Theological Truth: When we accept death as a given, we can turn our attention to how we are living now.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, Red, a long-term prison inmate, played by Morgan Freeman, unexpectedly gets paroled. Having been denied so many previous times, he had given up imagining freedom. He had become afraid to hope for something more for his life. Yet he had also seen his friend, Andy, choose the path of hope. In a pivotal scene, Andy tells Red,
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice really. You either get busy living, or you get busy dying.”
Upon his release, Red flounders — paralyzed between the possibilities of new life, yet also poisoned by fear of death and disappointment. Eventually he remembers his friend’s words and leaves everything behind to meet Andy in Mexico. By accepting the realities of dying, Red was able to leave some things behind in order to get busy living.
Ash Wednesday speaks to this relationship between life and death. Today reminds us not so much about the choice between living and dying, but the connection between living and dying. None of us need a reminder about the fragility of life or the inevitability of death, do we? With over one million excess deaths in the US alone due to COVID, all of us have been touched by the grief of loss. With every mass shooting in schools, churches, synagogues, and workplaces we are reminded that death by gun violence is everywhere. With war raging in Ukraine, we see the horrors of war and witness the death toll climb. We are more aware of death than ever.
But today’s reminder of our inevitable mortality is an opportunity, not a threat. We are reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return, so that we can repent and return to the Lord. Where we truly belong. We feel the grit of former living things on our foreheads (the palms from Palm Sunday), so that we can simultaneously remember that we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Death no longer has dominion over us. We are confronted with the realities of dying so that we realize we can leave some things behind — the parts of us that need to die, the practices that separate us from God — and get busy living.
Truly living.
We can choose to get busy living — truly living — when we have fully accepted the fact that we are going to die.
Think about it this way. Have you heard preachers talk about “the dash?” If you look at a tombstone, or the plaques in our Memorial Garden, you see a name, the date of the person’s birth and the date of their death. In between there’s a dash. The dash takes up the least amount of space, but tells the most about their life. When we remember that we each have those two dates, then we can get busy choosing how we’ll live in the meantime.
How are we spending our dash?
When we know we’re dying, we can get busy living. But not too busy!
Lent isn’t a competition to win God’s favor. Heaven isn’t a prize for the busiest. Those are the contest rules for the judges of this world. That’s why Jesus warns us about practicing our piety to impress others. The busy attempts to spotlight our holiness reveal who we are concerned about; who we want to impress; who occupies the deepest desires of our hearts. Jesus reminds us that these earthly treasures don’t last. Heavenly treasure is what we turn to today. Our repentance is a turning, or returning, to God, which implies a turning away from what we had been valuing, the treasures we had been seeking, so that we can live not for our egos or the treasures of this world, but for the Kingdom of God.
So how do we get busy (but not-too-busy) living? What should our Lenten practices be? Well, we know what the Lord requires of us,
“To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8b).
We can act to bring about justice. We can be “ambassadors for kindness” as Sen. Rafael Warnock says. And we can seek the humility rooted in the truth that God is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness (Ps.103:3), abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing (Joel 2:13b). This is the God who gives us this life and has shown us in Christ that nothing can separate us from that Love, not even death.
So whatever practices of prayer, fasting, self-denial, scripture reading, acts of service, lists of gratitude, or commitments to worship you may choose this Lent, please remember that the goal is to live our lives to God, from whom we’ve come and to whom we’re headed. This is what the Church calls the Paschal Mystery, the Way of Sacrificial Love, the way of Jesus — full surrender into the Love of God that always brings life out of death.
Knowing we’re going to die allows us to truly live. With this ever-present good news, we can ask today, throughout Lent, and always: What’s Now? Not “what’s next?” but “What’s now?”
How will be get busy living into this Love that transcends death?
— The Rev. William “A.J.” Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Readings on this day: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:8-14; 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
