Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
Preached Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024
There has been much amusement and speculation about Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day falling on the same day. Now, the last time this happened was just a few short years ago - 2018. But before that the last time it happened was 1945. Pastor friends have joked about making ashes in the shape of a heart on people’s foreheads. Still others have been sharing memes or little comics about the coincidence. My favorite is the one where someone asks a pastor what their Valentine’s Day plans are. To which the pastor says, “smearing dirt on people’s foreheads and reminding them of their mortality.” To which the pastor is met with a face of shock.
I have particularly enjoyed the Ash Wednesday Valentine Day Cards that have popped up on my Facebook news feed. Who doesn’t want a romantic card that says, “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, being my Valentine, is an Ash Wednesday Must.” For others, they say they will give up chocolate for Lent….starting tomorrow. Others are bummed their Valentine’s Day celebrations will be filled with ashes and reminders of mortality…
But since Valentine’s Day isn’t just the Hallmark celebration of love but the Roman Catholic celebration of the Feast Day of St. Valentine ...which is the anniversary of Valentine being bludgeoned with clubs and beheaded so…I don’t think he’ll mind so much that his day is a day that is shared with reminders of our own mortality. It might not fit well on a greeting card - but it is apt for the religious reasons behind this day.
And I would say these days aptly go together for another reason: Because both days really are about love. For us Christians gathered together today to start our Lenten journey together, to repent, to remember our mortality, and to participate in the imposition of ashes - we might wonder what does love have to do with ashes? Or, in the words of Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do, got to do with it?”
Well, actually, everything.
While Valentine’s Day focuses on human love that has its barriers, faults, and limitations, Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent serve as reminders of God’s perfect, limitless love.
In today’s reading from Joel, the prophet reminds us that God is abounding with steadfast love. That steadfast love is with us in all seasons of the Christian year and seasons of our lives. And yet we often fail to recognize it or live our lives in accordance with it.
Enter the season of Lent. A time in the lives of Christians to repent and redirect our lives toward God - this is in preparation both for Easter, Christ’s resurrection, and Christ’s final, triumphant return and redemption of all creation.
Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, traditionally serves as a reminder of our mortality and our limitations and the need to repent in light of those things. We gather together to worship God, to read Scripture, to confess our sins, and to be reminded of our mortality, that from dust we came and from dust we shall return. This is one of the most counter-cultural observances of the Church. As a society, we like to pretend that we are infinite. We imagine ourselves like little Buzz Lightyears, all saying together, “To infinity and beyond!” We shy away from death - relegating it to hospitals, funeral homes, out of our homes, and every day sight. But it is an everyday occurance, it is part of our reality. It will happen to each and every one of us. And so, we need to be reminded of our humanness, our faults, our limitations, our mortality. We can think of Ash Wednesday as a test of our emergency broadcast system, as Joel said, “Blow the trumpet, sound the alarm!” It’s our yearly reminder that while we are yet alive, we came from dust and to dust we shall return.
And love is at the center of that statement.
God made us out of dust because God loves us.
The book of Genesis creates an image of a loving God. A God that takes their own spit, mixes it with the dirt on the ground, and with their own hands, fashions humankind in God’s image. This is a hands-on God, a God who puts their own self, their spit, their sweat, their blood into their creation. A God that looks at it and blesses it and says it is “very good.” This is our loving Creator God who made us from dust and watches over us.
And Scripture tells us that because God first loved us, we can love. And so the repentance of Ash Wednesday and of Lent is really a return to that love. We have stored up our treasure in earthly things. In things that are finite, in things that moth and rust consume, where thieves break in and steal. In titles, in money and other measures of success. In ourselves and our selfish desires. In our own insular circles. In things that don’t honor and glorify God. Ash Wednesday is a reminder that our treasure is where our heart is - and while we are called to love God, our hearts are often preoccupied with other earthly things.
And so Joel says to return to the Lord “with all your heart.” God wants all of our heart, of our love. And so on Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are mortal. And that every life is a gift, no matter how long or how short that life is - and that God loves that life. And we need to use whatever finite time we have, to love God and to love neighbor. To live lives not for ourselves but to glorify God and to serve our neighbors. And so when we repent, when we lament, those are songs of love to God. As we turn from our sinful ways, from self-centeredness, from greed, from whatever is stopping us from loving others - we are moving toward the love of God.
So on days like Ash Wednesday, we mourn our own mortality. We lament our errors and sinfulness and we repent - we turn toward God, toward Love.
And so what form does this repentance, does this love take during Lent? Let’s take a look at the text from Matthew. This text is not telling us to not practice piety…
It is telling us that when we give alms, give not out of your own gratification, but give out of love.
When you pray, do so not out of wanting to look good, but for love of God and those we pray for.
And when we fast, when we receive ashes on our foreheads, don’t do it as a way to impress others with how religious you are, do it for your relationship with God. To prayerfully and purposefully deepen your relationship with a God who loves you and a God who desires you to return to God with all your heart.
And so today, ashes to ashes, dust to dust - What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Everything.
Amen.
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