Sermon - Ash Wednesday 2022

Jesus said: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

So, dear Christians, where’s your treasure? That’s not an easy question to answer, I know. We’d like to quickly answer by saying that our treasure is obviously in heaven, Jesus is our treasure. We like to think that we don’t store up treasures on earth, because that would be dumb, since Jesus says it’s dumb. But you and I both know that we’re not as holy as we’d like to think. We have treasures on earth galore! It’s just kind of hard to identify those treasures.

This is why the season of Lent spans forty days: it takes time to identify and recognize our treasures, it takes time to examine the heart. This is also why various practices arose in Christianity during Lent, so that we could better learn to identify and minimize our worldly treasures and thus better lay up for ourselves heavenly treasures. 

To clarify, this isn’t just self-help or self-improvement, to do that would be to focus even more so on ourselves, which is the opposite goal of Lent. Likewise, this isn’t really just about temporarily giving up vices, and then resuming them after lent, because that makes a mockery of the whole thing. Rather, this is about remembering that we have been cleansed from our former sins through the blood of Jesus Christ. Through His blood we are partakers of His divine nature. He has called us to His own glory and excellence. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Through Jesus we have “escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”

All of this is true for us now, even though what we will be in the resurrection is far greater. Already through baptism God has declared you an heir of the kingdom of heaven and a partaker of His holiness in this life. You are God’s child. The Holy Spirit has cast out the demons from within you and He now resides in your heart; you are a temple of the living God. 

However, this, your sanctification, is not yet complete, nor will it be until Christ returns. It’s all too easy to fall again into our old corrupt sinful desires of the world. Therefore it’s absolutely vital that we constantly heed the words of the prophet Joel: ““return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him.”

One of the things we can do to help us examine our hearts and identify our worldly treasures is to give things up and give them away. Jesus talks about giving to the needy, praying, and fasting. Each of these are an exercise in giving up our worldly treasures and giving them to others. 

When you give to the needy you’re giving away some of your earthly treasure so that another with a greater need can use it. To some extent this makes us feel good about ourselves, since it’s better to give than to receive. But in this case the goal isn’t to make us feel good, instead it’s to identify an earthly treasure so that we may learn to treasure God. To aid this, one thing I’ve heard from others is to give until it hurts. Maybe $20 is easy to give, so try $100, or $500, or a grand. It’s easy to give away the can of green beans from the pantry, you didn’t want to eat them anyways, but what about the steak in your freezer? Everyone has their own threshold, but the point (in addition to helping your neighbor), is to identify the worldly treasures in your heart.

Likewise with praying. Prayer is a sacrifice of time. Again, there are some worldly benefits to praying, like feeling more relaxed. But it’s not always relaxing, home devotions and the divine service with a bunch of small kids is not so much relaxing as it is exhausting. Or when you’re really busy, stopping and taking some time to pray can feel excruciatingly frustrating. We don’t have service on Sunday morning because it’s a convenient time, rather it’s meant to be a sacrifice of time. In praying we’re saying that God and what He does matters more than me and what I want to do.

Similarly with fasting. Recently intermittent fasting has become a pretty popular health craze, and God knows many of us could do with skipping a meal or two, myself included. But fasting isn’t merely some fad diet, rather it’s meant to make us feel hunger so that we might stop letting our stomach control our minds and our actions. I regularly need to remember that my stomach is not my god, since my heavenly Father is my God.

But lest we think that Lent is only a time to give up our worldly treasures, it’s also a time to take up our heavenly treasures. We don’t just give up our past sinful desires, but we return to living according to those things which pertain to true life and godliness. “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

By God’s divine power He has made us new creations and those qualities belong to us and are increasing. We are no longer children of wrath but we are children of our heavenly Father. Use these forty days of Lent to forsake worldly treasures, and turn again to God’s grace and peace through our Lord Jesus. As our knowledge of our own sins increases, so does our desire and anticipation grow for that coming resurrection day. We’re not just looking forward to our celebration of Easter, but we’re awaiting the great and awesome day when our Lord shall return and gather us together with Him to His mansion in the skies.