Greetings from the Pastor:
Ash Wednesday is coming. Yes, I know that we have just finished celebrating Christmas, and are still recovering from its cost as credit card bills arrive in the mail. But God is shifting our focus from the Babe born in the manger to the man crucified on the Cross. The contrast is stark, and the pace is bold; but perhaps there is no better time, and no better way, to force us to reflect on the reality of what’s coming, namely, the cost of sin – for Christ and for us – than with the arrival of Ash Wednesday on February 17th. The Festival of the Transfiguration falls on Valentine’s Day. While most calendars follow Hallmark in setting aside this day to celebrate a certain sort of romantic love, at Zion, and in churches all across this land, we will be saying Farewell to Alleluia, as we focus on the love God offers through the Cross of Christ.
The cost of sin for Christ was death on the Cross. The cost of sin for us is the condemnation of death and the curse of our mortality. While death can sometimes come as relief from a long illness or release from unrelenting suffering, death reminds us that all is not well with the world. God wills that life, not death, be the last word that determines the future of creation. Yet, all the evidence points to death having that say. If death were only at the end of things, then we might delay addressing these matters until then. Unfortunately, death has many servants, including the very process of aging, which reminds us daily of the fate that ultimately awaits us. Perhaps you have read Ecclesiastes 12, which talks about aging in a poetic way, with references to white hair as almond blossoms, our eyes as windows growing dim, and our slowing gate as grasshoppers dragging. On paper, the poetry of Ecclesiastes sounds so light-hearted. But I prefer the way a dear friend of mine – a retired pastor, now well into his seventies, and experiencing more than his share of health related challenges – recently put it: “Growing old ain’t for sissies!”
That it is not! Growing old is the daily payment we must make as we pay the cost that sin has exacted from creation. It is a reminder of our mortality, and much more than that, because it is the reality of our mortality. Every Sunday, we begin our worship service with a prayer of confession, which makes it seem like it is what we do that is the key to what separates us from God. “We have sinned against Thee in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and failed to do.” Certainly, misdeeds display a wide gap between our lives and God’s. However, it is not what we do, but what we are that displays the defining mark of sin, which is the curse of death. It is not morality, but mortality that defines the human condition as in bondage to sin. We cannot free ourselves from death’s claims. We can try harder to do the right thing. We can make small and sustained improvements in the good that we do. But there is nothing we can do to become less mortal. It is a bondage from which we cannot free ourselves.
This is what we proclaim with Ash Wednesday. “From dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” And from the ashes we celebrate the Good News that God has done what we could not. In the body of Christ on the Cross, we see a Savior who died that death might die; and with His resurrection, God’s will for life conquers the grave and all of death’s claims. The body of Christ on the Cross, the body of Christ in Communion, the body of Christ alive in the Church: these form the content and context of the Good News that because He lives, we, too, shall live! The life of Christ alive in the church is the on-going sign of this decisive truth. It might not make growing old any less a burden; but it is certain to make our ultimate future a whole lot brighter.
In His service, and yours,
Pastor Sherwindt |
