By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

Ash Wednesday, 2/25/04

Luke 4:1-13

The older I get, the more I appreciate symbols, I think because symbols carry meaning that we recognize at a deeper-than-cognitive level. Take ashes for example’ashes, a sign of humility for some as we enter this period of self-examination’ashes might also remind us of our final destination in the ancient words repeated: ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.’ Or are ashes for you a reminder of the shadows in your life that need attention?

Last night I was on the phone with my 20-something-year-old daughter, who, like many young adults is finding her way through the religious maze and currently not attending a church, even though she has a minor in religion from Harvard, and is fascinated by the world’s religions. She lives with 9 people in a warehouse, several of whom are Jewish, one who leans toward Buddhism and some who espouse no particular religion. These 10 roommates respect each other’s religious holidays, so for example, they didn’t celebrate only Christmas or only Hannukah; they called it Christ-nuh-kah. Cari said to me on the phone last night that Ash Wednesday is the one day of the year she most feels like going to church, to experience the ashes on her forehead.

Of course, I got excited and said, ‘Really. Have you thought about why that is?’ And she said, ‘It’s like you get a fresh start. Like no matter what’s gone before, this day is a day to begin over again, new. It’s like that song we used to sing, Mom’

We rise again from ashes, from the good we’ve failed to do

We rise again from ashes, to begin our world anew.

If all the world is ashes, then must our lives be too?

An offering of ashes, an offering to you.

Well I got off the phone thinking it’s nice to know some things have stuck! Take this as encouragement if your college-age or adult kids aren’t attending church these days!

Symbols carry great meaning, and some are archetypal. An archetypal symbol is one that seems to speak to people throughout the ages. The famous psychotherapist, Carl Jung, identified patterns of thought and symbolic imagery that he believed to be derived from the collective experience of humanity, now present in the individual unconscious.

The wilderness is an archetypal symbol. In many traditions, not just Christianity, the wilderness often refers to a place of struggle, sometimes in chaos, often in danger, in each individual life. Take Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. Characterized as struggle with temptation to power and pride, this may have been some kind of vision quest at the beginning of his ministry, or simply the time in Jesus’ life when he struggled to understand life and his relationship with God.

In over a thousand years of Jewish writings, long before Jesus’ day, the wilderness was a symbol of spiritual struggle, rather than a literal area of untamed landscape. The number 40 was repeatedly used to symbolize a significant length of time spent in confusion. The ancient story of the Israelites has them spending 40 years ‘wandering in a wilderness’, meaning it took a long time for them to learn to trust God. Moses is described as having spent 40 days on a holy mountain, before he produced the ten commandments. Elijah spent 40 days alone before hearing the still small voice of God up on the same mountain. Little wonder that the early church chose 40 days to be the season of Lent, that season of time set apart to be our own wilderness experience.

The hope, of course, is that if one faces the wilderness, the questions, the doubts, the pain and the struggle of being human, one comes out of such a time of reflection, ready to experience a resurrection, newness of meaning, a new start, just as my daughter understands at a deep, unconscious level. If we are to learn from the wilderness parts of life, then it is not a place to run through blindly or look for short-cuts. We need to spend 40 days each year wrestling again and again with the beasts that we meet in our life journey, trusting that what we see in them, what we see in ourselves, can lead us closer to God.

What is your wilderness tonight? What is your struggle? Is your wilderness simply a dullness in which you feel dried up? Do the things that used to give your life meaning no longer work for you? Is it time to do something about the angst that has been trying to get your attention? Or maybe your wilderness came with the death of a loved one, or a divorce, or sudden unemployment that has thrown you into chaos.

If you are walking through a wilderness of discouragement, your energy may be low and you may be vulnerable to the beasts of fear or anxiety. Remember the wild beasts of the soul that Jesus encountered. He was given spiritual strength; you will be too. I like Matthew’s version of this story the best, because it says at the end, ‘Angels came and waited on him.’ Angels sometimes come to us in the form of friends, some show up in the form of new understanding; trust that the spirit will come and wait on you just as the spirit touched Jesus.

Some folks are lost in the wilderness of greed and materialism. So preoccupied with accumulating, we risk being swallowed up in spiritual darkness where stress and greed suck the joy out of life for ourselves and others. We may be dust, but we are God’s dust and we were created for something much better than that! Theologian Karl Rahner says: ‘We are nothingness that is filled with eternity; death that teems with life; futility that redeems; dust that is God’s life forever.’

Maybe your wilderness is the chaos of guilt and remorse over unresolved sin. Do you need to talk to someone about that, finally? Tonight is the night to bring whatever the guilt is before God, the One who we believe loves us and wants to give us a fresh start on a new journey toward wholeness.

We rise again from ashes, from the good we’ve failed to do

We rise again from ashes, to begin our world anew.

If all the world is ashes, then must our lives be too?

An offering of ashes, an offering to you.

This Lent is a gift to you, and it is your offering to God, time in the cycle of every year to pause and examine your one-and-only precious life. What are the lessons of the wilderness part of your life? You will only discover the lessons by going through it. So receive the symbol of ashes, trust the Spirit to walk with you, enter the wilderness, and trust in the promise of resurrection, again and again. Amen.