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| Hoosier United Methodist News |
March 2002 |
Mini Homily:
The grace in the lesson offered
By Dan Motto
Following my father's death in California, my family decided that his ashes should be scattered in places he cared about. Parts of him are scattered in California, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. I was responsible for Indiana, although I had some help from my siblings.
I scattered his ashes using my hand. Spreading a handful here and there in appropriate places, in parks, and yards and in cemeteries, on his parents' and grandparents' graves. Each time I took a small handful and placed it, there was, of course, a residue. I determined not to wash it off but to let it wear away over the course of the day, molecules of father's body deposited wherever they chose to fall away.
Ashes are a sign of mortality says The Book of Worship, appropriate for our reflections as we begin Lent, the season of preparation for the overwhelming mystery of Easter. Easter is about immortality, a gift offered to us by Christ's defeat of death. I honestly don't think you can do Easter without doing Lent. And I don't think you can do Lent well without doing Ash Wednesday. Ring around a rosy. A pocket full of posy. Ashes. Ashes. We all fall down. Mortality.
There are times I profoundly understand that mortality is nearly as great a gift as immortality is a gift. Mortality, says the dictionary, is the state of being subject to death. But to be subject to death requires that you first have been given life. You have to have been born in order to die.
You may think that this is just a simple, effusive soliloquy on how wonderful it is to be alive: flowers, sunrises, peach pies and friends. But no, more important to the gift of mortality is the knowledge that each wonderfully scented breath could be my last one. Each striking sunset could be the last glimmer of light I see. I might well have been with my grandchildren for the last time already. Death is a brooding presence that offers me a choice -- to be afraid or to cherish the gift of life I have; to make each moment count; to value the life God gives me. Sin is the devaluing of this moment as ordinary, dull, boring -- needing to be made into something else, something more exciting, more secure, more titillating, more selfishly centered on me instead of the gift that God made it.
We (humanity) got kicked out of the Garden (where the Tree of Life is and which, you may note, was not proscribed) because instead of valuing life as it is given to us, we wanted to remake it according to what we choose to value or devalue -- usually ourselves at the expense of anything else, appropriating for ourselves the judgments of what's good and what's evil.
Consider, if we could live life, strictly from our own selfishness, endlessly -- where would be the incentive to stop and smell the roses, to stop and say: "this is a day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." Death is a gift given to make us appreciate life. And if we don't appreciate life as it really is . we guarantee death permanently. (I don't like mosquitoes; therefore let's use DDT until every bird is dead and the forest is bare.) That's what sin is, death is. Unless we see the grace in the lesson offered.
I honestly believe if we don't get this lesson this side of dying, life beyond death would be a gift too cheap to appreciate. That's why it's important to do Ash Wednesday and Lent. I have a Father and a father whose ashes are important.
The Rev. Dan Motto is the superintendent of the Michiana District.
Last updated on 01/14/2004