Some of you have been a part of our short Children’s Ash Wednesday Services in the past and of course, I invite you to join us this Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Little Chapel. We all know that Children’s Sermons are made with adults in mind, too, so here's a sneak peek of some of what I'll share with the kids on Ash Wednesday:
One of the dreaded announcements in my house when I was a little girl was “Today we are starting SPRING CLEANING!” Spring Cleaning in my family meant that for several Saturdays in a row, we had lots of chores to do – to help clean the house and all the mounds of stuff that had piled up during all these cold months where we played indoors and used every blanket and jacket in the house. During Spring Cleaning, my parents did things like wash windows and clean blinds and curtains and baseboards. You can ask your parents about how NOT fun that can be. Spring Cleaning for my brothers and me meant that we had the dreaded chore of ….dun, dun, dun….cleaning out from under our beds. Oh man…it was bad. We found clothes, missing socks, toys that we’d forgotten about from Christmas, and the worst part, little pieces of cereal or candy covered in dust and dirt. You had to stretch and reach all the way back to get everything out…sometimes even using a coat hanger or baseball bat to help you reach into the farthest, dirtiest corners. By the end of Spring Cleaning day, we were covered in cereal pieces, colored markers from all the capless markers we discovered, and lots and lots of dirt and dust.
Well, in a way, Lent is a time of Spring Cleaning in our lives. It is during these 40 days before Easter that we do our best to pray, say we’re sorry for things we’ve done wrong, and ask for forgiveness and patience and self-control to do better. And so Lent is like Spring Cleaning of our lives because we clean out our thoughts, words, and actions of all the things that don’t belong.
The neat thing about Spring Cleaning when I was a child was that once I had all the piles of stuff out from under the bed, my Mom and Dad helped me sort through the piles and decide which things to recycle or trash, which things to donate, and which things we could clean and put away in the places they actually belonged. I didn’t have to do any of it alone. My parents were there all along. And for the Lenten Spring Cleaning of our lives, we are not alone, either – God is with us all along!
That’s what Lent is all about...looking deep within ourselves – our thoughts and habits and the way we treat people – and deciding what we ought to throw away – things like disrespect or dishonesty – and deciding what we need to brush the dust off of and return to the places they belong – whether something we can actually dust off like our Bible that we can start reading each day or remembering to be kind to others and help those in need in special ways. Remembering what giving to others is all about. And just like my parents helped me with actual Spring Cleaning, we can all help one another with prayers and forgiveness and sharing God’s love during Lent. And we know that the Holy Spirit will help us in everything that we do.
The very old special tradition of taking ashes from burnt palm branches and placing them on our foreheads or hands in the sign of a cross reminds us that we belong to Jesus and that during the next 40 days of Lent, we will do our best to remember to repent, to pray, to forgive, and to do special things to share God’s love with others as we get ready to celebrate Easter.
For the grown-ups reading this reflection today, I want you to take time to remember that odd, mysterious feeling – physical, emotional, and spiritual when someone has made the sign of the cross in ashes on your head. Remember that feeling? It’s so strange and vulnerable...and I can tell you, it’s a humbling and mysterious experience to make the sign of the cross over and over on heads of all ages, children, and adults. Each Ash Wednesday I find myself thinking, “Who am I to remind someone that they are dust!?” But as my hands get dirtier and dirtier with the ashes, I am reminded that our dustiness—our sins—mark us all, and together we remember and repent as a Body of Christ. That’s why we gather. That’s why we do these strange rituals.
Having a cross on our forehead reminds us that we are a child of God, as this is where the water was placed on our heads when we were baptized and became a part of the church family. The ashes help remind us that sometimes it gets quite dirty to be a Christian and to do the right things and share God’s love with all people. Just like how I used to dread Spring Cleaning and how hard and dirty work it was to clean out from under my bed. Like we teach the children, the ashes also remind us that God created us out of dust and that after we die, all of the things of this world – even everything hidden under our beds – will return to dust. But having the ashes in the shape of a cross reminds us that this is not sad, but happy because Jesus lived, died, and then rose from the dead and promises us eternal life in heaven.
It’s as simple as that for a Children’s sermon, and it’s as simple as that for us today! And that’s what we’ll celebrate at the end of these 40 days of Lent–when we come together and celebrate Easter….Just like how good it felt and how proud I would be with a clean room at the end of Spring Cleaning, that’s how we will feel as we celebrate Easter together soon...we will give thanks to God for cleaning out our lives with love and grace – and making our hearts sparkling clean to share love with everyone.
Hope to see you and your family at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday!
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Susan Pinson