Joel 2:12-19; 2 Peter 1:2-11; St Matthew 6:(1-6), 16-21
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
“We commit this body to the ground, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection . . .” This is the graveside declaration at the burial of God’s beloved children. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Now dust represents death. Man is taken from dust and must return to the dust. The sinner must return to the ground from which he came. Dust is the inevitable consequence of all men. Every child conceived in the image of Adam must return to the dust. To death. Dust is the end that all men share in common.
This is not so with ashes. Ashes do not merely represent death, but sacrifice. Ashes are the result of the burnt offering. They are the constant residue left on the altar. The constant reminder of man’s need to mercy and atonement. Ashes represent that particular death which is an act of sacrifice. The death of all men is signified by dust, but only the Christian’s death is signified with ashes. As it is written, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints (Ps 116:15).
Thus the words, “Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return,” are spoken to your old man, your dusty man. To your fleshly Adam, the sinner.
Yet the ashen Cross is traced upon your forehead, marking you as living sacrifices belonging to and redeemed by Christ the Crucified. Just as the raider brands his cattle to mark them as his own possession, so Jesus signs you with His Cross, showing you belong to Him. And just as cattle are driven, sold, and slaughtered at the discretion of their owner, so you are called to submit to the will of your Creator and Redeemer. To suffer as a Christian, not being ashamed, but glorifying God in the Name of Christ that He has placed upon you, as St Peter has elsewhere written (1 Pt 4:16).
The holy and blessed season of Lent begins with the imposition of ashes. It is not a practice of righteousness before men that you may be seen by them. It is a reminder that you are marked with the Cross of Christ and so belong to Him. And the fact that He inscribes you with an ashen cross means that our Lord wishes to use you for sacrifice.
Not as sacrifices of atonement, as though you could merit or maintain your own salvation or the salvation of another - that could never be! You are not sacraments! The once for all sacrifice, the all sufficient atonement has been made by our Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, in His flesh and blood upon the Altar of His Cross. There His flesh was picked at by moths as He lay slain by a rusty spear, hung between thieves. He is your heavenly Treasure, dear Christians, the One who suffered for you and leaves you an example.
For you are called to be living sacrifices of thanksgiving. Denying yourself, taking up your cross and following after Him, through suffering and sorrow, in compassion and mercy, through the grave unto eternal life. The ashes inscribed upon you represent both Jesus’ death and your own death with Him and in Him. All who are born of Adam must return to dust. But all who are born of Christ must turn to ashes, that is, to sacrifice. For in union with Him, your sacrifices are a pleasing aroma that time into the heavenly sanctuary.
And it is in His Sermon on the Mount that our Lord Christ describes the substance and nature of your sacrifices of praise. They are, in part, charity, prayer, and fasting. The three Lenten disciplines that are, in fact, the warp and weft the Christian life of repentance and faith. They do not merit or maintain righteousness before God. Rather, they are sacrifices of praise made by those who already know the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, and rejoice in His reconciliation.
The heart of the Father is Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord. The heart of the Son is displayed for you in the Cross, where He lays down His life in mercy and in love for you. This is the higher righteousness to which Jesus calls you, His disciples. To cling in faith to His merciful heart and, in turn, to show forth this mercy and charity in fervent love toward one another.
Thus you are taught to pray for the hallowing of the Name of your Father in heaven, the coming of His kingdom, and the doing of His will. This is not only for yourself, even as it is against yourself, that is, against your own sinful flesh and dusty Adam. But the holiness of the Lord’s Name, the gracious coming of His reign and the victorious doing of His will is for you and for all people. When you petition your dear Father in heaven as a dear child you ask for daily bread not only for you and yours, but for all men, even for all unbelievers!
And in turn, it is our Lord Christ, who is Himself the instantiation of the Lord’s Name, the Coming King who does the Father’s will, who is also in Himself the true Bread from heaven. And He uses you, His dear Christians, to be daily bread unto one another. To bake you into His loaf that He may use you in service and sustenance for your neighbor. You pray the Our Father only in and through Christ. You are marked with not only the ashen Cross, but the watery Cross of Holy Baptism. Plunged into His death and resurrection, you have been consecrated as the as holy priests, called to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pt 2:5).
As the prophet Joel says, Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people, consecrate the congregation. Beloved, you have been consecrated in Christ Jesus, your Great High Priest. You are made partakers of His divine life, given a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, the very righteousness of the One Atoning Sacrifice, even Jesus Christ, who is Himself your reward from your Father who is in heaven. A reward not for deeds done by you in righteousness, but graciously given by faith in the Righteous One.
So then, it is not a matter of if, but when you pray, when you fast, when you give alms, you do so according to the Word and will of the Father who bought you in Jesus Christ, to be His own possession, a people after His own heart, to proclaim His excellencies and be holy as He is holy.
“Is this not the fast that I choose:” says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh (Is 58:6-7).
Beloved, these are likewise the virtues of which St Peter writes. The Holy Spirit who creates and sustains faith in the hearts of the elect is not idle. He moves you, God’s children, to obey God’s commands, to desire what He desires, to love what He loves. To fast. To pray. To give alms. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. As the Formula of Concord says, “Practice all Christian virtues, in all godliness, modesty, temperance, patience, and brotherly love” (FC SD XI 73). “The whole life of a Christian is a festival, a continuous sacrifice, and this sacrifice consists on the one side in prayer and thanksgiving, on the other in imparting of his substance to the needy” (Ulhorn, p150).
This is the severe mercy of the Christian faith and life. Severe because it empties you of all your idols, topples and destroys all false hope and worldly gain. But mercy because it fills you with the love of God in Christ Jesus and prepares you for the life of the world to come.
Severe because it brings repentance and sorrow over sin, ever deeper introspection of how all things in your life are covered in the dust of the Old Adam, but mercy because it grants you the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus, the Once for All Sacrifice and welcomes you into the joy of all the angels.
Severe because it finally takes your life, but great mercy because it gives the only true life that there really is: the life lived in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dear children, you who enter now the Lenten fast do not do so to display your righteousness before men, but in order to drown your old Adam, to put to death that old dust man though discipline and prayer, worship and fasting, and to arise in the new man and to hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ.
Therefore, having been cleansed from your sin and washed from all iniquity through the blood of Christ Jesus, you enter now into His own battle against sin, death, and hell. For the Son of God joins Himself to human flesh and blood for this very purpose. In His crucified body the victory has been accomplished. In His broken flesh and obedient will, the battle is once and for all determined.
Yet Jesus does not wage this war for His own benefit. This Lententide, Christ seeks to accomplish His victory within you, within your heart, within your flesh and soul. And His greatest weapon against the powers of hell is not your strength and resolve, not your fasting and bodily preparation, but it is the Word of His Cross. For the Cross is His Altar, the means by which His perfect flesh was turned to ash, that is, was offered up in perfect sacrifice.
Now in the Holy Supper of His Body and Blood, His grain offering and drink offering, He invites you to share in His Cross. To participate in His life of humility, suffering, prayer and self-denial. Since He is ours, we fear no powers. These are your greatest weapons agains the devil and your flesh. Prayer and fasting.
For here He gives you to drink of His cup, the cup of thanksgiving and salvation, and to call upon the Name of the Lord, as He bestows strength and life to the new man. For that ashen man, that new man under the Cross, has already died with Christ through Holy Baptism, and already lives with Him who is your treasure in heaven.
Therefore lift your hearts and partake of the Holy Communion of the crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus Christ by which you can never main in the corruption of dust, but like your Lord and Master, are turned to ashes, becoming a living sacrifice, sanctified by the Spirit and acceptable to the Father, who has richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
“We commit this body to the ground, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection . . .” This is the graveside declaration at the burial of God’s beloved children. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Now dust represents death. Man is taken from dust and must return to the dust. The sinner must return to the ground from which he came. Dust is the inevitable consequence of all men. Every child conceived in the image of Adam must return to the dust. To death. Dust is the end that all men share in common.
This is not so with ashes. Ashes do not merely represent death, but sacrifice. Ashes are the result of the burnt offering. They are the constant residue left on the altar. The constant reminder of man’s need to mercy and atonement. Ashes represent that particular death which is an act of sacrifice. The death of all men is signified by dust, but only the Christian’s death is signified with ashes. As it is written, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints (Ps 116:15).
Thus the words, “Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return,” are spoken to your old man, your dusty man. To your fleshly Adam, the sinner.
Yet the ashen Cross is traced upon your forehead, marking you as living sacrifices belonging to and redeemed by Christ the Crucified. Just as the raider brands his cattle to mark them as his own possession, so Jesus signs you with His Cross, showing you belong to Him. And just as cattle are driven, sold, and slaughtered at the discretion of their owner, so you are called to submit to the will of your Creator and Redeemer. To suffer as a Christian, not being ashamed, but glorifying God in the Name of Christ that He has placed upon you, as St Peter has elsewhere written (1 Pt 4:16).
The holy and blessed season of Lent begins with the imposition of ashes. It is not a practice of righteousness before men that you may be seen by them. It is a reminder that you are marked with the Cross of Christ and so belong to Him. And the fact that He inscribes you with an ashen cross means that our Lord wishes to use you for sacrifice.
Not as sacrifices of atonement, as though you could merit or maintain your own salvation or the salvation of another - that could never be! You are not sacraments! The once for all sacrifice, the all sufficient atonement has been made by our Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, in His flesh and blood upon the Altar of His Cross. There His flesh was picked at by moths as He lay slain by a rusty spear, hung between thieves. He is your heavenly Treasure, dear Christians, the One who suffered for you and leaves you an example.
For you are called to be living sacrifices of thanksgiving. Denying yourself, taking up your cross and following after Him, through suffering and sorrow, in compassion and mercy, through the grave unto eternal life. The ashes inscribed upon you represent both Jesus’ death and your own death with Him and in Him. All who are born of Adam must return to dust. But all who are born of Christ must turn to ashes, that is, to sacrifice. For in union with Him, your sacrifices are a pleasing aroma that time into the heavenly sanctuary.
And it is in His Sermon on the Mount that our Lord Christ describes the substance and nature of your sacrifices of praise. They are, in part, charity, prayer, and fasting. The three Lenten disciplines that are, in fact, the warp and weft the Christian life of repentance and faith. They do not merit or maintain righteousness before God. Rather, they are sacrifices of praise made by those who already know the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, and rejoice in His reconciliation.
The heart of the Father is Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord. The heart of the Son is displayed for you in the Cross, where He lays down His life in mercy and in love for you. This is the higher righteousness to which Jesus calls you, His disciples. To cling in faith to His merciful heart and, in turn, to show forth this mercy and charity in fervent love toward one another.
Thus you are taught to pray for the hallowing of the Name of your Father in heaven, the coming of His kingdom, and the doing of His will. This is not only for yourself, even as it is against yourself, that is, against your own sinful flesh and dusty Adam. But the holiness of the Lord’s Name, the gracious coming of His reign and the victorious doing of His will is for you and for all people. When you petition your dear Father in heaven as a dear child you ask for daily bread not only for you and yours, but for all men, even for all unbelievers!
And in turn, it is our Lord Christ, who is Himself the instantiation of the Lord’s Name, the Coming King who does the Father’s will, who is also in Himself the true Bread from heaven. And He uses you, His dear Christians, to be daily bread unto one another. To bake you into His loaf that He may use you in service and sustenance for your neighbor. You pray the Our Father only in and through Christ. You are marked with not only the ashen Cross, but the watery Cross of Holy Baptism. Plunged into His death and resurrection, you have been consecrated as the as holy priests, called to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pt 2:5).
As the prophet Joel says, Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people, consecrate the congregation. Beloved, you have been consecrated in Christ Jesus, your Great High Priest. You are made partakers of His divine life, given a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, the very righteousness of the One Atoning Sacrifice, even Jesus Christ, who is Himself your reward from your Father who is in heaven. A reward not for deeds done by you in righteousness, but graciously given by faith in the Righteous One.
So then, it is not a matter of if, but when you pray, when you fast, when you give alms, you do so according to the Word and will of the Father who bought you in Jesus Christ, to be His own possession, a people after His own heart, to proclaim His excellencies and be holy as He is holy.
“Is this not the fast that I choose:” says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh (Is 58:6-7).
Beloved, these are likewise the virtues of which St Peter writes. The Holy Spirit who creates and sustains faith in the hearts of the elect is not idle. He moves you, God’s children, to obey God’s commands, to desire what He desires, to love what He loves. To fast. To pray. To give alms. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. As the Formula of Concord says, “Practice all Christian virtues, in all godliness, modesty, temperance, patience, and brotherly love” (FC SD XI 73). “The whole life of a Christian is a festival, a continuous sacrifice, and this sacrifice consists on the one side in prayer and thanksgiving, on the other in imparting of his substance to the needy” (Ulhorn, p150).
This is the severe mercy of the Christian faith and life. Severe because it empties you of all your idols, topples and destroys all false hope and worldly gain. But mercy because it fills you with the love of God in Christ Jesus and prepares you for the life of the world to come.
Severe because it brings repentance and sorrow over sin, ever deeper introspection of how all things in your life are covered in the dust of the Old Adam, but mercy because it grants you the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus, the Once for All Sacrifice and welcomes you into the joy of all the angels.
Severe because it finally takes your life, but great mercy because it gives the only true life that there really is: the life lived in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dear children, you who enter now the Lenten fast do not do so to display your righteousness before men, but in order to drown your old Adam, to put to death that old dust man though discipline and prayer, worship and fasting, and to arise in the new man and to hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ.
Therefore, having been cleansed from your sin and washed from all iniquity through the blood of Christ Jesus, you enter now into His own battle against sin, death, and hell. For the Son of God joins Himself to human flesh and blood for this very purpose. In His crucified body the victory has been accomplished. In His broken flesh and obedient will, the battle is once and for all determined.
Yet Jesus does not wage this war for His own benefit. This Lententide, Christ seeks to accomplish His victory within you, within your heart, within your flesh and soul. And His greatest weapon against the powers of hell is not your strength and resolve, not your fasting and bodily preparation, but it is the Word of His Cross. For the Cross is His Altar, the means by which His perfect flesh was turned to ash, that is, was offered up in perfect sacrifice.
Now in the Holy Supper of His Body and Blood, His grain offering and drink offering, He invites you to share in His Cross. To participate in His life of humility, suffering, prayer and self-denial. Since He is ours, we fear no powers. These are your greatest weapons agains the devil and your flesh. Prayer and fasting.
For here He gives you to drink of His cup, the cup of thanksgiving and salvation, and to call upon the Name of the Lord, as He bestows strength and life to the new man. For that ashen man, that new man under the Cross, has already died with Christ through Holy Baptism, and already lives with Him who is your treasure in heaven.
Therefore lift your hearts and partake of the Holy Communion of the crucified, resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus Christ by which you can never main in the corruption of dust, but like your Lord and Master, are turned to ashes, becoming a living sacrifice, sanctified by the Spirit and acceptable to the Father, who has richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
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