This is the script from the Ash Wednesday Service, taken from Touch Holiness by Ruth C. Duck and Maren C. Tirabassi
Community Congregational Church of Clinton Heights, UCC
February 22, 2023
Rev. Kathy Johnson
Welcome: No matter who you are or where you on life’s journey, you are welcome here!
1. After John’s arrest, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, saying, “The time has come at last – God’s reign has arrived. You must change your hearts and minds and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:14-15)
2. We must change our hearts and minds.
*Hymn - Here I Am Lord, 452
3. While he was walking by the lake of Galilee Jesus saw two brothers, Simon Peter and Andrew, casting their large net into the water. They were fishermen, so Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will teach you to be fishers of humanity.” At once they left their nets and followed (Matthew 4:18-20)
4. Jesus calls – and we follow. At least we try to follow!
5. Trouble is, he’s always out ahead of us, moving faster than we do.
6. Lent is a time for deciding to follow Jesus, a time for re-turning to his path.
7. Tonight, we can lay down some of the heavy load we carry.
8. Tonight, we can fall again under the spell of Jesus’ love.
Rev. Kathy: The Burden of Idolatry
1. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they confronted Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us gods to go ahead of us.” Aaron answered them, “Take your gold and bring it to me.” He took it out of their hands, cast the metal in a mold, and made it into the image of a bull calf. (Exodus 32:1-4)
2. From time before time, this has been our way. We sense the Living Spirit, but can hardly let it work its way before we try to capture and control it, enflesh and entomb it.
3. We want things predictable and safe. But too much safety kills! Jesus knew this: “We must be born from water and spirit. Flesh can give birth only to flesh; it is spirit that gives birth to spirit. The wind blows where it wills; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So with everyone who is born from spirit.” (John 3:5-6)
4. And from the Sermon on the Mount: I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes. Set your mind on God’s reign and God’s justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well. (Matthew 6: 25, 31-33)
5. We are idol makers, all of us. We think, first I must have a fine, secure home, and then I will seek out God’s ways.
6. First I must advance in my job.
7. First, I must marry someone attractive.
8. First, I must be healthy.
9. First, I must get an education.
10. First I must raise my children.
11. First, first, first! But maybe we have it backward. Maybe there is no home, job, marriage, health, education or parenthood without God.
12. “Set your mind on God’s reign and God’s justice before everything else…” What are the idols that you and I put before commitment to God? What are the things we want to happen before we follow Jesus?
Rev. Kathy: The Burden of Violence
1. “Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it.
2. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously. You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.” (Matthew 5:38-44)
3. “When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Matthew 5:48)
4. Another burden we carry is violence. We are acutely aware of differences. We remember wrongs done to us from long ago. We believe that only weapons will keep us safe from potential enemies.
5. Jesus knew the violence of our hearts. He knew the liking for grudges, the temptation of bitterness. Jesus counseled a different way: Peter came up and asked how often we should forgive. Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven (Matthew 18:21-22)
6. Jesus also knew that violence begets violence, that we must resist the temptation to outdo our enemies, that fighting will not lead to peace. Judas, one of the twelve, appeared with a great crowd armed with swords and staves… they came up, seized hold of Jesus, and held him. Suddenly one of Jesus’ disciples drew his sword, slashed at the High Priest’s servant and cut off his ear. At this Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its proper place. All those who take the sword die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:47, 50-52)
7. Fear and anger are such natural human responses.
8. But they lead so easily to hatred and violence.
9. It is not the fear and anger that are wrong
10. But the way we choose to respond to them.
11. What are the ways we allow fear and anger to encumber us with hatred and violence – either the hatred we carry within or the violence we choose to act out on the outside?
Rev. Kathy: The Burden of Selfishness
1. It was at this time that the disciples came to Jesus with the question, “Who is the greatest in God’s realm?” Jesus called a little child to his side. “Believe me”, he said, “unless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never know God. Whoever can be humble as this little child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:1-4)
2. Like the disciples, we, too, are interested in greatness. Wealth, fame, power – at some level we’re all attracted to these. Like James and John, we wouldn’t mind being chosen to sit at the left and right hands of God.
3. Jesus, too, was concerned with power. But it was the power to love rather than control, the power to give rather than receive, the power to serve rather than be served.
4. It was before the Passover festival. Jesus knew that his hour had come and he must leave this world and go to God. He had always loved his own who were in the world, and now he was to show the full extent of his love.
5. During supper, Jesus, well aware that God had entrusted everything to him and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from the table, laid aside his garments, and taking a towel, tied it around him. then he poured water into a basin and began to wash their feet and to wipe them with the towel. (John 13:3-5)
6. Jesus had everything: power, responsibility, authority, strength.
7. But he used it to serve – to wash is disciples’ feet, to die on a cross.
8. We also have been given power, responsibility, authority and strength. But how have we been using them?
9. Let us ask ourselves how we are weighed down by not using our power with love, and our responsibility with wisdom.
*Hymn All Are Welcome
Rev. Kathy: Forgiveness and New Life
1. We have examined the burdens of idolatry, violence, and misuse of power as they weigh down our lives and keep us from following Jesus.
2. These are a heavy load, indeed! Yet the good news of our faith is that Jesus seeks out people like us.
3. Said Jesus: “It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but those who are ill. I have not come to invite the ‘righteous’ but the ‘sinners’ – to change their ways.” (Luke 5:31-32)
4. Come and celebrate with me… For I have found that sheep of mine… which was lost. I tell you that in heaven there is more joy over one sinner whose heart is changed than over 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance. (Luke 15:5-6)
5. “Salvation has come to this house today!...for it was the lost that the Son of Man came to seek – and to save” (Luke 19:9-10)
6. Come, you who have won my God’s blessing! Take your inheritance – the realm reserved for you since the foundation of the world! I assure you that whatever you did for the humblest ones, you did for me. (Matthew 25:34, 40)
7. In the light of the promises of Jesus, let us renounce the burdens of idolatry, violence, and selfishness that weigh us down. Let us allow the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit to purify our hearts. And let us pray for the love of Jesus to dawn on our hearts and draw us closer to the life he offers.
Rev. Kathy: Ashes are a symbol of purification. As a fire burns, it can separate what is valuable from what is valueless, just as an assayer’s fire can separate a base metal from one that is priceless. In this same way, these ashes are pure. They are a symbol of the new space that is now present within us for a new life. Let us claim the new life Jesus offers us by praying to our God”
All: God of love and mercy, we come to you in prayer, seeking to change our hearts and minds. We confess the baggage of idols, bitterness, and self-concern that we so often drag around with us, struggling under its weight all the while we attempt to follow Christ. Cleanse us from the attachment to these old things. Burn away their power in us and purify our hearts. In place of old ways fill us with the new fire of your Holy Spirit. Open up new opportunities for us to follow Jesus in loving you and our neighbors. In Jesus’ name we ask these things. Amen.
Rev. Kathy: Friends, receive the good news of our faith, for in the name of Jesus, I announce that our sins are forgiven. The old has died. Behold, the new has come!
Those who wish may now receive the mark of these askes as a sign of your forgiveness and new life.
“The old has died. The new has come.”
(Hymn plays while people receive their ashes)
*Hymn Be Thou My Vision, 595
Commission and Benediction Postlude
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