Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Sitting in the Ashes with Ben Carruthers
The profound symbolism of Ash Wednesday unveils a journey from endings to new beginnings. Far from being simply a gloomy reminder of mortality, the message "you are dust, and to dust you shall return" offers a beautiful invitation to transformation.
Dust and ashes represent the end of something. Throughout Scripture, we see figures like Job and the people of Nineveh sitting in ashes as a powerful symbol of coming to the end of destructive paths. Job, after losing everything and questioning God, covers himself in dust when he realizes he doesn't have all the answers. The Ninevites, upon hearing God's message through Jonah, cover themselves in ash to signify their wicked ways must end. These biblical examples teach us that true repentance—the Hebrew "shuv" meaning "to turn away"—involves recognizing when we've been walking down unhealthy paths and making the decision to turn around.
The challenging question we must ask ourselves: what in our lives needs to come to an end? Is it unhealthy habits, destructive self-talk, measuring our worth by worldly standards, or perhaps darkness that lives in the depths of our hearts that no one else sees? The beauty of Ash Wednesday is that while we receive ashes as a symbol of our mortality, they come in the shape of a cross—a reminder that our endings can become beginnings through Christ's redemptive work. Life may be astonishingly brief, but Jesus came so we might experience abundant life now. What needs to end in your life so you can truly begin living the way God intended? Take time this Lenten season to reflect, repent, and turn toward what gives life.
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Heavenly Father, lord, god, I would give you thanks and praise for the gathering tonight, that we can come here and remind ourselves that we are dust. So, lord, as we dive into that passage a little bit and talk about what dust is and what does it mean to return to dust and what you have to say about it, I pray that we have open ears, hearts and minds to receive your word tonight. Help us to search the deepest parts of our hearts, even if that means going to the deep, dark places that we don't like to go. Let tonight be a transformational experience for us. It's in your name that we pray. Amen, please be seated. Well, good evening, I got that right. I've been practicing good evening all day, because that's, I didn't want to mess that one up.
Speaker 1:My name is Ben Carruthers, I'm the director of student and family ministry and it really is great to be here worshiping with you on this Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday, from you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Like Isabel said, it can be kind of a gloomy message, but I don't think so. I think, like Ryan said, man, this is really a beautiful message, and if you have no idea what Ash Wednesday is, I thought about that this week. I'm like what if someone doesn't have any idea what this is all about? So I Googled it and I actually found some pretty funny memes about it. So I want to show you a couple memes. So here's the first one that I found Fasting does not mean eating fast food. Happy Ash Wednesday. How about this one Me interacting with people today? Why are you looking at my forehead? If you're going to Walmart afterwards, you'll have people watching, I promise. And how about this one? He's a bit of a perfectionist. I actually had someone in the first service come up to my line. I was giving them ashes and they're like your ash is fantastic, thank you. Thank you, sonia. Sonia did it. Thank you. And probably my personal favorite this one Lent is coming. Get your ash in church. A little risky, that's for the seven o'clock crowd only, right there.
Speaker 1:So this thing about Ash Wednesday it comes down to this thing of ashes, of what ashes are? Ashes are made up of calcium, potassium, magnesium and carbon. I googled that too. But ashes also mean the end of something. This is ash from Peter Deusterman's and Janet McCarthy's fireplace From Peter Deusterman's and Janet McCarthy's fireplace. This once was wood and now it's the end of it.
Speaker 1:You see, ash is symbolic for the end of something and through the scriptures in the Old Testament, there are people who the scriptures tell us sat in ash. There are people who covered themselves in ash and they're in parts of scripture where we just read over it and we don't think too much of it. Okay, that was just something weird. They did thousands of years ago, sure, right, but it's incredibly symbolic because it means the end of something and we all know what it means to be at the end of something, right At the end of your wits or whatever. It is right. I can't tell you how many times I'm driving in my car with my kids and I have to say I've hit my end. This is it. I will pull over, I will turn this thing around.
Speaker 1:Some of us know what it means to have a relationship end. Some of us know what it means to have a job end. We understand this idea of an ending, but with Ash Wednesday, it's not just about the ending. So we're at the sermon style called sitting in the ash, because there are a couple stories in the old testament where these people would sit in the ash. We're just going to do two today and we're going to move on from it. But there's a more than just the two. In job 42, 6, it says this therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. And in the book of Jonah, chapter 3, verses 5 through 8, it says this the Ninevites believed God, they declared a fast and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on a sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. So here we have two familiar stories the story of Job and the story of Jonah, and we have these people sitting and covering themselves in dust. So now the story of Job. Right, this isn't a sermon on the story of Job. So a real quick overview of the story of Job.
Speaker 1:Job is a guy who's very faithful to God, and so God and Satan have this conversation about him and saying that man, job is only faithful to you because he has everything. So Satan says he's like listen, if you take everything away from him, he will curse you, he will turn from you, he will not have faith in you any longer. So God and Satan have this conversation and God says okay, go at it, but you can't kill the man. And so Job goes through the worst physical pain. He loses everything. He loses his farm, he loses his livestock, he loses his family. He loses everything. And at the end of Job he's starting to get angry as one would and he's shouting back to God. He's starting to be disobedient to God. He starts having this conversation with God where God says listen, job, you have no idea. You have no idea the plans that I have for so much more that is going on. You have no idea what I can see. How can you say this? I'm the one that created all of these. You have no idea. And Job has this conversation with God and afterwards he sits down and covers himself in dust because he's come to the end. He's had this realization that God is in control and that he doesn't have that. Job doesn't have all the answers, and that's okay. And he has this incredible experience where he's come to the end and he turns back to God.
Speaker 1:And in the story of Jonah, we know that story pretty familiar, where he goes to Nineveh. And Jonah goes to Nineveh because Nineveh is a wicked, wicked place and God has a word for them turn from your wicked ways. So Jonah brings this message to the Ninevites and he tells them of God's message Turn, repent, turn of your ways. And the passage that I read is their reaction. The Ninevites and the king of Nineveh hear this word from God through Jonah and sit down and cover themselves in ash as a sign for how we have been living has now come to an end. The way that we have been living has now come to an end. The way that we have been living our lives is over and we're repenting. We are turning from our ways. It's this repentance Now.
Speaker 1:Repentance it's kind of a big church can maybe be kind of a scary word, but repentance the Hebrew word is shuv. Everyone say shuv. It's a fun word to say, you can impress your friends with it. Shuv, it really means to turn away from Repentance, means to turn away from repentance. It means this if you're Job or if you're a Ninevite, you have been walking on this path in a direction in the wrong way and something happens in your life. If you're Job, god speaks to you and says Job, you don't understand.
Speaker 1:If you're a Ninevite, you hear this message from God that says turn away from your wicked ways. Something happens in your life that causes you to shove, that causes you to turn and go back this way because you have come to an end. Job covered himself in dust to symbolize that the end was there. The people of Nineveh covered themselves in dust because they wanted to live that way no longer. The dust symbolizes the end Central.
Speaker 1:What is something in your life that needs an ending? What is going on in the path that you have been walking that you need to stop, that? You need that thing to come to an end and repent and turn away from and come back to the goodness of God? What is it in your life that has been taking away the goodness of your life? Something that is not life-giving? It's Lent, right? People give up these things for Lent. They give up these non-life-giving things, whatever it might be. My wife and I were talking a couple weeks ago and she said she's giving up social media for Lent and I said you know what? You're right, I am too. Now she's on multiple social media sites and I'm on Facebook Marketplace, so one of us has a little bit of an advantage there, but I'm giving it up too.
Speaker 1:Even on my little old Facebook page, I see people that I respect and I love that are friends and they post things I disagree with. And you know what? This is someone that I care about, this is a friend of mine that I love, and since they posted something that I disagree with, my mind goes to an ugly place, For some reason, my mind forgets the relationship that I have with this person, the knowledge that I know their heart. But because they posted something that I disagree with, my mind goes to a place that says they are no longer a friend, they are the enemy. How could they post this? I don't want that. That's not life-giving for my life. I have come to an end and I'm getting rid of it.
Speaker 1:Well, not many years ago, probably about four, four and a half years ago, I was sitting on the couch with two of my sons, isaiah and arlo, and arlo at the time was probably two and a half years old and we were watching the vikings game. I love football, I love the vikings. It's hard, but I love the vikings and I can tell you we were watching the playoff game versus the Eagles yeah right, there's not enough ash in the bucket to fill up and we were watching it and I, back in those days, I was a very aggressive football watcher, right. When something bad happened, I would stand up and I would yell, I would throw pillows, I wouldn't curse in front of my children, in front of my children, right but I'd get angry and upset, and during this game I was so frustrated, if you remember, man, they were getting their butts whooped. It was horrifying, it was so sad and I was so angry. I remember I was standing up yelling at the refs or about the Eagles fans, because they're the worst, let's be honest. And so it's just, I'm just, I'm almost enraged, I'm so angry. And I look at the couch and there's my two-and-a-half-year-old son, my oldest son, isaiah, and they're no longer watching the TV, but they're watching their dad freak out. And I thought in that moment that the path that I was walking, as something as so silly as watching football, it had to end, because I want that to be something I enjoy with my sons, enjoy with my family. And if I kept going down that path, that was something that they wanted no part of. And so I had to change. It had to come to an end because something that was life-giving for me stopped being life-giving and so I stopped watching football for a while.
Speaker 1:What is going on in your life that is not life-giving that needs an end? What in your life is going on in your life that is not life-giving that needs an end? What in your life is going on that is destructive? What kind of unhealthy habits are inside of you that are leading you down a path of destruction? What are those things? There's a lot of easy ones to name. We all know the easy ones, but what about things that are kind of inside, the things of the heart, or maybe the way that you view yourself when you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see someone of worth? Do you see someone of value, or is that not what you see? Do you give in to the lies of the world that says you need to look this way? Do this make this much money, drive this kind of car, have this kind of house, and the value of who you are as a child of God diminishes? Are those things that are leading you down a path that need an end because they're destructive? Or how about this?
Speaker 1:What are things in your life that live in the darkness of your soul, that your best friend, maybe even your husband and your wife, don't even know, just you and God. I want to tell you something about that darkness. We talked about the people of Nineveh who had been on this path, and it was a horrible place. The time that Jonah brought this word to Nineveh, jonah didn't want to go, and he didn't want to go for good reason, because the people there were absolutely wicked. But he went anyways and he gets there and he shares this word of God to them. And in their wickedness, these were people who worshiped idols, who had child sacrifice. It was an absolutely wicked place. The darkness of their hearts, the darkness of their souls, and even in that darkness the darkness of their hearts, the darkness of their souls, and even in that darkness, the Bible tells us that they turned, that that deep darkness came to an end. So, whatever that deep darkness is that you and God know about, only no matter what that darkness is can have an end. So what is it? What is something that you're on this road that needs an end?
Speaker 1:Now, we talked about how this Ash Wednesday is purely not about the ash or the end, but there is good news, there's a gospel message here, because when you came up here to receive ashes, I didn't get out the Home Depot bucket, the Menards bucket, and just say open your hand and go. Bloop, there you go, because that's not the end of the story. You came up and you were marked with the cross of the story. You came up and you were marked with the cross because the good news is that all of this stuff is All of the darkness, all of the stuff that pulls us away from the goodness of God, all of the stuff that we look at in our life and says this just isn't right All of that stuff is taken to Jesus. This is the mark of the cross. It's a mark that says you are forgiven. It's a mark that says you are forgiven. It's a mark that says you are loved. It's a mark that says, no matter the darkness, no matter what road you've been on, you can still turn and repent and shiv and come back to God, because that's what the cross represents. This is good news, because this ending also has a new beginning, because when Jesus was on the cross, he said it himself it is finished. There was an ending. There was an ending, but a couple days later there was a new beginning, because, yes, you are dust and to dust you shall return, but then there's a whole new beginning, made possible because of what you have on your forehead right now.
Speaker 1:I want to leave you with this thought this life is short, right, we talk about it all the time. It's incredibly short. We don't know and, like Isabel showed us in the measuring tape, it's just a blip on eternity. But a few years ago I had a reminder of that, and I'm sure you're noticing these incredibly amazing hot pink shoes that I'm wearing. Don't be jealous.
Speaker 1:I'm wearing these for a purpose and a reason, not just because they're great, but a couple years ago, three, four years ago my wife and I were at a wedding. It was an outside wedding in Wisconsin, very beautiful wedding, lightly raining outside, and after the wedding the reception took place a little bit later, but it was outside and it was by a river, and so my wife and I decided to go for a nice romantic walk down by the river. And as we're walking we're walking together I take a step and sparks immediately fly up from the ground and I immediately jump like 25 feet in the air and I'm a big guy, that was a big jump, right. I was like what was that? And we looked down on the ground and there's an exposed live wire. I had stepped on it in the rain. These shoes have a burn mark in them.
Speaker 1:We'll do show and tell after there's a burn mark on these shoes, because, man, that could have been it, because life is short. But here's the thing Even though life is short, even though we are dust and to dust we shall return. Jesus came and died on the cross for you, for this life, to have an abundant life. So whatever is pulling you away from the amazing grace, love and forgiveness of God, let it come to an end and return back to the loving grace of god, central. What needs to end so that you can start living. Amen.
