Ash Wednesday Reflection + First Trinity 2015
Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
And if your heart leads you, wherever,
according to whatever it treasures or desires most,
then wherever you go, there you are.
When you give / when you pray / when you fast:
don’t do it for benefit / or praise / or gain
says Christ
If you give to benefit yourself
If you pray in order to be praised
If you fast to become full of yourself
If you fast to become full of
you’ve missed the point, the center, the mean, the meaning, the crux of the matter
You have missed. You have fallen short.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
And if your heart leads you, wherever,
according to whatever it treasures or desires most,
then wherever you go, there you are.
There you will be.
Do not store up treasures / Thieves may break in
Store up what is treasured by God
for God’s treasures endure,
what God values
perseveres, presses on,
toward God’s kingdom
We are treated as though we have nothing
and yet we possess everything, says St. Paul.
The finite holds the infinite, says Luther.
Christ will come like a thief in the night.
In earth, in moth, in rust.
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
And if your heart leads you, wherever,
according to whatever it treasures or desires most,
then wherever you go, there you are.
There you will be.
There you will be
but who you are is only the beginning
of who
in Christ
we are called to become.
The treasure of the Church is the poor, says St. Lawrence.
And the heart of the Church is love for the least among us.
We pray with the faithful three thousand years before us:
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Create of us a New People
displace our treasures / upset us / shake us up /
agitate us / disturb us to the core
replace in us, create in us a new heart, create something new
that we might find your treasure
that we might treasure what you treasure
that which is “heavenly” :
your presence in those
who call out
and search out
for love, for Resurrection
so that with our hearts, grounded in your treasures
wherever we go
there we might become
Wherever we go, we might become
in you
Wherever we go
we become
the bearers of your love
bearers of
your dusty, ashy
mortal, eternal
finite, infinite
cross
on our foreheads in ash and dust
in our hearts until to dust we return
bearers of your love
from which neither life nor death can separate
help us to pray / to fast / and to hold on
in your Spirit of Resurrection and becoming
that we might be transformed in the fire of your love
by the renewing of our bodies and our minds
amen
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