Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Matthew 6: 1 - 6

Intro: Do you remember as a child singing “Ring Around The Rosie”? It is unknown what the earliest version of the rhyme was or when it began. The game has a group of children form a ring, dance in a circle around a person, and stoop or fall to the ground with the final line. The last child to do “fall down” is faced with becomes the "rosie" (literally: rose tree, from the French rosier) and takes their place in the center of the ring.

I We are not going to do that this evening. I guess it was the “ashes, ashes” part that caused me to think about ASH WEDNESDAY.

A I remember as a child that my Roman Catholic friends came to school with black ashes on their foreheads. I thought maybe they had forgotten to wash.

B Because of that experience, some may think that we Presbyterians have stolen the practice from the Roman Catholics.

C However, the OT speaks in several places about donning sack cloth and ashes not just on the forehead by all over. Then, it was a symbol of distress or mourning.

Mt. 6: 1 – 6 – “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. They your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

II Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. The word “LENT” is a German word for Spring (lencten) and the Anglo-Saxon for March (lenct) because Lent usually begins in March.

A Lent is a period of 40 days not including Sundays beginning with Ash Wednesday and continuing until Easter.

B The tradition of using ashes to express repentance, distress or mourning is firmly rooted in Biblical practices in both the OT and the NT.

C Lent has been traditionally observed by giving something up as self-denial and giving the money spent on that thing would be given to charity.

Concl: Lent is to be a period of aloneness with God, a period of self-emptying and ego-denial. But we should also remember these words from Matthew:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

As you go about during Lent, remember to be humble in your promises to God. Whether you give up something or not is between you and God. But, in all our actions, Jesus cautions us to approach them with the utmost humility.