Sermon for Ash Wednesday: "Out of the Ashes"

+ Ash Wednesday – February 14^th, 2018 +

Joel 2:12-19; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Redeemer Lutheran, HB

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus met with his disciples. He showed them his hands and feet. He ate with them. He spoke to them: “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”  And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

Today, as the season of Lent begins, and we prepare to journey to the cross and the empty tomb, our Lord gathers us as he did his disciples. Jesus reveals and gives himself to us in the breaking of the bread, his body and blood poured out for you. Jesus meets with us as he did with his disciples, with his peace, presence, and promise. And Jesus opens the Scriptures – that’s NT way of saying the OT – to see his passion and promise for us foretold by the patriarchs and prophets.

We don’t have to play hide and seek or bring out a Where’s Waldo book to find Jesus in the Old Testament. Jesus’ birth, life, teaching, miracles, suffering, death, burial, and resurrection. It’s all there, declares Jesus. His suffering and death for us is on every page.

And what about the prophet Joel, our Old Testament reading today?

Is Jesus there? Yes he is. Jesus gives us repentance and redemption through his servant Joel, just as he did his people in the Old Testament. YHWH sent the prophet Joel to warn Judah. Israel had turned from YHWH to false idols. And punishment was coming in the form of the Assyrians. They would descend upon Israel like a swarm of locusts on a ripe wheat harvest. The dark clouds of locusts foretold by Joel mirrored Israel’s sin, black as night, covering everything and everyone in Israel.

“Yet even now, declares the Lord, turn to Me with all your heart,
With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
Rend your heart, and not your garments;
Return to the Lord your God,

Today our Lord sends his prophet Joel to us warn us as well.

It’s easy to tear our garments, to rip our clothing in a great spectacle of repentance. Much harder to rend our heart. To rip, tear, and break us from our sin. To die to sin. To have our sinful heart broken and revealed for what it is. That can only be done by the Holy Spirit.

He is a farmer sent to break up the hard soil of our hearts and plant the living seed of God’s Word. He is a physician who diagnoses our deadly disease of sin and pronounces treatment in God’s steadfast love. He is a bulldozer called to level our pride, tear down our foundation built on sinking sand, and firmly set us on Christ our rock and Redeemer.

Mourning. Weeping. Fasting. Like Israel of old, that’s all we deserve. We are a compost pile of sin and death. That little smudge of ashes on our foreheads captures our problem pretty well. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But notice that the ashes aren’t a shapeless blob. It’s the cross, the place where God gathered all our sin, decay, disease, and death and placed it upon Jesus for us.

Jesus joins us in the ash heap and sits with us in the dust and dirt of our sin. God gets down in the dirt with his creatures by becoming a creature for us. The Lord who formed Adam from the dirt and dust of the earth, assumes our humanity. Jesus took all our sinful dirt and ashes upon himself and was judged, condemned, and broken for you. And on the third day, Jesus rose from the earth for you. On Easter Jesus is our new Adam, perfect for you, obedient for you, risen from the ground for you.

Jesus is flesh and blood proof that YHWH’s promises to Israel in the Old Testament are fulfilled. Even in Israel’s exile, YHWH saved a remnant, from whom came Jesus. YHWH preserved his promise until the fullness of time. Jesus is flesh and blood proof that his promises to you are true as well. Like his disciples at Emmaus, Jesus opens our hearts and minds to see the Scripture – from Genesis to Revelation – as pointing to his death and resurrection for you. Like those disciples, we see Jesus’ steadfast love revealed for us in the breaking of the bread, in his body and blood.

Joel foretells this blessed reversal. Behold, I am sending you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied. Like Israel, we bring nothing but sin, dirt, and death to our Lord and in return he gives us forgiveness, life, and his holy body and blood.

For the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Who knows if He will turn and relent,
And leave a blessing behind Him—
A grain offering and a drink offering
For the Lord your God?

Thanks to his prophet Joel, and the rest of the Scriptures, we do know the answer. Our Lord does relent of disaster. Jesus spares us. Jesus saves us. Jesus takes our sin and forgives us. Jesus takes on our dirt and ash and leaves us with his blessing. Jesus takes our death and gives us life. For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses – or yours – against them.

The prophet Joel – and all the Old Testament – repeatedly testify to this steadfast love of the Lord in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection for you.

A blessed Ash Wednesday and Lenten season to each of you…

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.