Christ Cathedral

Old Testament - Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103
New Testament - 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10
Gospel - Matthew 6:16, 16-21

One of the most chilling scenes in the movie Schindler’s List comes when a group of Jews is being admitted to the Plaszow concentration camp. There is a sense of foreboding as they are forcibly sorted into groups. The camera follows a group of women as their hair is chopped off, their clothes are taken away, and finally they are herded like cattle into a giant shower stall.

The women have heard rumors about extermination chambers, and they huddle together in fear waiting for the gas. There is a hissing noise and they wince, in expectation of the deadly fumes. When water begins to stream from the nozzles overhead, they raise their arms to the sky and begin to laugh and weep as they realize that their lives have been spared.

A few moments later, the women are back outside as they are pushed along to the next stage in their dehumanizing journey. Nevertheless, there is almost a lightness in the air. Only minutes before, it seemed that death had come, but death had passed them by. The relief is clear from their faces. As they walk along, a white flaky substance falls about them in the cold night air of the Polish winter.

It is only when one woman looks up to the towering chimney of the incinerator that the truth is clear. They have been spared, but others have not. The flakes that fall around them are not snowflakes. They are the ashes of those who have not been so lucky. A few have been spared death, but even these are covered with ash, a visible and palpable reminder that death is never far away.

On Ash Wednesday, Christians all over the world prepare for Lent with a simple reminder that we too are never far from death. As Paul notes in his first letter to the Corinthians, the last enemy to be destroyed is death, and although we believe that death has been defeated by Christ, the power of death is not yet fully destroyed. Even in the face of our future hope, we recognize that this hope we share in Christ is something that comes to its fullest fruition only after we go through the doors of death.

For many people, the season of Lent is a time when themes of death and penance loom large, but if the subjects of our own mortality or making personal amends with God become the exclusive focus of our Lenten practice, much of the meaning of the season is lost. Lent is not a season of mourning. It is a time of preparation; it is a time for action that will draw us and those around us nearer to God.

As the people of God, however, we must be mindful of the sort of action that we take. The situation Isaiah describes in today’s lesson is very instructive as we begin this season of preparation.

"Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God."

Isaiah’s description of the people of Israel is full of irony. People who seek God, people who are described as knowing his ways generally fall into the category of the righteous. But Isaiah calls them rebellious. He tells them that they need to repent.

The problem that Isaiah identifies was not with their formal religious practice; it was the fact that their faith did nothing for the world around them. In a word, they were pious, introspective, and finally ineffective at making the world a better place. They did not know how to practice evangelism.

They had figured out how to pray. They studied the Bible. They showed up at religious services. But their devotion lacked a proper evangelistic outreach. The Greek word from which we get "evangelism" literally means good news. The people addressed by Isaiah’s words had plenty of religion, but their religion did not translate into a message of hope for the people around them. There were people who were hungry and destitute all around them, but the religion of Isaiah’s congregation did not tell people on the outside of their synagogue how God could make their lives better.

In our world, we do not see a lot of people in the kind of desperate poverty Isaiah describes, but we are surrounded by spiritual poverty. The spiritual poverty of the present age is widespread. All around us, people are spiritually dead and dying. They live lives of quiet desperation, distracting themselves with food and sex and consumer goods and civic clubs that will never lead them to eternal life. They will live and die, without ever hearing that we have ourselves found true and lasting life in God.

What is our message to these people? I’m afraid that we often don’t have one. The reason we don’t have a message, the reason we have no good news to share is that we are like those Jews from Schindler’s List who escaped the gas in the showers. We too have escaped. Our religion has helped us overcome our greatest problems. We have our life. We know what it means to have eternal life. We are safe.

And we all too easily forget that we are surrounded by a world of people who are dying a spiritual death. We are surrounded by people whose sense of self and meaning has long been offered up to the ash heap of this broken world. What is our message of hope to them? How long has it been since you invited someone to join you at church, or told someone about answered prayers, or mentioned the comfort that you find in your weekly participation in the sacraments?

Let me urge you as you come forward to receive this sign of your own mortality, to consider this question: who do you know that needs the life that is only found in Jesus? Please let these ashes be a reminder to you of your own death, but more importantly, let them remind you that there is another death, a spiritual death which is far more significant. People everywhere are waiting to hear the good news of Christ, but it is up to us to tell them in time for the resurrection.