February 25 2004
Joel 2:12-18 + 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 + Matthew 6 :1-6,16-18
Ancient Catechumens, in the rites that moved them to grace and baptism performed a kind of “dance” that acted out in experience what was happening in their hearts. Led to the font of “living” water, they faced the darkness of the western sky and were asked to reject Satan and his empty promises. Then they turned and faced the east, where the sun would soon rise. In this direction they professed their belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. The turn from west to east, from darkness to light, from Satan to God was all captured in that simple gesture.
We have long ago given up many of those power-filled gestures. We think of ourselves as far too sophisticated to do that sort of thing. Baptism has been speeded up, privatized, and sanitized. “Living water” has been reduced to a splash that I have seen in some places come from a mason jar off a shelf. Avoiding the public nature of the commitment, Baptism was slipped into “free time” on an afternoon when no one, but family could possibly hear the profound commitment being made.
The Baptistery took on the appearance of a private chapel with a basin to catch the half cup or less of water that spilled from a baby’s head. Gone was the tomb, the grave that provided the visual connection with dying and rising. With some relief in our lifetime, we welcome a change in practice that now leads us deeper into the mystery.
We are people of the grave – we have come up out of the tomb, and today we shall show our origins. We are dead people raised up to life. The ashes of our death will be visible for all to see. Perhaps we miss half the point if we think these ashes are only a sign of our future. They are also a sign of our past. We were dead and we have been raised to life.
In this season, we are a people doing the dance of those early catechumens. We are turning: from west and darkness to the east and coming light. We are turning from old ways to new ways, from ways of living that lead to death toward ways of living that lead to life.
The most ancient traditions of our faith are rooted in this season and the three Holy Days to which it leads. Proven again and again through the centuries, the power of three things is undisputed and universally practiced by anyone who stands before God. Buddhists, Islam, Judaism all know the power of these things. In our Christian faith, we too embrace these ancient customs with the full knowledge at those who practice them cannot possibly fail to turn toward God. Fasting
Prayer Almsgiving ——- lead us onto the path of change. They lift us from the grave and turn us from the west to the east. These are, in some ways, the steps of the dance. When we learn them and use them together, we shall be transformed, and this whole world will be filled with Light and the Presence of Christ. When Fasting and Prayer and Almsgiving become the steps of Life’s great dance, we shall spring up from the grave and brush aside the dust of death refreshed in living water, we shall be stand in the light, and nothing will ever again be the same.