Ask Me Whether What I Have Done is My Life - An Ash Wednesday Sermon

Since first posting about William Stafford’s poem a short time ago, I have found that it has never been far from my consciousness.  Perhaps in an attempt to exercise it from my thoughts, I used it as the basis for my sermon tonight at my church’s Ash Wednesday service.

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I am still trying to comprehend the meaning of this poem,
but the imagery and words spoke so powerfully to me that I been wrestling with them ever since..
The most powerful line for me is “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”
On the most obvious level,
the answer to the question Stafford invites us to ask is “Yes.”
Yes, my life is all about what I have done.
What other measure for one’s life is there than to look at what one has actually accomplished? Even Jesus in Matthew 25 seems to tell us that the truest measure of our lives lies in what we have accomplished/attempted/done.
“I was hungry, and you fed me.
Thirsty, and you gave me a drink,
naked and you clothed me,
sick and in prison and you visited me.
Come, you who are blessed by my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

But on another level, however, aren’t we more than the sum of our actions?
Isn’t there more to my life than what I have done?
Don’t our beliefs, convictions, and internal lives/monologues count for anything?
I, for one, certainly hope so.
And again, Jesus seems to imply as much,
especially when it comes to our negative thoughts.
In the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus equates lust with adultery and hate with murder.
And if these negative emotions and intentions count for something,
don’t our dreams and good intentions matter as well?

Ask me whether what I have done is my life

That’s a haunting statement for most of us to consider.
As the  Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, Dean of Washington National Cathedral says:

For some of us those words will sound ridiculous,
the kind of empty words you’d expect from a poet.
Obviously my life has been my life!
But for others, those can be penetrating words,
because they ask the question of whether the life I’m living is the life I was made for,
the life I have it in me to lead,
the deepest, most creative, best life I could offer.

A similar perspective is found in a Hasidic Jewish story about a wise rabbi named Zusia.

When Zusia was on his deathbed he began to cry.
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, why do you weep?”
Zusia explained, “When I get to heaven, I won’t be troubled if God asks me,
Zusia, why were you not Abraham?” or “Zusia, why were you not Moses?”
I could answer these questions.
After all, I was not endowed with the righteousness of Abraham or the faith of Moses.
But what will I say when God asks me, “Zusia, why were you not Zusia?”

“Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”

“Why were you not Zusia?

Why were you not Will, or Marvin, or Vernon, or . . . .

And the truth is that if I dwell on these ideas,
I am likely to get more than a little depressed.
There is, after all in the poem, the very first line:
Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made.
I don’t know about you,
but I have made plenty of mistakes.
They are too many to number,
and though you might be titillated to know a few of them,
I’ll spare you the long list of my sins.
After all,
you have your own list of mistakes and sins to tend to, don’t you?

Those of us who have lived for more than a little while have come to realize that life is such that many of our best intentions and fondest dreams turn to ash before our eyes,
so much so that their bitter taste is often on our lips,
and our tears never really wash them away.
And on a night like tonight we realize that we are, at best, failures when it comes to being the disciples Christ has called us to be.
Our flights of love and goodness never break the chains binding us to earth.
And the ashes we will receive in a few moments symbolize this in a very real way.
The best we do is little more than ashes and dust.
We need to see this.
It is important for us to know this.

But, and this is a big but, this is not the whole story.
If it was, then we would be better off to just pack our bags and go home.
It this was all,
then all we could do would be to sit around and mope and mourn and shed our bitter tears.

But my friends, there is more.

As our friend Paul said,
“For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Did you hear that?
Paul is telling us that in spite of ourselves,
in spite of our faults and failures,
and in spite of our sins and transgression,
we can become the righteousness of God;
the righteousness of God.

How? Well Paul tells us how.
“By accepting the grace of God.”

You see, the ashes you will receive will be placed on your forehead in the shape of the cross.
And so they illustrate the graciousness of God towards us through Jesus Christ.
They tell us that there is nothing that God wouldn’t do for us.
In fact, there is nothing God hasn’t already done for us.
That is how great his love is for us.
And that, my friends, is something.
And it brings me back to the poem and the line:
ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.”

While I know there have been some people who haven’t liked me,
maybe some who have even hated me.
I also know that there is one who has loved me with a never-dying love.
And because of that love, I am a child of God.

Is what I have done my life?
No, thank God it isn’t,
and neither is what you have done your life.

For as Paul says,
“I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.”