Ash Wednesday – COVID-19
Hillside Church – February
17, 2021
Streamed Worship Service
Welcome to the Hillside Church Ash Wednesday for
2021. We’re coming to you from Culbreth
Road in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
There are many Baptist churches that only loosely follow
the liturgical calendar, don’t make much of the season Lent, and do not have an
Ash Wednesday worship service.
In our Baptist congregation, we do observe Advent, Lent,
holy week, Pentecost, and other high points marking the liturgical year, but,
true to our Baptist sense of independence, we don’t feel bound by
tradition. We appreciate and honor
tradition, we see the value in it, but, when necessary, we deviate from
tradition.
Ash Wednesday is an example. I have had colleagues I respect insist that
on Ash Wednesday, using the ash of the previous year’s burned Palm Sunday palms
you must impose ashes on the forehead of each worshiper as you say “From dust
you are and to dust you shall return.”
The phrase is a quote, Genesis 3:19, words of the curse after Adam and
Eve had sinned. The reason I disagree
with my esteemed colleagues who insist that this ritual with these words are
what makes Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday is theological.
The coming of Christ undoes the devastating effects of
the fall (Adam and Even’s eating of forbidden fruit). Our sin, which renders us dust, has been
nailed to the cross. The resurrection of
Jesus assures that we will not return to dust.
As he rose, so will we. We are
resurrection people, new creations, bound for eternal life in the kingdom of
God.
So, why bother with Ash Wednesday at all?
While we are bound for resurrection, we’re not there
yet. We’re in the world, reaching for
new creation, celebrating the in-breaking of the Kingdom, but we live as new
creations while serving God in a fallen world that, because of sin, is bound for
destruction. We exist in the overlap
between fall and salvation.
By worshiping on Ash Wednesday, we acknowledge our own
sin, our need for forgiveness, and our need for change. This is a time of spiritual renewal. This is a time to identify what in our
thinking, in our way of life, and in our outlook prevents us from growing
closer to God in Christ and makes it difficult for us to love our neighbors as
we love ourselves. Once we’ve identified
those areas in which we need to grow or change, then we commit to spiritual
practices and disciplines that will help us see with new eyes. Fasting, confession, numerous forms of
prayer, are examples of disciplines believers undertake to help them put their
focus on their relationship with God in Christ.
The ashes call to mind the way we see people throughout
the Bible express remorse and repentance.
They would heap ashes on their heads, mess up their hair, and wear
coarse sack cloth. All these rituals of
repentance functioned to signal that this person was trying to turn from sin
and turn back to God. When we impose the
cross in ash on the foreheads of worshipers in our modern context, we’re trying
to turn from sin and turn back to God.
This year, with social distancing still needed, we will
not do a traditional Ash Wednesday worship.
Instead, we come to you virtually.
We encourage you to adopt disciplines of confession and repentance to
which you will commit from now until Easter Sunday, April 4.
From our youth group, I have with me M__, E__, I__, J__,
and H__. They will do our scripture
reading. Some of these verses are
traditional Ash Wednesday passages. Some
are readings I have selected. After they
have read, I’ll offer a few comments about the call of God to us that is
specific to this time, 2021, pandemic, Lent.
Readings
Psalm
51:1-4 - M__
Psalm
51:9-13 - E__
2
Corinthians 5:20-21 - I__
Matthew
18:21-22 - J__
Zechariah
3:1:-5 - H__
Confession, repentance, and forgiveness are themes found
in every reading we’ve just heard.
Moreover, a fresh start, the chance to begin again, is a natural outflow
from repentance and forgiveness. At
Hillside, we’ve begun 2021, imagining starting life anew, post-pandemic and
post-election.
Discord and disagreement over politics, racial injustice,
and over how we as a society should respond to COVID-19 has deeply divided
American culture. As followers of Jesus,
what can we say in this time fraught with anger and violence? I think we can be voices of calm, grace, and
peace. Now that vaccines are here and the
election is over, we can invite our neighbors and friends to come together and
start again.
Starting again is a theme in the words of the prophets
Haggai and Zechariah. They prophesied
about the same time, both calling the nation to return to God and rebuild life
with worship as the organizing activity for a community founded on faith in
God.
In Zechariah, the Satan stands to
accuse Joshua the high priest. The
priesthood was one of many institutions in ancient Israelite life that had
become badly corrupted. The Satan would
have recited all the ways the priesthood led the people to rebel against God,
but the Lord immediately silenced the Satan.
The people’s sins had been punished, forgiven, and were
no longer an obstacle blocking the way between the people and God. God shut the Satan up and then declared a new
message. “The Lord has chosen Jerusalem”
(3:2).
Joshua was dressed in filthy rags, indicating the
degradation sin had brought upon God’s people.
The angel took these clothes dripped in decay and exchanged them for
sparkling new clothes, representing the washing and the new beginning. He once again was acceptable as a priest and
the people were once again chosen by God.
In the high priest Joshua’s change of clothing, we see how complete is
God’s forgiveness of us.
Our sins are washed away and when God looks at us, he
sees the holiness and righteousness of Christ.
We are made new. Colossians 3
calls to mind this image from Zechariah 3 of Joshua changing clothes. Verse 9, “Do not lie to one another, seeing
that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed
yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to
the image of its creator.” And also
Colossians 3:12, “As God’s chosen ones, beloved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”
What spiritual disciplines can you undertake from now
until Easter to remind yourself that your sins don’t define you. You’ve been made new in Christ. How can you and I remember to clothe
ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
I think we pray every day. Read the Bible every day. Be specific in striving to embody these
values in the relationships of our every day life: with a friend; with a boss;
with the person in your Zoom call; with a son or a sister or a neighbor. Approach these relationships with the idea of
Christ in you coming through. Don’t
dwell on how you’d react to the other.
How would Christ love him or her?
Be a conduit for the love of Christ.
And, when we fail, because we do, remember, we are forgiven. Stay connected to the Holy Spirit through
constant thought prayers. Let God’s
power be at work in you.
From here until Easter, it’s a journey. We hope you’ll take it with us. We pray you’ll see God at work in your
life.
We close with this blessing from
Revelation chapter 1:
Grace and
peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven
spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him
who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a
kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion
forever and ever. Amen.
Revelation
1:4-6
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