, move and have your being. And, then, as simply as I can say it, spend the rest of Lent working on it. Whatever “it” may be…adding time in each day for prayer…making our Wednesday night program a commitment on your calendar…thinking of those people or that person who needs to hear from you words of love and encouragement and connection…planting trees in communities that need shade…setting up a visit to that volunteer organization that quickened your heart when you first heard about it…seeking an authentic reconciliation with a person who you have lost touch with over some disagreement or conflict. Calling that spiritual director or therapists office and making a first appointment. Again, work on it…whatever “it” might be.
If we will but do so, I believe when Easter comes, and it is coming, we will find ourselves knowing the reality of resurrection to new life in a wholly new and transformative way. We will together be healthier, in body, mind and spirit, as individuals and as a community. We will feel the dust of which we are all made more wondrously all mingle up in each other’s dust…and…and in its eternal source…God’s own love…that binds us all, and the world that God made, together in perfect balance and harmony. Amen.