Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The life of faith is most often expressed through the sparks of juxtaposition. We know that life is not that simple. Life cannot be understood by some Linnaean system of nomenclature. We can categorize all we want in attempts to master nature, the universe and all creation. But the riddle of life is not found in the categories. It is found in the deeper mystery of life that forms the depth from which all life springs.

For example, take our own religious efforts to deal with our mortality. Some use religion to take fanciful flights from reality, trying to avoid thinking of death. We attempt to escape the discomfort of finite human existence, either by ignoring death altogether or by resigning our selves to fate.

How many times have we denied the reality of death through our grandiose, if not manic, efforts to build our kingdoms in the world or in our minds. We flee death by our efforts to accumulate wealth, by a desire to be more important than we are, by engaging in thrills either directly or vicariously. How often do we avoid life itself by answering our desire to control life, when we could simply live it by answering the divine invitation to live.

Today we juxtapose two things: the gloomy ashes of death and the tender buds of spring or Lente as our Middle English ancestors called it. Yes, Ash Wednesday is all about the ashes of this world and our failed dreams and our desperate measures to beat death. In one courageous act of honesty we receive the mark of the cross made with the ashes. They signify our limitation and our rebellion. But in the act of juxtaposition, we receive the word of promise.

Ash Wednesday is all about spring and the renewal of life in the daffodils and paper whites and in the azaleas and redbuds. Ash Wednesday is about finding signs of life amidst the ashes. Lent is a time of renewal: ashes on the one hand; spring on the other.

Many continue to ignore the biblical readings for Lent and Holy Week, especially the Three Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Vigil of Easter. These readings are filled with images of hope in the God and Father of Jesus Christ. Jesus walks the walk of obedience to God and thereby places himself in great jeopardy. With every threat that he encounters, he puts his trust in God all the more. For Jesus trusts in the prophetic promise that God alone will vindicate his servant. We must learn to see the resurrection already present in the cross, for we will not come to know resurrection without the cross.

Dear congregation, during Lent we discipline ourselves, not in order to prove our worthiness or our strength. On the contrary, we learn of our weaknesses and vulnerability. It is in the discipline of Lent that we might discover ourselves to be open to the promise of God made in baptism. It is in baptism that the great paradox of faith is most fully expressed. In the water of baptism we die with Christ and are raised with him to walk in newness of life.

Is it true that we must die to self in order to truly live? Receive the ashes and start looking for the signs of life. Amen.