Death, Sin, & Resurrection
An Ash Wednesday Homily
In 2023, I preached at The District Church for the first time on Ash Wednesday, which felt like a great responsibility and task. I was grateful for the opportunity.
We start Lent with ashes tomorrow, so I thought I’d post my sermon here. Please forgive any typos I may have missed as this is a direct copy from my manuscript.
Tomorrow, we will also begin our study of The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge. There is still time to join in on the study. Here is a LINK to the reading guide. Join our chat below to stay engaged with other readers.
Sermon Audio
Sermon Manuscript
When people think of Arizona, it’s usually deserts they imagine, not green and purple forests across large jutting mountains. Yet, much of Arizona’s landscape is filled with vegetation and forests and life.
In 2017, there was a wildfire that swept across northern Arizona, where most of this vast greenery is, called the Goodwin Fire. It was devastating to the land.
It ripped across hundreds of acres destroying everything in its path. Right after the fire had finally been extinguished, I found myself driving north on the I-17; I saw nothing but scorched earth when I looked out over the west side of the highway. All plant life had been destroyed, the mountains were white, gray, and black with dust and ash. It looked like something Cormac McCarthy would describe in one of his novels.
Growing up a pastor’s kid, I celebrated Easter every year. I remember the colorful shirts, easter eggs, the big lunch after service, the skits of Christ bursting out of the tomb. It was filled with joy, but I never quite understood the Gravity Easter Sunday until I discovered Ash Wednesday and Lent. In college, after rediscovering my faith, I started attending a church that observed the Lenten season. I didn't understand why we needed this intense 40 days to prepare for Easter… but my pastor pointed out that when we participate in Lent, we participate in the narrative of the gospel. We recognize sin and the desperate need for salvation from it. We discover the weight of what Easter Sunday accomplished.
Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent. Historically, the church has a yearly calendar that lays over top of our standard 12 months, in part to help us remember the important seasons of Jesus’s life and ministry. Lent is the time of the year in the Christian calendar where we prepare for the joy of Easter. During the Lenten season, Christians traditionally follow in the path of Christ as he was led into the desert for 40 days to be tempted. Jesus fasted while he was in the desert, which is why fasting is such an important part of the lent season. For the next 40 days (46 if you include Sundays, which are not traditionally included in the church calendar), we will walk in the footsteps of Jesus. If you’d like to participate in this season together, we are providing a devotional for the church to join us in. Each day you’ll find a Psalm to pray and verse to reflect on as we walk through the desert. If you’d like to join us in this, you can scan the QR code on the screen and find a digital PDF that you can download or print.
Fasting during Lent is distinct from the fast we just took part in during our 21 days of prayer and fastings. This time, we’re not fasting to hear a new word from the Lord or to catch vision for the year. Lent is not just a time to fast for a new thing. It’s a time of year where we reflect on death, repent from sin, and long for resurrection.
It’s important to frame this different sort of fast that could seem pretty self-deprecating or even scary to some in the context of Jesus’s life. When Jesus fasted in the desert he made himself vulnerable to the “tempter” and as Pastor Amy mentioned during our Acts series, was fully dependent on God.
Christ was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted not simply to fast. Going into a season of temptation while also fasting seems counterintuitive to most or at least me. When I fast, I feel weak and constantly at the edge of giving into all sorts of temptations. But Christ chose to prepare for his ministry his weakest point, he looked at temptation, sin, death, and devil right in the face when he was seemingly least prepared for it. Lent is a similar season of preparation, where we bring ourselves low to emphasize the frailty we face temptation with. It’s a time of year where we reflect on death, repent from sin, and long for resurrection because we realize our weakness.
Forest fires, like the Goodwin fire, are inevitable in Arizona. The arid deserts, the valleys where wind catches great speed, combined with brush and pine trees make for a perfect recipe for wildfires. The years are few and far between when a forest fire doesn’t catch. That might be why they are considered “natural disasters.” Forest fires and death have that in common. According to Benjamin Franklin, “in this world, nothing is certain, except death and taxes.” Maybe that’s why Paul describes Death as “the wage of sin.”
During Lent, we reflect on death.
Death is a direct result of sin, that much became clear in the Garden of Eden. And because sin permeates our world, death cannot be ignored. Paul calls this the Law of Death in Romans 8:2. It’s a contract that can’t be broken.
In Genesis chapter 3 we read God speaking to Adam and Eve after they bit from the forbidden fruit, letting sin enter the world. He says,
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
When sin entered the world, the same ground where the miracle of our creation occurred, became corruptible. Now, death comes for all–man, beast, and plant alike. Even the ground itself is cursed by the wages of sin. Genesis describes sin crouching at our door, ever present even when we try to run from it.
Later in this service, we’ll invite you to participate in a moment we call the “Imposition of the Ashes” where our Pastors will use the ash of the Palm Sunday branches from last year, to mark a cross on your forehead. As they do this, they’ll quote Genesis 3 to you “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
This Ash Wednesday, we reflect on death.
Some would say that reflection on death is pointless, depressing, and even counterintuitive to living well. But “memento mori” is a deeply Christian practice dating back to the first few centuries of the church. And in American culture, we run from death. We’re notorious for investing just about anything in a product or treatment that will prolong life even a few days. And to think about death when it isn’t imposing itself onto us? Why court that hopelessness? Thinking about death can make us feel like nothing matters because it will all waste away into…. Dust and ash. Looking at death in the face feels like standing hopeless in the heat of raging wildfire.
Part of the reason we reflect on death is because it leads us back to that Genesis cause: sin
But we don’t just stare at death and wait for it to consume us. That is not God’s prescription for navigating this broken world.
Forest fires, although inevitable, are one of the only natural disasters that we can fight back. Not only can we fight them back, but according to my dear friend Smokey the Bear, “only I can prevent them.” which is a lot of pressure to put on 8 year old Jenson. When a wildfire starts, firefighters are called immediately to not only begin fighting it, but to start implementing preventative techniques. One of the most effective methods of prevention is to dig a trench around the fire and create a “fire line.” By digging these deep trenches and clearing out shrubs and other vegetation, they keep the fire from spreading. Fire spreads so quickly that it must be slowed before it can be extinguished.
Sin, in the same way, has a propensity to spread, which is why we repent.
In Isaiah 58, read at the beginning of this service by Camille, God instructs the prophet to call out the sin and rebellion of his people and draw them to a deeper form of repentance through fasting. God wants more than just sackcloth and ashes. He calls them to an active form of repentance, a radical form of fasting–to dig a deep trench to combat the spread of sin.
“to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”
Repentance is not just acknowledging sin in our world. We cannot just reflect on the coming destruction. We must turn to God – for “the kingdom of Heaven is near” We must begin to dig deep trenches that stop sin in its destructive tracks.
Sin spreads and so, we repent for it.
When the firemen dig those deep trenches, they are fully aware of the fact that the trench will not extinguish the fire. Nor will the trench save the already burnt land. They are digging it knowing that later, a helicopter will come and drop water to extinguish the flames.
We do ourselves a disservice if we think that repentance will be the thing that ultimately saves us from sin and death. Even the active repentance that Isaiah calls for, does not end the onslaught of sin in our world or our own personal ability to cease from sinning.
St. Athanasius, a church father from the 4th century, once said,
“Nor does repentance recall human beings from what is natural, but merely halts sin.”
We do not have power to abolish the law of death, to make what is now corruptible, incorruptible. Only the God who becomes man, enters the desert to face down every sin, walks the road of Calvary and dies, to rise again and defeat that death, can save us.
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that, “now is the day of salvation.” Freedom from sin is available to us, but we cannot achieve it in our own strength.
There is no fire too big, too hot, or too vast that Christ cannot extinguish it.
No fire of shame, hate, injustice, oppression, addiction, sexual immorality, lies, pride, ego, racism, sexism, war, violence, or even death that He will not put out. And, Christ does not just extinguish the sin, he transforms everything it has burned.
Last November we observed Advent as a church. Advent comes when the nights of the year grow shorter and darker. There is a certain despair involved in that time as we approach Christmas, longing for Christ to come, even longing for his return.
Lent begins when the days grow longer and brighter. When the air gets warm, flowers bloom, the cherry blossoms here in DC might even make an early arrival.
All this talk of death today, may make you feel like Lent is scary and worrisome, but Lent is the season of new life. It’s the season of miracles when that which was once dead is brought back to life. In 46 days we will turn from staring in the face of death and gaze upon the wounded healer on the cross on Good Friday, marvel at the empty tomb and rejoice in the risen body of Christ that conquered death on Easter Sunday.
During this season of Lent, we long for the salvation that comes from Easter. And that salvation is two-fold. It defeats sin and brings new life. This Ash Wednesday we reflect on death, repent for sin, and finally we long for resurrection.
There are a variety of ways we can engage with this reflection, repentance, and longing during the season of Lent. As I mentioned before, you can engage in daily worship with the devotional that is available on our website that you can print or download. The devotional will lead us through prayer and reflection on scripture that guides us on this journey towards resurrection.
You can participate in a fast for 40 days (Sundays are excluded, then we feast for the resurrection is still at hand). If you do this, I’d encourage you to heed the words of Jesus to fast humbly and remember our Isaiah passage. This is an ACTIVE fast that longs for justice, reconciliation and redemption. So maybe that means you pair your fast with volunteering and serving the poor and marginalized in our city. You could give your time to DC127 or mentor a youth through the DC Dream Center. Remember it is not just a fast of sackcloth and ashes, but one that beckons Heaven to earth.
And finally, you can engage in weekly worship as we will be starting a new series in two Sundays on the book of Habakkuk. During this series we will focus on finding God in the midst of silence and suffering. A perfect Lent series if you ask me.
All that to say, I encourage you to lean into the Lenten season. Practice repentance. Long for Easter. Even when you feel like God is silent, know that we reflect on death, repent for our sins, and long for resurrection because we need God in the midst of the brokenness of our world.
A year after the 2017 Goodwin Fire, I drove back up the I-17. I remember driving up to where the fires had been, looking out my window to the west side of the highway again and where just a year ago I had seen death, destruction, ash, and dust, there were waves of green rolling across the mountains.
Yes it is true today that “you are dust and to dust you shall return,”
but dirt in the hands of our Father formed the very first flesh in the Garden of Eden.
Ash in the hands of our God brought a field of dead bones back to life.
And dust in the hands of our Savior makes the blind to see.
Let us pray.