Sermon for All Saints-by-the-Sea, Ash Wednesday, February 16, 2010
by the Reverend Elizabeth Hendrick

Joel 2:12-18; 2Cor 5:20-6:2; Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

Last night, we re-instituted an old tradition not done for many years:  the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper.  Shrove Tuesday provides a good excuse to eat pancakes and sausage with enthusiasm – these days, it’s not often we can justify that much fat, sugar and white flour in one meal.  We also said our good bye’s to the alleluia’s during last night’s supper.  We gave them a proper send off, gently rolling up the alleluia banner and laying it in a special wooden box, designed by our sexton Carlos just for this occasion, and then following the children as they carried the box to the church.  We sang songs and prayed prayers, one of which had these lines:
“Help us to give up our selfish habits and all the things that stand between us and your love.  Help us to add things to our lives that bring us closer to you.”

It seemed to me that these verses summed up the reason behind this annual time of reflection and introspection.  Our souls, our spiritual “home” is a trash magnet.  We get cluttered with things that don’t add any value, but do take up a lot of space – space that should be reserved for God. 

It’s as if our spiritual house is full of clutter and grimy from neglect.  It’s a Thomas Kincaide painting in reverse.  Rather than warm light at the windows and smoke curling from the chimney, the house is deserted and dark.  The beautiful garden has surrendered to an overgrowth of weeds.  The walk path has disappeared under grass a foot high.  We stomp our way through the brush and press down on the door latch.  The door proves hard to open because the hinges have rusted so that the door barely moves.  As we put our shoulder against the door to slowly push it forward, trash piled up against the other side of the door slowly relinquishes its territory, but only for a moment.  The area taken up by accumulated trash allows the door to open only a little bit before all movement stops. 

We manage to open the door wide enough to get inside, but when we look around, it’s too dark to see much detail.  The windows are so grimy with dirt that only the faintest light gets through.  As our eyes adjust to the limited light, we notice that almost all of the floor space is cluttered with something: discarded appliances, old couches and chairs with broken springs and faded fabric. A record player with a thick spindle that used to play 45rpm records sits discarded in the corner; the covering over the speaker has started to unravel. Newspapers and magazines dating back several years and paid bill receipts from as far back as 1998 are stacked haphazardly on all the tables. Dirty dishes are in a sink half-filled with cold, grey water. Thick dust covers every surface and there is staleness to the air.  As we continue to look around, we begin to realize that our spiritual house – this space reserved for God, is not fit for habitation. 

What trash are you holding on to?  What is the nature of the dirt that clouds the windows of your soul?  What sins of omission or commission are weighing you down?  Are you tired of carrying them?  Ready to give them up?  Maybe now is the time to throw out all of this accumulated junk.     
And so we pray, “Help us to give up our selfish habits and all the things that stand between us and your love”.

We begin to throw out things that are beyond repair, and to repair items that are salvageable. Slowly, we see space being created as one item after another is tossed out.  After awhile, the front door is able to open all the way, and we can move from one room to another without stumbling.  So we’ve straightened up, as my Grandmother would say, but we realize we’re not quite finished.  

Do you think maybe it’s time to give this space a thorough cleaning?  “Rend your hearts and not your garments”, the prophet Joel writes.  It is not enough to get rid of the things that clutter the space, we must scrub it clean.

We carry all of the papers to the recycle bin and sweep out dust and cobwebs.  We clean old ashes out of the fireplace and restack it with new logs.  Being good recyclers, we keep some of the old newspapers and use them to attack the grime stuck to the windows with Windex so that sunlight can not only brighten the space, but also generate warmth.  Then we open the windows to allow the soft breezes to blow through.  We polish; we mop; we scrub the tile grout with toothbrushes dipped in bleach to kill the mold.  In an interesting parallel between this story and  what we are doing today, did you know that ashes were once used to make soap?  Ashes contain alkali, a chemical that is a powerful cleaning agent.  Maybe having ashes pressed into our foreheads is a good start to what we’re about here.

And when it is thoroughly clean, we go out and mow the lawn, pull the weeds, and plant new flowers.  We put clean linen on the bed, hang fresh towels in the bath and cover the dining room table with a bright colored tablecloth.  We buy new candles; replace broken crockery with new. And we invite God to come inside, praying, “Help us to add things to our lives that bring us closer to you”. 

May these 40 days, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, provide you with what you need to put your spiritual house in order, scrubbed and ready to welcome Easter.