Rend Your Hearts - 14 February 2018 - Ash Wednesday

Welcome! At midnight tonight begins the Season of Lent, a time of forty days leading up to Easter. It is a time of prayer and reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ presence in our lives and in the world; a time to look within ourselves to see what needs changing and healing as we seek to follow Jesus more willingly and more completely.

In Bible times when people sinned and were sorry they would sometimes put ashes on their heads as a symbol for their sin, and as a way of saying they were sorry for doing wrong. Sin is when people act and think as if they don’t care about God or about themselves or other people or about God’s world.

Tonight, we too will use the symbol of ashes to express our sadness about sin. The ashes come from the palms we used last Palm Sunday as we welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. They remind us that Jesus is King and that we are God’s creation of the earth. They also remind us of new life, from which new plants grow and abundant life comes. The ashes are mixed with oil, which in Bible times was a sign of God’s favor and God’s healing. –– Sara Webb Phillips

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

There’s no evading the odd fact that Matthew 6:1–6 and 16–(18)21 seems to be an anti-Ash Wednesday text assigned for Ash Wednesday. The passage apparently warns us away from every kind of visible piety. In order to live out Jesus’ injunctions everyone should stop at a restroom on the way out of Ash Wednesday services and wash off those ashes. Matthew’s gospel more than any other is a manual for discipleship—piety is done secretly; charity is done openly. How do we relate the appropriate concern with liturgical faithfulness to the warnings against showiness and hypocrisy? –– David Bartlett

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

In the Hebrew Bible, fasting and repentance are often prescribed in times of suffering and danger or under threat of such concerns. Here the threat is not attack by a human army, but the “day of the LORD” and the destruction and terror it brings.

. . . Joel calls for fasting, but in a redefined form. He calls upon the people to return to God with fasting and repentance, but rather than rending their clothes as a sign of that repentance, they are asked to “rend your hearts and not your clothing.” –– Jonathan Lawrence

2 Corinthians 5:20b––6:10

Just as the psalmist pledged to “teach transgressors your ways,” Paul seeks to reconcile the Corinthians to God, serving as an ‘‘ambassador for Christ.’’ In many of the readings for today, it is not the act but the motivation that counts, the way we respond to God’s gifts. So too here, he urges them “not to accept the grace of God in vain.” He cites Isaiah 49:8 in its reference to an acceptable time, a day of salvation, which Paul says has arrived. –– Jonathan Lawrence

David Bartlett, an ordained American Baptist minister, is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and Lantz Professor Emeritus of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jonathan D. Lawrence, an American Baptist Church ordained minister, teaches Religious Studies and Theology at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York.

Sara Webb Phillips is a United Methodist minister serving North Springs UMC in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

Homily Service 39, no. 4 (2006): 2-12.

You are Heir to Jesus’ Mission – 31 December 2017 – First Sunday after Christmas

Preachers might begin thinking about today’s sermon by asking themselves the pointed questions put to us all by Ron Anderson:

As Mary models for us, what now does it mean to let this word “dwell in us richly”? How does it take up residence in our lives? Have we provided the word only with the “guest room” and assumed its residence is temporary rather than permanent? –– Ron Anderson

Luke 2:22-40

The Holy Family arrives at the temple for Jesus’ dedication. The prophets Samuel and Anna greet them and recognize the identity of the child. But even while rejoicing, Samuel speaks of the child’s mission to reveal to the world the truth about God’s power. The rest of Jesus’ life expresses this mission.

If by “Holy Family” we mean good old-fashioned values, such as honoring elders, not rocking the boat, and love of mother and apple pie, we are going to be disappointed. Jesus doesn't have much time for such things. He is about a greater mission—to set captives free, to liberate the oppressed. Later he will declare: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear God's word and do it” (8:21).

Jesus' family values do not focus on the preservation of the nuclear family but on the doing of justice. He spends much more time reaching out to those on the margins of his society—those who neither come from nor seek to establish a stable, two-parent home—than the decent and upright. His community is full of those who have abandoned steady livelihoods, spouses, children, even dying parents. “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Lk. 9:60). He welcomes the rejected and embraces the stranger. –– Scott Haldeman

Isaiah 61:10––62:3

The second part of this chapter, following the mission to Zion to bring hope to the exiled and oppressed, rejoices in the salvation of Zion. The confidence in God's righteousness leads to praise of the vindication of Israel with metaphors of beauty and power. –– Sara Webb Phillips

Galatians 4:4-7

The Holy Family now includes all the baptized.

Paul describes the mechanism by which we are brought into the family of God—baptism. Both those who were born into the covenant (the circumcised) and those who heard and believed (the uncircumcised) are made heirs—not servants of God but daughters and sons. Circumcision is no longer requisite for joining the church; in Paul's eyes, it is an act of obedience to the law from which we have been set free. Jew and Greek, then, are equal and equally members of the Body.

So, too, equality not hierarchy is established along other lines of social differentiation: whether one is a slave or free out in the world, here we are equal; whether one is granted greater deference out in the world because one is male, here male and female are equal.

We are to live differently than the world lives—with the confidence of those who have been adopted and so who are guaranteed a great inheritance, with the liberty of those who are no longer subject to the law but free to indulge in acts of radical service. As Paul concludes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:13–14). –– Scott Haldeman

E. Byron [Ron] Anderson is the Ernest and Bernice Styberg Professor of Worship and the Director of the Nellie B. Ebersole Program in Music Ministry at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.

W. Scott Haldeman is associate professor of worship at Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.

Sara Webb Phillips is a United Methodist minister serving North Springs UMC in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

Homily Service 40, no. 1 (2007): 73-84.