"Where Our Treasure Is" Ash Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 6:1-21

Day in day out, month in month out, the years seem to go faster and faster. We routinely lose track of what is important, what is meaningful and awe-inspiring. I am thankful for the marking of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season to set aside days for prayer and for faith. Until the 1980s in Protestant Churches we did not celebrate evening services during Lent, we had potluck suppers with a movie or speakers, but somehow we went from the season of Epiphany to Lent and Palm Sunday to Easter without acknowledging a distinction.

One church, every Lent, had the Middle School and High School students create a large wooden cross. We are talking about a 6 x 6, 12 feet tall, with a 6 foot cross piece, and on Ash Wednesday, we would carry the cross out to the roadside in front of the church, where we would dig a hole and set the cross, for the Lenten Season. On Good Friday, it would be draped in Black, and Easter Morning, helium Balloons would be tied to it.

One year, a college freshman, was on Spring-break mountain climbing with friends when he slipped and fell and died. Stephan had loved the outdoors, so his classmates had created an outdoor Sanctuary beneath the cross. It was an especially meaningful memorial, with many of his friends offering music, or poetry, or memories. But at the end of the Memorial, the Pall bearers carried the casket to the hearse, and as we all watched we heard the door slam and the car drive away, while we remained at the church. The reality of his leaving us, of this 19 year old dying was unintentionally too real.

The calendar sometimes plays tricks with us. I am told that in 2013 CareGivers day and Mother's day fall on the same day. The Presbyterian Women's Annual Yard Sale always fell on the last week of April, which because Easter moves, one year was the week after Easter. Advertising the Event, their husbands had made a large billboard like sign, that read “Trash and Treasure Rummage Sale” and carried it out to the roadside. It took about 15 minutes for my phone to ring, with a neighbor complaining that at the foot of the cross was a sign reading Trash & Treasure. I tried to explain that this was Biblical, as Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I tried quoting that “One persons' trash is another's treasure” but getting into more trouble the longer I talked, I hung up the phone and moved the sign.

The Call to Illumination from the words of Wendell Berry describe exactly what Ash Wednesday is all about. Stop for a moment and collect all the emails of the last year, all the media concern about Charlie Sheen, all the anxiety over Haiti and Egypt, and Libya, Jordan and Kuwait, all the efforts related to interpreting Midterm Elections, and purge it. Would we be any the worse? Possibly we bury it on the earth, possibly we burn it to ash, but we mark an end to what was and a beginning to what will be, and we turn it all over to God.

Walking throughout the Village today, I ran into several individuals with the cross on their foreheads, they smiled at me as much as to say “See Reverend, I did something holy today.” There is this tension to Biblical faith that does not allow us to get away with anything, for while we are to pray, while we are to be active in our faith, we are not to desire recognition for our piety. The struggle of Isaiah 58 is that the people have been praying, have observed fasting, have made their offerings, but they did not get anything for it. Faith in God does not follow the market economy. There is no quid pro quo, I paid money, I said my prayers SO give me a good life, or solve my problems for me. That is the equation of the Sale of Indulgences. You paid money to buy a sliver of Jesus' cross, or a hair from the head of John the Baptist, or to drink from the Cup that is the Grail, and possessing this charm, you could be satisfied.

The last several days, the Morning shows have been marketing the idea that The American Dream has changed, our Treasure has been moved. For decades, ever since WWII, possibly even The Great Depression, the American Dream had been to send your kids to college, to pay off your Mortgage and own your own home, to have two cars, to be able to retire from work. According to the new economists, the new dream is not measured in possessions and accomplishments, but in savings. Knowing that Pensions are being invaded, knowing that Social Security is in trouble of becoming an unfunded mandate, rather than being concerned with College Loans or Mortgages for which you can get a loan, the question is how much we are saving for our future, because there is no Retirement Loan.

In much the same way, faith is not about whether we were a Church member, or for how many years. On the ends of each of the pews are brass plaques with numbers which correspond to a chart, and originally in this church it was prestigious to be in the front row, to be seen in church. Today, in any church, the seats which fill up first are always the ones in back, which makes me wonder if we want to not be seen. But the point of prayer is not how many times we prayed, or the words we used, or how sincere we made ourselves sound.

A small group of us have been in Bible Study together the last many Wednesday evenings. Reading and sharing together, we have come to understand the Presbyterian belief in PRE-DESTINATION, that with Adam, all Humanity will always choose selfishly, but that what matters is that God does offer grace that we can turn our lives around to live differently.
AND that this is different from PRE-DETERMINATION that we do not hold to, that all of life is pre-ordained and we are simply going through the motions.
That God is both Eternal, and All Powerful, and All Knowing, which make God God, but God does not use all these abilities simultaneously, God allows us Freedom of Will. God may well know what we are going to do, but choose to not act; or God may be able and willing to act but be uncertain what we will do.
AND the wonderful element of faith that we as believers routinely overlook is that humanity has had the ability to Change the Mind of God. The experience of The Flood, changed God to never again destroy the earth by chaos. The experience of Ninevah demonstrated to God that they were repentant.

Rather than being a purchase of divine services, PRAYER is a kind of conversation between us and God, which re-orients us to who God is, and what we can expect.
We begin with three statements affirming God in our lives:
God is our Loving Parent and Creator,
God's very NAME is holy.
Eventually the Kingdom of God will be worked out on earth as it is in heaven.
All we as Creatures can ask of God, is three things:
that our Daily needs will be met,
that a forgiving righteous God will forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors,
that God not lead us into temptation.
The Ancient Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac, the Muslim story of Abraham and Ishmael, both describe God testing Abraham's trust of God.

So we enter into this season of Lent, in which we re-orient our lives different from our routine.
We intentionally create and carry the cross out to the roadside.
We evaluate where our Treasure truly is, and what we Treasure.
We recognize that as Ken Blanchard described OUR CHEESE IS CONTINUALLY BEING MOVED
And we hope that through prayer, through starting again and acting with integrity, with compassion We can affect God, or bring our own lives in line, either way becoming one with the Almighty.