As Those Prepared to Die

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

The Rev. Dr. David A. Van Dyke

Ash Wednesday  

I don’t know how long this church has had an Ash Wednesday service but my hunch is that given our long history, it’s a fairly recent addition.  We Protestants had pretty much let the Catholics have a monopoly on Ash Wednesday and in fact, we deliberately stayed away from it because it was considered a Catholic thing.

We even went so far as to use scripture texts like this one I just read from Matthew, about disfiguring your face as an outward show of piety as a reason why imposing ashes on your forehead might not be such a good idea.  I don’t think that was a very accurate reading of the text, however.  Instead of understanding it that way, I think Jesus is commanding people to get in touch with themselves and their relationship with God, who knows the very secrets of our hearts.  In other words, it doesn’t matter what you do publicly—the image you try to present when others are looking, God knows your heart.  And because God knows your heart, you’d better be in touch with what’s in there as well. 

Lent asks us to do that—to get in touch with ourselves. To come to terms with who we are and what our lives are all about.  And to do that, can be a sobering experience.  It requires a certain amount of courage because any realization about who you are must also include the acknowledgement that one day you will be no more.   That time, like an ever rolling stream, will soon bear us all away.    

We don’t like to think about that.  In fact, we go out of our way to avoid discussions about death.  I think it’s safe to say, based on my experience conducting funerals, that very few people plan their funeral services in advance.  Some have cemetery plots, almost by default, but very few families arrive for the pre funeral meeting with their pastors with a list of things written out or very much in the way of details in terms of what they want. 

I don’t know about you, but the longer I live, the more I appreciate the rhythms of a liturgical life.  The more I depend on it and am reassured by its familiar signposts as a way of marking where I am on the journey.   That’s true for certain, familiar scripture texts read at certain occasions, and it’s true for prayers that come from our Book of Common Worship. 

And one prayer that we always read at funerals or memorial services—a prayer I wait for on those occasions, is the one that includes these familiar lines:      

Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying, our life may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord.

As we begin our Lenten journey with this Ash Wednesday service, those words about living as those who are prepared to die seem particularly fitting. 

Barbara Brown Taylor says that the words we say on Ash Wednesday, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return,” are sobering words. In her book Speaking of Sin, The Lost language of Salvation, Taylor says,

It’s hard for a healthy adult to hear, but when it is said for a three-year old child, or a person gaunt from chemotherapy, it can sound too harsh for words. It is language that yanks away all our deceit about death (p. 71).

She describes conducting an Ash Wednesday service and then stumbling out of the church going back into the world, and how helpful people stopped her to point out that she had some dirt on her forehead.  She responded, “Yes, I know. That’s my mortality. I thought I’d let it show today.” 

And so we have to come to terms with our mortality.  And I’d like to propose that the reason we need to do so is not out of a sense of morbidity or ghoulishness, but because to come to that realization is actually liberating.  It can help us to live deliberately and with drive and purpose, which I would argue can only be done when you are fully aware that your days here are limited and will come to an end some day. 

Do you remember those familiar words of Thoreau?   

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived (Walden).

Well, Lent begins with Jesus going not to the woods but to the wilderness.  For forty days and nights he was there, fasting and praying, but so was the devil, who, sensing his vulnerability, decides to tempt him.  “Turn stones into bread,” the devil challenged him, and who could blame him if he had done that after forty days without food?  “Grab the political power I’m handing you and establish your own reign of peace and justice.”  I’m in favor of that, by the way. 

Then the devil leads him to the pinnacle of the temple and challenges him to throw himself off and let the angels catch him, demonstrating that no harm would ever come to one of God’s own.  A sign like that would certainly be comforting and reassuring.  The devil actually quotes scripture, Psalm 91, saying, “He will command his angles concerning you, to protect you.” 

But Jesus responds, “Don’t put the Lord your God to the test.”  Of course Jesus does not give in to any of the temptations.  And my hunch is that the reason he didn’t was because he had learned something important in the wilderness.

And what I think he came to terms with out there was his own mortality. He confronted his own limits and what was required of him. 

There is so much we don’t know about Jesus.  We don’t know how he lived every day.  We know how he spent only a few days and only some of the things he said and did.  But I’d like to think that after his time in the wilderness, something about him changed dramatically.  That he understood what being faithful meant—what it required of him.  That in the wilderness he came to realization that he needed to sort things out, figure out how he was going to spend the rest of his life and what road he would travel, what sources of strength he’d rely on along the way when the going got tough, and who would be his traveling companions. 

Help us to live as those who are prepared to die and enable us to die as those who go forth to live.

Coming to terms with your mortality can do that—it can change your life, your outlook and your perspective on everything. It can teach you how precious life is and that every day is a gift. And that despite the assurance of Psalm 91 and the protection of the angles, it just doesn’t work that way.  And that immortality, physical safety and comfort, are not guaranteed to any of us. 

In some year, on one certain day, and at a particular hour whether appointed or not, who knows, each of us will die.  We don’t know how, when or what the circumstances will be, only that it will happen. 

Zoë and I were in Birmingham, Alabama last summer at the meeting of the General Assembly when my mother, who was losing her agonizing battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, took a dramatic turn for the worse. In fact the Hospice nurse said she was so weak that she could go at any time.  So we decided to fly home and get to Michigan as quickly as possible. 

We were riding across the tarmac on a crowded shuttle bus between terminals at the Cincinnati Airport when my cell phone rang.  It was my father telling me that my mother had just died. The news did not shock me as much as did the location in which I had to hear it.  It was so intrusive. 

But it made me wonder what news others on that bus had learned that morning.  Who were all these other travelers talking to on their cell phones and perhaps, saying goodbye to?   Could some of them be catching planes and rushing to deathbeds as well?   

Yesterday, while walking through Children’s Hospital, I noticed a young couple sitting in a little coffee area in a busy hallway—they were holding hands and crying about what I could only imagine.  And I cannot walk down that hallway without the sight of that sign—the one pointing to the offices for Hospice, in a children’s hospital of all places, taking my breath away.  

Death comes to each of us whether we’re ready for it or not—and most of the time we’re not ready. My friend Jon Walton said of this night with its imposition of ashes, that death is the ultimate imposition.    

What we cling to, however, the hope we live into is the same hope that Jesus discovered in the wilderness—namely the fact that God will never abandon us, whatever we are forced to endure.  And that in whatever comes our way in this life, even our own deaths, nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, and that ultimately, we are held safely in a love that will never leave us or forsake us or let us go. 

It is a love that has endured from the beginning and will endure long after were gone from this life.  It is a love that assures people of faith that even though the strife is fierce and the warfare long, hearts are brave and arms are strong. 

People of God, don’t be afraid to let your mortality show.  And may we all live each day with a sense determination, intentionality, purpose, resolve, courage, and gratitude for the precious beauty of each day we have. 

Let us pray:

Eternal God, we acknowledge the uncertainty of our life on earth. We are given a mere handful of days and our span of life seems nothing in your sight. All flesh is as grass and its beauty is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but your word will stand forever. In this is our hope for you are our God.  Even in the valley of the shadow of death you are with us. So speak to us once more your solemn message of life and death.  Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying, our life may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord.

Amen.      

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