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A Storm of Ashes
Driving home from our pancake dinner last night, having prepared the materials for our Ashes to Go and some Ash Wednesday goodies (which is in the back, please pick one up on the way out), the darkness mixed with the dripping from the sky. The cracks of thunder and streaks so sudden and arresting, any…
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Not-So Secret Faith
How can we talk about always telling the truth and being honest, if we are also keeping secrets and refusing to share with one another? The love (without hypocrisy) Jesus longs for Ash Wednesday | Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 Secret Faith One of the historic battles around Ash Wednesday is based on this gospel passage. A church fight,…
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Ashes
Ashes (Day 1 of A Simple Lent) Today isn’t a normal day. I wake up early, before the sun rises. I get dressed with extra layers and I prepare to share a public invitation. An invite to the anti-party. No loud music or dancing. The food is meeger. It isn’t an invite ordinarily welcomed. I…
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Ash Wednesday 2016
If you are in Terre Haute on Wednesday, I invite to join St. Stephen’s in inviting the community into the observance of a holy Lent. In the morning, we’ll impose ashes upon the foreheads of those rushing to class and work. We’ll move inside and give the same invitation to students at the volunteer fair…
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Make the Kingdom
What Ash Wednesday tells us about what Jesus really wants. It is a time of wrestling with weighty issues of faith and of community; of justice and of the nature of GOD. To wrestle and prepare one another for greater unity. To heal the broken, to care for the weak, to help flip over and…
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ReMembering is Messy: Ash Wednesday and black thumbs
a Homily for Ash Wednesday Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Beyond Black Thumb Day Today is Black Thumb Day. What? Never heard of it? It is the day that priests all over the world put on nice white albs, dip their thumbs in black, flaky ashes, and smudge those ashes on everything. It begins with people’s…
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Getting Some Ash: finding our place in creation
Ash Wednesday is symbol-rich day. It is marked with one of the most evocative Christian symbols in all of our liturgies. We smudge a cross of ash on each other and we say to them: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. For most Christians, we deal first and primarily with…
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The Scandal of Lent
Every year I struggle with Lent. I struggle with what we are really called to do. Certain things are different, and yet we don’t really live all that differently. We fast or we take on new things or we mark our worship differently. But something doesn’t ring true about it for me. As I wrote…