Clean Hearts

Rebecca Sheridan
Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

    Would you consider yourself a relatively clean, tidy person, or more of a Type-B, fine with “disorganized chaos” personality?  My family is here tonight, and all three of them would tell you I like things clean and orderly, and I like to clean!  You could say cleaning is one of my hobbies.  Especially when I am anxious, worried and busy, I find cleaning to be a great stress-reliever.  Even if you don’t like to clean, what is your favorite or least-undesirable household chore?  Get this, mine is cleaning the bathroom.  I don’t mind it at all, and it just gives me such comfort to know my bathroom is clean!  But my least favorite household cleaning activity is dusting.  I do it as rarely as possible, even though I like the looks of my house without the dust.  During the pandemic when we were not having many people over, I enjoyed NOT dusting even more.  I guess it’s just the sheer effort of how long it takes to dust everything, if you really do it properly.  Dusting is a good reminder of how much stuff we really do have, and how everything, eventually, gets pretty dusty.  I think that’s why I don’t like dusting so much – it’s REALLY hard to get rid of every speck of dust.
    “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” I will say to each of you tonight.  And then rather than sending you out from here clean and shiny, I will put ashes on your forehead as an outward sign of our inward spiritual dirt.  The word “Lent” means “spring season.  Tonight, God calls us to do some spring cleaning of our hearts.  Lent is a season of repentance, a call to turn back to the Lord.  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” the psalmist asks.  But first, we acknowledge the dust – the dirt—in our lives that we cannot remove.  Sin is pervasive and persistent outside of us and within us.  Sin is like the one black-lacquered shelf I have in our living room that if I dust it today will be dusty again tomorrow.  For clean-freaks like me, it is frustrating to know there’s no end to the dust.  It’s perhaps even a bit frightening to us to think about our own mortality; that everything we have been given by God (as Jesus reminds us in the gospel tonight) – our stuff, our houses, our most treasured possessions and even our own bodies– will return to dust.  We have painful reminders right now of how persistent and pervasive sin is – potentially a second Cold War with Russia, a lingering novel virus that hasn’t completely disappeared like we hoped, catastrophic predictions of the effects of climate change, bitterly divisive politics. Then there’s the state of what’s going on with us personally, whether it’s chronic stress and anxiety, financial worries, loneliness, or simply the hard cold fact that we’re getting older and our bodies and minds don’t work like they used to.  The things we’ve done and the things we’ve left undone.  The ash on our foreheads is a brutal reminder of all that’s wrong with us and our world that we can’t just wipe away. Not on our own at least!  And yet.
    And yet.  The ash is shaped in the sign of a cross.  The sign of the cross was first placed on us with oil where different words of blessing were spoken over us at our baptism, “Child of God, you are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever.”  The ashy sign of the cross drives us to our need for Jesus, to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  We can’t get rid of dust or sin forever.  There’s not much we can do about this war in Ukraine or most of the other headlines we see on the news except pray.  We strive to live the way of Christ and reject sin, death and the devil, but we know we’re not perfect.  So the cross of Christ is God’s reassurance that while we are dust and to dust we shall return, we have a treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  Only with God, Psalm 51 tells us, gives us clean hearts and a right spirit.  This Lent, this spiritual spring-cleaning time, God invites us to renewal.  We may be dusty sinner-saints, but Jesus has secured a treasure in heaven for us even after everything has turned to dust.
    In our gospel for tonight, Jesus invites us to three simple faith practices for this year’s spiritual spring-cleaning:  Prayer, fasting, and giving alms.  Rather than Jesus’ self-improvement regimen, however, Jesus points us to our Father in heaven and the need of others as the motivations for spiritual renewal.  I’ll admit it – I like to have a clean house because it makes me look better to others.  I don’t want other people to see my dirty house or the dusty, sinful side of myself.  But God knows the dirt on me, even the dirt I successfully hide from others.  Therefore, our scriptures remind us to focus on God rather than what other people think, or what we want other people to think about us.  Jesus tells us to pray and not worry about how smart and pious we sound with flowery words.  The point is for us to be real in prayer with God!  Jesus doesn’t ask us to fast so that we look better in our bathing suit by summertime!  Rather, Jesus intends for self-sacrifice to lead to more care and concern for others and for God!  Jesus urges us to give to those who have less in secret – not to worry about showing other people how much money we have or how generous we are but that we care for the least of these and see Christ in them.  The more we place our focus this Lent on Christ and serving Christ in others, the less selfish we become.  And ironically, that helps us embrace and love our dusty, sinner-saint selves more, allowing us to be truthful, honest, and open with God and one another.  Pray, fast, give.  Look to God to clean your hearts and renew your spirits this Lent.  Wear your ashy cross proudly – this is who we are.  The ash will wash off, but the cross of Christ given to us at baptism is forever, our treasure in heaven.  Amen.