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yesterday was to eat, drink and be merry carnival , literally Karna ball goodbye to meet or Mardi gras , fat Tuesday, shrove Tuesday, whatever it is it's that time of indulgence and excess and we eat

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up all those things that if we're keeping the fast we say we're going to set aside the lard, the butter, the sugar, the milk, the eggs, the cheese, the meat, carnival Mardi

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gras. So maybe some of you did that here yesterday. BBW Beer King's cake. I lived in pennsylvania for a while. I learned the Germanic custom of ordering ahead of time. You're fost nuts,

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they don't even deal with the hole in the doughnut , they just fry the dough sugar it. I spent the weekend with my eastern european friends. They started lent sunday evening. So sunday afternoon at the

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church luncheon was Blini buckwheat pancakes, slathered with sour cream, caviar, salmon washed down with shots of vodka at the church lunch. Yes, maybe says something about why I went, I don't know and

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not everyone keeps the fast, but we indulge we like to indulge in that annual excess. But today we make the turn it's ash Wednesday. So some of our Eastern brothers and sisters started on sunday evening

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. Those of us in the Western Church, we've joined in today with ash Wednesday. So at this point around the globe, so very many christians have now entered what we call great lent the great fast

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. So it begins in many of the prayers. Today you will hear some references to baptism and that's on purpose. These 40 days came into being early in the church, Those who were preparing to be

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baptized sometimes as much as a three-year preparation period. The last 40 days was that intentional faith formation before baptism. And eventually those baptisms were scheduled for the Great Paschal Vigil. They were done annually at the

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vigil. And so the 40 days preceding that time Became that final preparation for baptism. And that's how we get these 40 days, not counting the Sundays , those are still that day of resurrection, but

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that's how we make that timing. And for those of us, he already baptized back then. And now we join in in this time of repentance and renewal in the texts for today. There's several threads

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, but one of them is a thread about matters of the heart. So in the gospel reading, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, moth rust, thieves get to that treasure store up

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in said for yourself, treasures in heaven, where your treasure is? That is where your heart is also. And so we could say that we come to these days asking that question and looking deep within

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ourselves, into the depths of our hearts. What is there? What is dwelling there now? And where is our treasure? The psalmist said, create in me a clean heart. Oh God renew a

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right spirit within me. And later on a broken and contrite heart. O God that will not despise . So we can think of the fast as this season, this landscape set before us, so that

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we can look to the secret places of our hearts , the places that God knows, the places that we may even be insulating ourselves against and ask what is living there? What needs to be cleaned away

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? Created me a clean heart. Oh God renew a right spirit within me. Some of the church elders talked about the noose and they meant that in the sense of the heart and seeing all of life

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with the eyes of the heart, there's spring cleaning to be done. They're sweeping out. That needs to happen. We will come to the time today for the ashes and the words that are said are

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those from Genesis Chapter three. And you well know that's after both creation accounts. It's the story of the fall. It's our story of the fall. It is the story of how we do not live

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as we were created to live. We do not live in the beauty and harmony of that verdant garden paradise. We break communion with God and with one another, we lose and betray that life that God

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imprinted imaged us in. We live alienated lives. We mutilate the life. God gives us. We live fragmented, estranged, disengaged. We live as if christ did not rise from the dead. If

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you're wondering what to focus on for lent, discerning your heart and its treasures and what needs sweeping. You could take the papers with you and look back at are rather lengthy confession of sin for today,

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you could look at the back of this bulletin. We have again, given that quote from that fourth century bishop ST john Chrysostom, who cautions us about how we keep the fast. You could look at

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the end of the bulletin and see another old Lenten prayer attributed to another fourth century Saint Saint Ephraim, the Syrian. He uses some words that are strange to our ears in this 21st century Google away.

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See what these things mean. But it's a rather good list for lent take from me. Give me not the spirit of Slaw. Well sloth that can mean that passivity. That can mean our sense that

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nothing can be changed. So we just sit back and let things continue on as they are. And the church elders understood that sloth leads to despair. That sense of despondency and pessimism going around as if

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we're the glass half empty or can never be filled at all. Type people. Saint Ephraim speaks of lust of power. If God is not in charge , then we are the center of our universe,

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but power can also manifest as indifference. Why should I be bothered? If I'm in charge, I can be indifferent to others, I can have contempt for others. I can have a lack of interest

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. The remainder of the words on his list are pretty easy to understand caution with idle talk, gossip that might creep into social media. He has that strange word, chastity and of course, we think

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about sexual practices with that, but it's an understanding of how we do not see the wholeness of one another and how we we relate to each other just for one aspect of their person. And it invites

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us instead into again with the eyes of the heart , to see the whole. He invites us to humility and to patience and to love. There might just be a word in those prayers at the end

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that call to you for your Lenten discipline. I heard recently that there's one church elder, I'll have to track down his name, But he did some of those liturgical mathematics that some of you know about

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and he calculated that if you are discounting Sunday since they're always the day of resurrection and we're counting the days of lent, then we will have a fast for 36.5 days. Which accords with the 365 days

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a year. So the fast is like a tithe of our life. That's okay. Little number playing there, but that's okay. So if we think about this invitation, however, we keep this season

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however, we enter into this landscape. If we think about it as a time where we can sweep out clean out awaken, what is in ourselves? Can we recover that vision of new life which we

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so easily lose and betray? Can we recover that vision and repent and return so that we're returning to the genuine order of things lent is about a restoration of right vision rooted in our humility. So for

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us in the west we begin with this sign symbol of ashes, sign of our death, sign of our sin, sign of our betraying the life God has imaged us with these speak of our fragmentation and

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our estrangement and our disengagement. And so if we choose to receive these ashes, it is a way of admitting the truth about ourselves. And if we receive these ashes, it's also showing our utter dependence

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on God, who has conquered the power of sin and death. And then leaving this place, we begin our Lenten work. It's an invitation to us think about your discipline that you may take on come

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tomorrow to chapel for chocolat. Wonderful cautions us against religious strictures and shows us the undergirding of love. The classic ingredients for lent, if you will. The recipe for lent, building upon the jewish practices

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is what we heard in the Gospel according to Matthew , it is prayer and fasting and alms giving. So if the disciplines you think about, you can think about those three ancient practices. Well, prayer

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, let it be not just for what I want , satisfy me. Oh, God! Let us open our hearts to others to the needs of the world fasting. Strange for some of us again,

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check all the different ways that you might enter into some sort of restriction. It's about becoming aware of how easily we just attend to our urges and our desires without even checking ourselves. So we can fast

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from food, but we can also fast from other things that we easily give into. And the aim of fasting is to lighten us to create space so that we have more room for communion with God with

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one another. Fasting is about our mindfulness of our dependence on God. And the old instructions were that if we are fasting from food, then the money that we would have used on that food becomes the

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money of the extra alms, giving offering beyond our normal gifts. So we enter into this surrounded with the words of Matthew cautioning us not to do anything for show. Again, some of the church elders

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will caution us even from revealing to our closest people what are disciplines are um they speak of the Lenten imp who will quickly enter in and try to thwart our work but Matthew of course don't show off.

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So it's a balance and it is a choice of retaining the ashes for the remainder of the day because it calls you to be able to speak for them or for some, it is a good discipline to

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remove them because it might be a better practice for you to be carrying that in your heart. We come to this day certainly in the midst of the words of Isaiah, what is this fast that we

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keep? They thought they were doing the right thing , sackcloth and ashes, but they were hoping for a mechanistic outcome with God, they would do this and God would respond and God through the prophet says

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the fast you keep is always for the needy of the earth and you're fasting is to open you to that work. Any penitence and contrition must link us to the ones who are to be repairers of the

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breach. And are there any more timely words restorer of the streets to live in Paul's letter gives us the long view for today. His earlier verses before our passage proclaim that in christ we are a new

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creation in christ the cosmos is a new creation in christ prime or it'll a new creation old has passed now reconciled and restored. I have very much liked this two word phrase that our brothers and sisters in

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the Eastern Church give us for this time. They speak of the time of lent as being in the key, the tone or the key of bright sadness . And that's good because we know the sadness for

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all the ways we are not as home for all the ways we do not live in that garden for all of the ways that we are not living as our God created image for all the ways we do

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not honor one another. Made in the image of christ for all the ways that we are clutter hearted , fragmented people. We are sad and we work to repent. But this time is bright because we

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are here, we are here we are in the midst of one another, held in the love of God. It is bright because God is merciful. It is bright because we know the ending. It

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is bright because God beckons it is bright sadness because we trust God to restore God have mercy on us and may we keep a good lent our men.