FEBRUARY 6, 2008 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-18; 2 Cor 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Complicated Food for Worms
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.
As I thought about my sermon for tonight, I tried to remember any movies or books that featured images of people with dirty faces. I thought of Charles Dickens’ young Oliver Twist trying to survive in Fagan’s gang of thieves; or Jane and Michael Banks learning about the life of chimney sweeps in the movie Mary Poppins; Liza Doolittle before her transformation in My Fair Lady; and the street-urchin-turned-patriot named Gavroche who died for freedom in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
They, along with everybody who gets their faces smudged at work or at play, share a common trait: that kind of dirt can be wiped off, washed away. There’s something different, though, about the dirty diagram that Christians all over the world are wearing today. Oh, it’s not like a tattoo – this mark also washes off just fine. It does, however, have a lasting effect…on the way that we live.
Once you receive this smear of ashes on your forehead and hear the words, Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, it’s almost impossible to remain detached about or in denial of our mortality. In that way, it’s nothing short of subversive, counter-cultural even, to come to church, confess our sin and consent to bear this sign of the cross.
For truly our culture seeks to counteract this consternating and cruel consignment to the grave, even though, as we all know, it’s a contract that cannot be contravened. As the old saying goes, we can only count on two things in life: taxes and…death.
So how are we encouraged by our culture to deal with death?
To quote a former politician: Deny, deny, deny! And we deny it with a passion: look at the billions of dollars spent annually on everything from anti-aging creams to cosmetic surgery to the hair club for men. We cannot abide the terrible truth that the bell tolls…for thee and me.
This fact, says Ph.D. Ernest Becker, is the bane of the human experience. In his book The Denial of Death, Becker asserts that our entire cultural experience is designed to help us deny that the Specter of Death awaits us all. The problem arises when, in adulthood, we are struck by the massive unfairness of life: we, who can imagine eternity, are constantly reminded that our lives are limited to at most only a handful of decades. The crisis crashes upon us, he says, when we realize that we are nothing more than complicated food for worms…
And yet, though this may be true for many of our siblings who are slaves of this culture that worships youth and health, fame and wealth, it is, for those of us who call ourselves by the name of Christ, a particularly toothless beast.
Though the world may roar and rage, though its people may be angry and upset, though the powers of darkness may seem able to overcome any ray of hope…we know what the truth is. Says the Apostle Paul: We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
All this we know because of the God who desired to be known as the One who was crucified that all people might be forgiven, that all might come to know the One whose lights shines in the darkest of nights, and can never be overcome. Amen.