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Wednesday, February 22 - Time Travel

 This sermon was preached for Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023 for St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 103:8-14, and Matthew 6:1-6,16-21.

I saw a tweet the other day that I can’t stop thinking about. It was from a mother of a really little one and I wish I could give more credit than that but I’ve had a heck of a time finding it again. This mother said that every time she gets bored or frustrated with caring for her baby she pretends that she is a time-traveler who has gone back in time to spend time with her baby. She imagines that she has traveled from all the way in the distant future just for another afternoon with her child as a small infant. I love that. And I’ve been totally been stealing it. That second when I don’t think I could do any more midnight soothing or sing that inane song once more time, I think what if I’ve traveled all the way back in time just to be with him in this moment, just to see her again this tiny and this small?

It works because it reminds me that this time in my life, with all its frustrations or tedium, is fleeting, and therefore it is sacred. This will be a distant memory someday, and therefore it is sacred. 

I don’t think this radical way of viewing the present is just for early parenthood. It is for any time of our life. This person you are, this person you are with, they will never be exactly this person ever again. You will never be this you, this young, again. My baby will never be a baby again, my toddler will be a boy before I know it. My loved ones will never just stay as they are today. A part of me will always miss who they were. A part of me yearns to jump forward to imagining who they are going to be. But there is another part, a part I want to strengthen, that draws me to who they are right now. 

This is what Ash Wednesday is about. We remember that we will die. We remember that life contains within it a thousand, million deaths. A thousand, million goodbyes.

There is a particular kind of sadness in that reminder. But there is also a gift. In the scrape of ash against skin, there is an invitation to be more wholly in the present. 

If you have known great grief in your life, then perhaps you know what people mean when they say, I would give anything for one more day with the one I lost. Perhaps you have thought it or said it yourself. Yet for some reason, for many reasons, it often seems so impossible to remember in the moment that this is our one more day with the one right in front of us, right now. Ash Wednesday is here to remind us. 

On Ash Wednesday, we resist jumping forward to the hope of the resurrection. We do not say, it will all be okay in the end, when we are perfect. We do not speak of eternal spring or angel’s wings. We speak of ash and dust. We stay with death today, seeking its strange beauty, its paradoxical hope, and its gift to us. 

The prophet Isaiah would warn us not to wallow in exquisite sadness of our own impermanence. When we read Isaiah’s passage about fasting on Ash Wednesday, it’s not to shame us for putting ash on our foreheads. This passage reminds us of another gift of mortality: empowering us to act now, however imperfectly. There are bonds to be loosed today. There are chains that need breaking in our world right now. There are hungry people who need to be fed, there are naked people who need to be clothed, people without a place to belong who need to be welcomed in. Too much looking behind, or too much looking ahead, or too much looking inward and we won’t see the human beings right in front of us - the loved one or the stranger. 

Jesus says to us, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Ash Wednesday says to us, treasure the heaven in today. Seek out the heaven within this moment however hidden, however buried in grief or pain or frustration. 

And here, now, here, your heart will be. Amen.


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