Dying to Live (Ash Wednesday)

SCRIPTURE TEXTS:  Romans 6:3-8; John 12:20-24
PREACHER:  Rev. Monte Marshall

At 64 years of age, I’m closer to the end of my life than I am to the beginning.  But it’s also true that no matter how old we are, physical death is an inescapable reality for all of us. 

The season of Lent that begins today, won’t let us forget that the way to Easter is through a cross and a tomb.  The graveside liturgy of the church is true: “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”[1]  This is our destiny.  There’s no escaping the fact that we are all going to die.

But physical death is not all there is to dying.  During our lifetimes, we will die a thousand deaths because dying is an essential part of living.  We are dying to live! 

I learned this lesson most profoundly in the two years leading up to my father’s death on April 21, 1995.  Two years prior, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Several months later, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer.  A few months after that, he was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to his liver.  We knew then that my dad was dying.  We realized that the day would soon come, when my dad would no longer be with us.  And honestly, I was afraid of what life would be like without him.

But then, a strange thing happened.  The reality of my dad’s dying, triggered a dying process in me.      

I was dying to the idea of being my dad’s little boy.  It was now time for me to grow up and take my own place in the world. 

I was dying to a relationship that I had depended upon for love and support since the day I was born.  I knew what life was like without Laura Jean and our two sons.  But I had absolutely no idea of what my life would be like without my dad.  It was now time for me to learn how to live without him and the emotional support that he provided.

I was dying to fear and learning to replace it with faith.  This was important to do as fear stands in the way of so much living.  It was now time for me to trust God with life and death.

So I was dying—not a physical death, not yet—but an inward death, in the depths of my soul.  I was dying to live.  I was dying to grow.  I was dying to change.  The dying was painful, but it was good.  

The scriptures helped me along.  The words of Jesus from what’s known as the Farewell Discourse in John’s gospel are embedded in my brain: “The truth of the matter is, unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.”  Imagine that, a rich harvest of life emerging from the death of a single grain of wheat.  This metaphor underscores the significance of Jesus’ own life, death and resurrection, and the life-enhancing mission of the church.

Even more than this, I continue to probe the connection between death, life and baptism.  In the Roman’s text, Paul makes this connection: “Don’t you know that when we were baptized into Christ Jesus we were baptized into Christ’s death?  We’ve been buried with Jesus through baptism, and we joined with Jesus in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by God’s glory, we too might live a new life.”  To say it another way, in baptism we are dying to live.  And if we have already died in the waters of baptism, what then is there to fear in life?

A reporter once asked James Jones, a U. S. Army veteran of World War II veteran and the author of From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, this question: “How, in the middle of the horrors of war, do soldiers keep going?  What enables them to fight on?”

Jones replied: “What you do is you decide you are dead…. Every soldier I knew, in the horrors of war, just decides, ‘I’m dead.’  That enables you to live.”[2]

Bishop Will Willimon once asked this question to a church study group: “Has anybody ever had to die to be a Christian?”  To his surprise, a woman’s hand immediately went up.  She said, “I had always been afraid to be alone.  When my husband would go out of town, I would stay with a friend, so fearful was I of staying in the house alone.  Then, the night my daughter died, I have never been afraid again.”  Willimon said, “I’m sorry, I don’t get the connection.  What did your daughter’s death have to do with your not being afraid to be alone?”

She gave Willimon a surprised look, and then she said, “Don’t you see?  When my daughter died, I died.  Once you’ve died, what else can they do to you?  What more have I to fear?”[3]

We are dying to live--so we follow Jesus.  We follow Jesus and begin our journey through Lent.  We’re moving toward Easter, but only by way of the cross and a tomb.  We embrace our mortality, unafraid: “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  We welcome life: “[U]nless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.”  We remember our baptisms.  And we brand ourselves with ashes as a people ready to die a thousand deaths on the way to life—and life in abundance.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.