Category Archives: Ash Wednesday

Lenten Drash For Grace United Methodist Church

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During Lent, the Newburgh Ministerial Alliance has a mid-week Lenten service.  This year, the Ash Wednesday meditation was presented by Rabbi Larry Freedman of Temple Beth Jacob.

For me, this was an educational, enlightening, and challenging presentation.  It, in my estimation, gave a new understanding for that journey that we call Lent.

I trust that you will find Rabbi Freedman’s words to be as I heard them – educational, enlightening, and challenging.

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Every time Jews pray as a group, we include a prayer called the V’ahavta. It’s a standard part of the liturgy that is a basic for all 13 year olds to learn to the point of memorization. It is so well known that most Jews who have ever gone to synagogue can recite the first line by heart or at least recognize more than most other prayers. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:5. V’ahavta et Adonai, Elohecha, b’chol levavcha, v’chol nafshecha, u’v’chol m’odecha. That’s how it starts. You shall love Adonai you God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.

That’s the translation but it is a bad translation because the import of these words is as poetic as it is literal. This pasuk begins with a triplet so filled with meaning that the middle section, “love God with all your soul” is the easiest to understand. That’s right, the soul is the easiest to understand. The last third is tricky. Me’od doesn’t really mean might. It means “very” as in the Hebrew, “tov” for good and “tov me’od,” very good. To love God with you all your me’od is something like, loving God with all that you’ve got, with even more. You love God much? Now it should be “very” much, that extra something, that little bit more that pushes anything from what it is to so very much more than what it is.

But the first of the triplet, oh the first of the triplet, that is a tricky one as well. It means heart but no, not really it doesn’t. It means more. The word for heart is lev לב. Just lev. And that’s a fine word, used all the time, but here we are told to love God with our levav לבב. What is a levav? It includes the word lev in it so we know it is similar and indeed it is similar. Levav is sometimes used interchangeably with lev. And sometimes it takes on a slightly different meaning. Something happens when you add that second vet. Something happens when you stretch out that word. Something more is going on.

The pasuk I’m speaking on today as you enter into your Lenten season is from I Samuel 16:7. The context of this pasuk comes as Saul, failing to completely wipe out evil, loses God’s favor and Samuel the prophet is now directed to find the next King of Israel. Reading the story, you really do feel for Saul. The discretion he shows seems decent but it was not what God asked for. That’s a whole other sermon and study but to suffice to say that Saul is out and Samuel is looking for who will be in.

And so he goes, as ordered, to the home of Jesse and asks to see his sons. And who should appear but the fine looking, strapping young Eliav and seeing this young man, Samuel says, this must be the one. But God says no. “Pay no attention to his appearance or his stature for I have rejected him. For not as man sees [does Adonai see]. A man sees what is visible but Adonai sees into the heart.” Adonai sees into the “lev”? No, Adonai sees into a man’s “levav.” Not just lev but levav. That added bet. Something more is going on.

And indeed it is. When we look about at all the places levav appears, it speaks to something much deeper. We all say, look into your heart, which means think deeply but this means think even deeper. Levav means the inner person, the inner mind, the willingness to be serious about self reflection.

This past Valentine’s Day, people gave each other cards. And they said, it’s from my heart. But let me remind you that teenagers who have been dating for 2 weeks and will be broken up and on to the next crush in another 4 and half days also said, “it comes from my heart.” That is not the same as a twenty-somethings looking across a table thinking about a lifelong commitment in marriage or the couple who has been together for 50 years. There’s coming from your heart, lev, and then there is coming from your heart, levav.

There are people who take a few minutes to consider their options and then there are people who will sit quietly for hours working out the pros and cons of a situation and being honest with themselves in nothing less than a soul baring contemplation. That is the difference between looking into your lev or levav.

When Deuteronomy says you should love God with all your levav, that is not an appreciation of the Grand Canyon and thinking the solar system is cool. That is a depth of passion and commitment that ought to make you shake in your boots, a naked opening up that makes you tremble.

When Samuel is told that God looks into the levav of people, that does not mean that God looks into your personality as opposed to your physical traits. It means God looks even past your personality. We all think we know what we are really like. We all know that we have character and a certain nobility and a truly fine spirit that no one understands. Nobody really knows the real me, we say. But the truth is deeper. There is the way we act, the personality that we pride ourselves as having and then there is that which is deeper, the things that motivate us to do what we do both for ill and for good; the inner demons and the deeply rooted kindness. There is, somewhere way past personality, who we really, really are, deep, deep in our levav. It takes a great deal of work to get us to that awareness and then it takes extraordinary effort to accept what we find because we don’t always want to accept what we find.

A man sees just what is visible but God sees into the levav. Thus says Adonai to Samuel and thus does God remind us this day.

That ought to scare all of you a great deal because you are being understood for who you really are. Who you really are past behavior, past personality, past everything. Deep, deep, to your very core, your levav.

But, as I understand it, you are in luck. You have a Lenten season leading to Easter. You have a Lenten season which gives you time to look deeply into your levav. You have a Lenten season that challenges you to give up not simple treats but really those things that come from a really bad place in your levav and, if I may be so bold, to embrace and amplify those good things you find deep down in your levav. You can prepare yourselves as you make your way to Easter where the events of that weekend remind you that there is a saving grace that also understands who you really are. And I can’t help but imagine that if you understand who you really are, with total honesty and bone rattling frankness, then you will rise up a better person that Easter morning.

And so let me wish you all, a very challenging and very meaningful Lenten season.

Why Are You Here?

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This was my Ash Wednesday Meditation for February 25, 2004, at Tompkins Corners UMC.  The Scriptures are Joel 2: 1 – 2, 12 – 17; 2 Corinthians 5: 20 – 6: 10; and Matthew 6: 1 – 6, 16 – 21

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A few years back I was on my way to work in New York City. Then that particular chore in life required walking from Grand Central Station to Union Square. And on this particular day, seemingly no different from the others, I could not help but notice that people walking back towards Grand Central Station all had a smudge on their foreheads.

It was not just one or two people who were marked this way but dozens of people. There was no commotion, no shouting and these people did not seem to be any different from the others around them. Obviously, I could not help but think how strange this appeared to be. But then it occurred to me. It was Ash Wednesday and I was approaching the Catholic Church on Park Avenue just as the morning mass was ending.

Now, both figuratively and theologically, I knew then what Ash Wednesday was. But my knowledge of the day was not like it is today. With the requirements of getting to work weighing more heavily on my mind, the significance of this day and of this time on the Christian calendar did not register. In fact, while growing up, there was little or no emphasis on this date or the time of the calendar.

Oh, I know about giving something up and one cannot, when growing up in the South or the Midwest, not know the meaning of Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday. Yesterday was, depending on your language, either "Fat" Tuesday (otherwise known as Mardi Gras) or Shrove Tuesday. In traditional times, the rules for fasting and abstinence were rather strict and so on the last day before Lent, you used up all your food. So that you could begin fasting, you ate meat and anything like pancakes that would use up the eggs, butter and dairy products, and fat that was in your larder, hence the tradition of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. This was also a day for rowdy sports and mischief; hence the celebrations for Mardi Gras, especially in New Orleans.

But Lent is much more than a party before or giving up of something during Lent. Far too many people emphasize the partying and far too many people give something up during the forty days, only to take it back when Easter has come and passed. That is not what this time is about.

The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lencten or "spring". Historically, the forty days before Easter are a period of preparation for Easter. It was a time of fasting. It was also in the ancient churches a time to baptize the newly convert. It was a time of penance.

But it was not meant to be a temporary change. It was meant to be a change of the heart, an inward change, not merely something on the outside for others to see. And when I began to see that Lent was more about what happen to people inside rather that what they did on the days before Lent began, my view of this day has changed. That is why I am here today.

That is why we are here today. God, through Joel, calls to us to return "with all our heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." But to do so we must change our hearts. "Rend your hearts, not your clothes" is what God said to the Israelites. Change your ways is what God requires.

Jesus was saying the same thing. He was especially disdainful of those who would stand on the corner and pray so that others could see them doing so. They were not praying to God but rather performing for the others. Avoid the public display of penance and devotion. Your penance must be for yourself, not for others. What you do during this time must be for yourself and done to restore your relationship with God, not for public attention or adulation.

So why are you here today? I hope that you have come because you seek a change in your life; I hope that you have come this day because you know you need to repent. Remember that as Jesus died on the cross that Good Friday one of the two thieves that were crucified with him mocked him and ridiculed him. But the other thief understood that he was there because he had done wrong and that Jesus had not.

And in the agony of his death, the second thief asked Jesus to forgive him. And Jesus did. In the Old Testament reading for today, we hear God saying that there is no time when you cannot change, there is no time when God will not be there if you so desire.

In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul asked them to open their hearts, minds, and ears to God and hear his cry to us. Today, we are in the same position as the Corinthians of hearing God’s call for reconciliation. Paul pointed out that many of the Corinthians had, in fact, already acknowledged salvation through Christ but that they had become stuck because they had not changed their lives.

Paul pointed out that God was ready to listen to the cries of the Corinthians and He is ready to hear our cries. God is willing to help the Corinthians and, by extension, ourselves. But we must first make the change.

We are here today because God is calling us and we have heard Him calling. We are here today because we have said to God that we are willing to confess our sins and not only give up the old life for forty days but to do so for the days beyond that.

The smudge of ashes that we receive today is not a badge of honor but a reminder. They remind us of our own mortality; they remind us of our sins. But they also remind us that we have come seeking to change our lives and begin anew. The ashes are also a sign that we have begun preparing for Easter and the Resurrection of Christ. They are a sign that we are a truly reconciled people who have sought to come back to God.

Only a cynic or someone who does not know what is to come would now ask, "why are you here?" They ask because their faith is weak or non-existent. And those of us here today would answer, "I am here because I truly desire to repent and be reconciled with God."

We know the answer to the question, a question that will be asked many times in the course of our journey in faith. And in forty days we will hear the angel ask Mary that very same question. We are here because we seek the Risen Savior, who died for our sins and to set us free.

The Time and the Place

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This was my Ash Wednesday Meditation for March 5, 2003, at Tompkins Corners UMC.  The Scriptures are Joel 2: 1 – 2, 12 – 17; 2 Corinthians 5: 20 – 6: 10; and Matthew 6: 1 – 6, 16 – 21

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There are countless quotes involving time and perhaps an equal number that involve place as the subject. Thomas Paine wrote that these are the times that try men’s souls. Charles Dickens wrote that these were the best of times and the worst of times. Brigham Young, upon seeing the Great Salt Lake, said that this was the place.

But I am only aware of one time when the time and place of an activity are the subject of a single quotation. Invariably, when I would attempt to do something highly inappropriate, my parents would invoke the phrase, "This is neither the time nor the place." Now, I am sure that your parents said much the same or you as a parent have done so as well; but I am writing the sermon so the quote gets attributed to my parents. And to be complete accurate in quoting my parents, the phrase was generally followed by "and now is neither."

As Joel called out to the people of Israel, we have gathered in this place today in order to welcome the coming of the Lord. We have gathered here today because this is the day, as Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians, the day of salvation.

Today marks the beginning of Lent, the beginning of our preparation for Easter and the resurrection, the day when salvation is realized. It is because God has promised that there would be a time when all of our pleas for mercy and justice would be answered. And now is the time and this is the place, as Paul said.

The prophet Joel writes that this is the day both of the Lord’s coming and our own return to God. Joel wants us to gather together and celebrate the presence of the Lord in our midst now because we cannot presume that another opportunity will ever come again. It also marks the beginning of our preparation for the true celebration, one that marks our salvation.

But it is a preparation done privately, not publicly. Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospels, warns us against public demonstrating our faith solely for the purpose of saying that we have faith. This is not to say that we shouldn’t let others know what we are doing. Paul points out that there are many ways of expressing one’s faith and one’s celebration of life. . It will be our actions that the loudest when it comes to our faith. Paul writes about the different types of situations he and those who worked with him faced in the completion of the ministry. It will be by our actions that others will also come to know what it is that we are celebrating this day and preparing for over the coming days.

What Jesus warned us about was making a big deal out of it. Jesus never could tolerate those who would stand on the corner in public and loudly pray. For those who would stand on the corner and loudly pray for others to hear or sounded a trumpet before they arrived merely wanted the trappings of faith, not faith itself. If we spend more of our time showing off our faith, we do not have the time to use our faith. Paul reminded the Corinthians that God was ready to listen to them but they could not be so busy doing other things that they could not hear his call.

Jesus speaks of storing treasures in heaven, not on earth, for the treasures stored on earth would slowly disappear. We are afraid that if we do not work at putting away treasures on earth then we will be left with nothing. But the time will come when we find that we don’t have anything. Our treasures will be that which we find in heaven, having led the good life and putting our faith into action so that others have the good life as well. Jesus’ own concerns were for those to whom he ministered. He made no big deal about it, he did not call a press conference to let others know how many were fed or what was eaten; he simply went about seeing that those that were hungry were fed.

Paul wrote of the many ways that those associated with his ministry carried it out. Here is a chance to do the same. There is this thought that we should give something up for Lent; that we should sacrifice something. But I want us to think about something else this year; rather than giving up something, let us give of ourselves. Ask yourself what it is that you can do this year that would help someone. One way is to utilize the Lenten Calendar that is available.

There is a time and a place for everything, if I may paraphrase the Preacher from Ecclesiastes. Joel called for the people of Israel to come together in a single place to celebrate the coming of the Lord. Paul said that now was the time for salvation. If you have not given yourself to Christ, then this is the time and the place to do so. If you have given yourself to Christ, what better time or place is there but here and now to rededicate your life to Christ, so that others may also be able to so.