Cherishing Mortality Through Authenticity

Ash Wednesday   March 2, 2022

Isaiah 58:1-12 Ps.103

1 Cor. 5:20b-6:10 Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21

Lectionary Link

Welcome to our annual face painting liturgy.  No we're not like Native American braves going to war, so what is purpose of the ashes?  Most of us in some way have some vanity about how we look and we use various cosmetic means to make us look better to ourselves.

Ash Wednesday is a different kind of face painting, a different kind of cosmetics.  What are we doing?  With ashes imposed on our foreheads, we are trying to present to ourselves what our bodies will look like some day just before they have reach the phase of being in a state of transformation into something that might actually be useful to let either a rose or a weed to grow in the earth.

The dust of the ashes is revist of the Genesis creation story in the laboratory of God who makes humanity and uses one part dust and dirt and one major part Holy Spirit. The mixture of the two made the soul which came to be the great interior mediator between the body and the direct image of God upon us.  The soul includes mind, emotions and our will, our choosing power.

Our bodies are very important; they are the address and the location for spirit and soul.  Our observation of what happens in time, change, and aging indicate a separation of soul and spirit from the body which gets left behind to become dust.  So the ashes of Ash Wednesday, symbolically represent the final earthly state of our bodies before they transform on the invisible level to be recycled within the physical world to contribute to the future physical life of the world, becoming fertilizer for weed or flower or tomato.

We represent the future of our bodies with these ashes, not to depress ourselves, because when our bodies have become ashes, we will be gone.  We place the ashes on our head not to depress ourselves but to cherish the wonderful mixture of body, soul and spirit which is the genius of human life.

And because we cherish this combination of body, soul and spirit, we want this formula to be live with authenticity.  That is what the words of Jesus asks of us, authenticity.  How do we make body, soul, and spirit all agree about what is the highest expression of human living.

The highest expression of human life is not to look religious in public; it is to be authentic when our private lives in our closets agree with the deeds that we do in public.  The Greek word for hypocrite also means actor.  An actor plays someone whom he or she isn't.  Acting is fine for the theatre, but the purpose of faith is to unite the entire person, body, soul, and spirit to express the highest values of love and justice. 

And authenticity is a life time task; we don't get there right away.  Being authentic also means learning; learning that the standard of perfection is always higher than we thought it was.  So it means that we always have room to grow.

Let us today, cherish our lives in our bodies, while we have our location in them.  Let us also cherish the earth as the "body of God,"and be good stewards of our environment.  How do we cherish life in our body?  By living authentically.  Jesus and his words are God's gift to us to teach us to live authentic lives.  And may this Lent be for us a journey in further authenticity, as persons, as a parish, as a country and as world citizens.  Amen.