FEBRUARY, 2007 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-18; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Pointing Out the Obvious
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In an Ash Wednesday sermon, Pastor Luke Bouman said that smearing ashes on our foreheads with the words, Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return is not really telling us something we don’t already know. He means that we experience this same message many times daily.
-A good, honest look in the mirror; a visit to the doctor or the gym;
failing eyesight…or failing any test;
-a glance at: the paper, headlines on the net, or stories on the evening news;
any or all are enough to confirm our deepest fears: that life is terribly tenuous, far too fleeting, and feels unnecessarily unfair in many ways…
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
These ashes and those words remind me of a group project I was part of years ago that didn’t exactly go according to plan. Trying to assess what went well and what didn’t, our work was hampered by a know-it-all who felt inspired to rehash each and every mistake. Finally, when we’d all just about had it up to here, a friend of mine turned to this character and said, You have an amazing ability to point out the obvious.
We are made from and will return to dust – and we all admit it…or do we? In his book entitled The Denial of Death, Ernst Becker asserts that from the broadest constructs of society down to the heart that keeps our bodies alive, we do everything in our power to hide this wound called mortality, to turn a blind eye to the disease called death with which we are all afflicted…
It is a terminal condition that starts its work on us, I suppose, from the moment life begins. We know this unwelcome truth about death down in the deepest recesses of our brains and our bones – we even joke about it. As the saying goes, the only guarantees in life are…death and taxes.
Yet, says Becker, we find it impossible to resolve this split in the fabric of our reality: we can imagine immortality…but few of us ever live to be even a hundred. So in a dramatic display of denial, our society spends millions and millions on everything from anti-wrinkle cream to hair implants. We dream about the fountain of youth; we worship at the altar of beauty; and we struggle when death intrudes on our lives, as we should.
In a sense, Jesus’ words to us this evening are a dose of medicine to help ease this feverish fear of death. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal…says the Lord. Is he saying that such treasures are bad? No…but that there are better treasures out there deserving of our energy, passion and time.
What are those treasures that we can store up in heaven? Good works? Kind deeds? Generous offerings of our time, abilities, and money? Sure… but the truth is that it doesn’t matter how sacred or secular the cause: any path we take in life will lead to certain sacrifices, various victories, particular pleasures and poignant pains. Jesus’ warning is, in a sense, another example of pointing out the obvious, but still we need to hear it.
In short, I think he’s saying: Don’t get distracted by the glittery things of this world, and don’t sacrifice your greatest treasures: faith, family and friends.
With these two anchors in place, Jesus sets us free to discover the joys that fill our cups to overflowing: life’s simple pleasures and our simple service to help make life better for ourselves and our neighbors – for Jesus’ sake. Amen.