[00:00:14] Speaker A: I often do this a little differently also on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. So if. If you haven't been around for more than a year, then. But you have been here on a Sunday morning, tonight might seem a little different to you. I've always wanted to be one of those preachers who is able to, like, carefully craft their sermon.
And in case you didn't know, that's not what I do. Like, I'm very. I have very frantic energy when I'm up here, and, like, I wander around the stage and sort of speak according to some vague outline I have in my head.
So I've always been impressed with people like Janelle or Claire who are, like, very crafted, and I've always wanted to be able to do that. So two times a year on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, I do that.
So tonight I want to share some thoughts with you that I have about this Ash Wednesday. It's a little different than last year or the year before.
Ash Wednesday, of course, marks the first day of Lent. Janelle already shared that. It's a period of 40 days of reflection and repentance leading to the great celebration of the mystery of Christ on Easter. This is what we're working towards starting tonight.
The classic text for Ash Wednesday is Genesis, chapter 3, verse 19, where God says to Adam and Eve, by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, and you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
This is, of course, where God points out to Adam and Eve that there are consequences for sin.
They've made a cosmic mistake. They were enticed by the power represented in the garden, and that power came with enormous consequences.
Those consequences, to put it in the simplest possible terms, are this. To be human means we must labor to live until we die.
Or more poetically, our labor is to till the soil until we return to the soil.
So in that way, both life and death are in the dirt.
Out of it we were taken, and to it we will return.
In other words, our whole existence is wrestling with life and death.
On Sunday morning, we've been learning about prophetic imagination. Tonight I want to say a little bit more about that because we see, I think, Jeremiah the prophet wrestling with life and death in Jeremiah chapter 4, especially in verses 19 through 22, which say this.
My anguish, my anguish, I writhe in pain.
Oh, the walls of my heart. My heart is beating wildly. I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.
Disaster overtakes disaster. The Whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, my curtains. In a moment, how long must I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?
For my people are foolish.
They do not know me. They are stupid children.
They have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.
I hope what you're hearing in that Jeremiah passage is that Jeremiah doesn't just see terrible possibilities as a consequence of Israel's mistakes. He feels the pain.
He feels the terror of it. Even into the future he writhes in pain. He says his heart beats wildly and it's no wonder, because he also hears the sound of. Of the trumpet of war.
He's terrified and he bears that terror in his body.
So then I think prophetic imagination is in addition to the other things that we've said on Sunday mornings.
Prophetic imagination is an empathetic imagination.
Prophetic individuals, prophetic churches, whole groups of prophetic people, they don't just see what's possible. They don't just intuit where things could go.
They feel all those possibilities in their bodies.
They feel the joy and the sorrow. They feel the triumph and the suffering.
Many of you are experiencing the consequences of this kind of prophetic empathy.
And you're feeling that as a result of the stupidity, the foolishness and the lack of understanding on shameless display by the current you U.S. administration.
You've watched as over the past several weeks, disaster has overtaken disaster.
You've watched as the whole land is being laid to waste.
It's fascinating to me that amid his prophetic, empathetic suffering, Jeremiah earlier in chapter three, or excuse me, chapter or verse three of chapter four, urges his fellow Israelites in this way. He says, break up your fallow ground.
Do not sow among the thorns.
And Jeremiah here, I think is obviously pleading with his people to soften their hearts. That's what he means by break up your fallow ground. He draws on the imagery of farmers who might go out into a sun hardened and dry patch of soil and take their tools and break up that hard dirt. In this way, Jeremiah is urging his people to do the same thing to their hearts.
You heard a similar sentiment earlier from Joel when Joel said to rend your hearts, not your garments, to rip that part of yourself that feels, that empathizes with the suffering of others so that you might be moved to do something different.
I think Jeremiah is saying something very much like that.
But I also hear in verse three a kind of poetic echo from Genesis chapter three.
You remember that passage where God as a consequence of Adam and Eve's mistake. Cast them out of the garden, said, in order for you to live, you will have to till the soil.
Perhaps those who are bringing disaster today, perhaps those who were bringing disaster in Jeremiah's day have forgotten that the pursuit of power opens Pandora's box of death.
Perhaps they've forgotten that the consequences of stupidity and foolishness and lack of understanding conditions that we all suffer from.
Perhaps they've forgotten that the consequences of that are in fact death.
That we are destined to spend our existence not as warriors trying to conquer each other, but as farmers, faithfully breaking up the soil of our hearts, the soil of our lives, in order to coax the shoots of life from the fertile soil of death.
Until that day when we come to the end of our labor and we join with the soil again.
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken.
You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
As we sing our last song together tonight, we invite you to come forward and receive the sign of ashes on your forehead as a reminder that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the collective table. We are a production of the Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Learn more about
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