Half Full or Half Empty?

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; 

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21; and Genesis 3

A couple days ago I was asked a -sort of accusatory- question. 

It’s one that I’ve heard used many times, directed both at me and others. 

It is also a pretty rigid way to see life. 

I was asked, “You’re one of those ‘glass half empty people’ aren’t you?”

I’ve heard it before. I’ve also heard others make the opposite accusation. 

I think it's a ludicrous analogy for life equaled only by the tragedy of looking at any drink that way!

As a fan of many different types of drinks, I cannot imagine, let's just say a morning cup of coffee -which is but one of my favorite beverages- sitting between my hands as I ponder whether or not my mug is half full or half empty. 

When I have a cup of coffee in my hand, I savor that dark brew to the last drop, because frankly IT'S MEANT TO BE ENJOYED!

Oddly, this accusation has been directed at me numerous times when I share my fondness for the Lenten season. 

It seems that if you enjoy a particular church season or practice that some perceive as melancholy, dark, or depressing, you must be some sort of pessimist. 

It is sad that we have lost our appreciation and value for this season. 

Rather than considering the possible beauty and opportunity in it, we often spend more time dwelling on the inconvenience of our Lenten disciplines, what we give up or what we take on. 

Ash Wednesday is the very beginning of Lent, a day and a season that calls us to both turn away and turn toward something. 

This is part of the reason we give things up or take things on, sometimes we do both. 

Marking ourselves with ash is a sign that we are preparing for our “turn.”

It is a biblical sign and symbol, for repentance like in Job, or Daniel’s repentance on behalf of Israel. 

It is also a sign of grief like the grief we see in the story of Mordecai and the story of Tamar.

A few weeks ago, we even heard the story of Nineveh marking their repentance by covering themselves in ash as they turned themselves toward God. 

It is why our first lesson from Joel calls out for repentance. Of course for Joel, it appears the glass is half empty, right?

But our second lesson from 2 Corinthians gives us more of that “half full” approach, assuring us that “now is the time of salvation,” a nice tone of optimism to get you started on day one. 

But is that what we need?

Do we really need to approach Lent with a complete sense of optimism or pessimism?

Is Lent intended to be a temporary hiatus from the glory of God, traded in for the doom and gloom of a handful of dark and brooding Christians and clergy, walking around with these ash crosses on their foreheads scaring the heck out of the cop that pulls us over on the way home or the poor grocery clerk between church and the house?

Perhaps how we approach this season is best summed up in the Gospel text for tonight. 

“Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Matthew doesn’t deny the treasures of this world, Matthew only warns us not to hold so tightly to the treasures of our worldly existence that we lose sight of the treasures that await us through Christ. 

Lent isn’t a time to completely remove ourselves from the world around us, the things and people we love. 

It is a time to reevaluate what those things that separate us from God are. 

It is a time to reconsider what treasures we would leave in God’s hands,  because if we feel ashamed to call them treasures as they are being placed into God’s hands, perhaps they really aren’t treasures after all?

Ash Wednesday includes another story not read in our lessons today, but you will hear words from this story spoken tonight. 

“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

These are the words spoken by God in Genesis 3:19. 

Words spoken to the first man.

Words spoken following this man’s decision to treasure something he shouldn’t, something he was ashamed to call treasure as he stood before God. 

These are the last words spoken by God to humanity before humanity was cast out of paradise, Eden. 

The tradition of Ash Wednesday stems from this story. 

In the early church, once marked by ash, all those participating were cast out of the church. 

Allowing us all to not only relive this expulsion from paradise, but to acknowledge our own participation in that first act of sin. 

Reminding us why we are to return to dust, why we suffer: because of our own continual state of sin. 

But it should also be considered that this was not God’s intention, nor IS it God’s intention. 

God’s created order was for all things to be good, and God assures us that all things will be and are being returned to that state, in all that God does. 

Hopefully a reminder of this duality, this half full/half empty glass that is about to be marked upon your brow will also be etched into your hearts and minds when you leave here tonight. 

Ash reminds us that we were created from the dust of the earth, yet we are created from so very much more. 

In the past few years, astrophysicists, biologists, pathologists, and a few other kinds of ‘-ists’ have concluded that after the explosion of several stars billions of years ago, that stardust became the building blocks of life itself. 

The carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron and sulfur in our bodies most of the material that we're made of comes out of dying stars, or stars that died in explosions.

We have stuff in us as old as the universe, and then some stuff that landed here maybe only a hundred years ago. 

And all of that stuff mixes in our bodies.

Connecting us to the unlimited expanse of a growing universe, illustrating how we are not just created from the mud beneath our feet, but the stars we see in the night sky. 

Yes, the glass is half empty. 

We will all die one day, and we are reminded of that when we look to the ground beneath our feet. 

But the glass is also half full. 

God is still creating in us and through us, connecting us with a creation around us and above us. 

So, yes, on Ash Wednesday we are reminded of our own mortality. 

But life and death are both a celebration of the cycles God calls us to be part of. 

Remember when you go home tonight and you see that ash on your forehead, we are journeying into the next forty days considering how we participate in what God has created, is creating, and will continue to create. 

Then look to the dust beneath your feet and the dust that is glowing above in the night sky, and ask yourself just what -if anything- is worth separating us from the Artist that made all of that. 

Amen

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

Sources

Whalen, Michael D. Seasons and Feasts of the Church Year: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press, 1993.

Worrall, Simon PUBLISHED, and 2015. “We Are Stardust—Literally.” National Geographic News, January 28, 2015. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/150128-big-bang-universe-supernova-astrophysics-health-space-ngbooktalk/.

Knapton, Sarah. “We Really ARE Made of Stardust - Building Blocks of Life Found at Birth of New Stars.” The Telegraph, June 8, 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/08/really-made-stardust-building-blocks-life-found-birth-new/.