The Church of the Advent - Sermon by Fr John Archer, February 6, 2008, Ash Wednesday

When I left the shores of northern California, to move back east after sixteen years of residence in that other Bay area, I knew there would be a lot that I would miss about that magical place. I loved the food, of course, and the accepting community generated by millions of souls on various quests. I loved the quirky, infinitely talented culture, the smell of eucalyptus, the incomparable vista of the great bay with its gateway to the vast Pacific.

But one thing I knew I wouldn't miss was the weather. Many people love that too, but I found it boring, somehow unnatural. Not only was the climate for the most part invariably mild, but each season seemed to be on the verge of expressing itself, yet stopping short of a definitive statement. The procession of the year seemed to me like some benign wordless tune, punctuated by the occasional disturbing cymbal clash of an unwelcome exclamation from nature's percussion section: an earthquake, or perhaps a mudslide after an inexplicable spate of rain. Weather events intruded on the normal pace of life, and they seemed like arbitrary betrayals of the natural order.

Here in Boston, especially on a damp and blustery night in the heart of winter, you can always that say our weather has…character. We’ve all seen those movie montages that suggest the passage of the seasons - sequences of summer foliage, falling leaves, snowdrifts and then the melting ice in the streams of spring. This view of time is very much alive and well in this city.

Over the centuries, the Christian year has become wedded in western eyes (even in California) to those familiar changes that nature rings in, in each round of seasons. The European experience of the annual cycle of seasons was charmingly depicted in medieval books of hours. Portraits of the landscape were set against the Christian calendar to illustrate the connection between one’s annual pilgrimage on earth and the working out of God’s purpose. The signs and story of Christ's redemptive triumph came to be seen not only in the sun, the moon, and the stars, but in the passage of time itself. Many of us, dare I say most of us, have been touched by that portrayal, and as the years accumulate over a lifetime, we find ourselves anticipating the events of the gospel story as the seasons unfold their own familiar parable.

Ash Wednesday, which begins the 40 days of Lent, ushers in the great season of penitence that mirrors Christ's own trials in the wilderness, that prepared him to undertake the drama of his sacrifice. This year, Ash Wednesday falls very early in the annual calendar. As Fr. Warren mentioned this past Sunday, it is the earliest date for this day of fasting and self examination since 1913. In fact, the lunar calculations for Easter ensure that Ash Wednesday can only fall one day earlier ever, and that hasn't occurred since 1818, and it won’t happen again for almost three centuries - until 2285, when seasons won't matter to any of us here.

Well, it may fall early in terms of calendar measure, but at least in my own heart and mind, Ash Wednesday is always right on time. Precisely one month ago, on the weekend that hosts the feast of the Epiphany, I found myself going into New York - on the bus. That Sunday I was planning to worship at St. Ignatius and get a chance to say hello to Fr. Blume, and maybe it was this that triggered the music that popped into my head. It wasn't "we three kings…" but rather that old children's hymn that for me had been, years ago, a kind of primer for the Christian seasons…the one that goes "Advent tells us Christ is near/Christmas tells us Christ is here/In Epiphany we trace/all the glories of his grace."

The next verse recalls the three "gesima" Sundays, and then sings of the season that prepares us to celebrate the paschal mystery: "Then three Sundays will prepare/for the time of fast and prayer/That, with hearts made penitent/we may keep a faithful Lent."

Now, exactly one month to the day from that Epiphany, we stand at the threshold of this new season that signifies the stirring of the world from sleep, as the Savior prepares himself to usher in the redemption of all creation. For all of us, whose mortal life is measured by the faithful orbits of the earth around a distant sun, this season invests time with a new dimension, not merely the passage of the months and years in the inexorable progress from our birth to our death, but also the pilgrimage brought into the compass of a single year that marks our journey from death to life, from sin to a state of forgiveness, from this brief span of years to the hope of eternity spent with God.

The solemn acts of worship and reflection that have called us here tonight appear as a kind of thread in this cyclical tapestry of time that allow us to rehearse the mystery of the word made flesh and our transformation in the light of God's supreme gift - His Son's own sacrifice. But Ash Wednesday has another important significance that places it outside of the sequential narrative of time. This is the night when we call on this sacred space to help us stop time in a sense, to step back just a pace from the historical narrative of the world's salvation, and in the envelope of stillness that provides, to examine the essence of who we are, in the light of those godly events that make possible who we might become.

The lessons tonight help us see the significance of that examination and the frame of mind that we should bring to it. The prophet Joel speaks of the Day of the Lord, the awful day of reckoning and judgment whose prospect carries with it a need to repent and return to God. "Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting weeping and with mourning" (the ancient symbol of which is ashes). "Rend your hearts," warns the prophet, "and not your clothing."

In the Gospel, Jesus echoes that prophetic word, as he preaches to us as if we were present among those early congregations who eagerly listened to his teaching. The great outpouring of repentance the prophets had called for had become a superficial exercise in piety for many in those days, and Jesus underscores the need to approach the prophets’ mandate with open sincerity before God, not simply to showcase our piety to gain the admiration of others. Whatever our actions - almsgiving, prayer, fasting - let them be gifts we lay before God, not postures to secure the good will of the world. These are by their nature secret gifts, but telling ones. "For where your treasure is” Jesus says, “there will your heart be also."

Paul's letter to the Corinthians extends this teaching, describing Christian evangelists in that place as ambassadors for Christ, through whom God makes his appeal for reconciliation. There is no worldly honor in this calling: "We are treated as impostors, and yet are true…as having nothing and yet possessing everything."

How can we be true to this fundamental calling? How can we respond to the essence of repentance that Scripture has revealed time and again over centuries, and whose message has reached our ears on this night out of time? There is no formula of speech, no special knowledge, no heroic action that will lead us to the point of our return to God. The narrative is paused, and God awaits our overture. The best language for that offering of self is found not in the lexicon of our own intellect, but in the music of the palms:

"Have mercy on me, O God, after thy great goodness; according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences…thou requirest truth in the inward parts, and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly."

As we make that that confession our own this night, as we receive the ashes that signify our desire to contemplate in stillness what God requires of us, we hear the words that God first spoke to Adam in his fallen state: "[Remember, O man] that thou art dust and unto dust shalt thou return."

In that return lies our hope. With that remembrance, the first step of the journey to salvation begins, and continues. In the assurance formed from bread and wine is the presence that sustains us in that journey, and leads us once again through the story of our redemption.

Let us pray.

"Stay with us, Lord Jesus, for evening is at hand and the day is past; Be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know thee as thou art revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of thy love. Amen."