Stirring the Ashes

A message from Ash Wednesday, 2011
2 Corinthians 5:17

I’ve taken a couple of canoe trips to the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota.  Campfire management is one of the most important tasks in that vast wilderness.  Campers must properly extinguish their campfires.  Failures in this task can result in criminal penalties.  Huge forest fires have been caused by people who didn’t take the time to get this right.

Putting out a campfire in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area is a three-step process.  First, you pour lake water on the fire pit.  Second, you stir the ashes to find any remaining hot spots.  Third, you pour more water on those hot spots.  Repeat the process until you are sure the fire is completely out.

Stirring the ashes.  That’s what we do on this Ash Wednesday.  We stir the ashes of our past.  We hear some troubling words.  “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  These are troubling words because it’s painful to stir the ashes of our past.  It’s painful to uncover the pain, the grief, the anger, the shame and despair in our past.  But if we are to put out the fire, we must stir the ashes.

We stir the ashes around, and the hot spots re-appear.  Remember that you are dust.  But if that’s all we do, then the fires of our brokenness will just re-ignite.  The hot spots of our past will burn our broken spirits to the ground.

Think about the process for putting out the campfires.  First, pour on the water.  You and I are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection.  We are joined to him in death and in life.  God has “reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.”

Second, stir the ashes.  I can look with courage at the ashes of my past because I know that Jesus holds my past, present and future.  “For our sake,” Paul writes, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Third, pour on some more water.  “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.”  We keep setting new fires and creating new ashes.  But God’s love in Christ is new every morning.  We can be new creations in Christ every day.

So take some time in this Lenten season to stir the ashes of your past.  For me, it’s the pain of grief and the anxiety of being alone.  For you it may be guilt and shame over past failures.  Perhaps you wrestle with past sins or current fears.  Maybe the uncertainties of the economy or jobs or politics or war have overwhelmed your trust and hope.

Stirring the ashes of our past.  That’s what we do this evening.  The waters of baptism quench the deadly fire.  New growth can arise in place of those ashes.  So come and wear that cross of death.

Come wear that cross of death.  And know that Jesus washes it away with life.  Come wear that cross of death.  And know that Jesus turns it into the sign of your New Creation.  Come wear that cross of death.  And know that you are made into the very righteousness of God through Jesus Christ.

Stirring the ashes of our past.  It’s what we do tonight.  Making us new creations in Christ.  It’s what God does tonight.

Thanks be to Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit’s power.  Amen.