Faith in our time is often on the run from negativity, and it’s not hard to understand why.

We want faith to represent an alternative to all that, well aware that we have enough it in other parts of our lives. 

What we don’t have enough of is hope.

And so we come to church, which draws us in, describing a God who created us and names us good, and whose knowledge of us goes so deeply that even our worst attributes don’t render us summarily unlovable.

This is a place that believes we are each loved unconditionally. 

The rest of the world is not like that. 

I saw a bumper sticker once that said: Jesus loves you. The rest of us think you’re a jerk.  (Actually, it used a stronger word.)

Sometimes, that seems almost true. 

If so, no wonder that we come to church, hoping that the one who still loves us will be right here, waiting. 

That’s so important. 

But it also means that the church can stumble a bit when it tries to do more than just welcome and reassure us. 

It’s hard to tell people you love them and then shift gears to focus on sin.

Usually, we don’t try. 

We offer a few broad strokes during the Prayer of Confession, then move on as quickly as possible. 

And yet the spiritual life has always recognized that the ongoing task of turning toward the good cannot be separated from the ongoing task of turning away from the bad—and furthermore, that often, the bad has an allure that makes turning away from it a genuine decision, and not a particularly easy one, or a one-time choice. 

We should talk about that more than we do. 

And this is why I value Ash Wednesday—this night when we try to name some of the hardness of our lives, and of the human condition, in general. 

Life is not easy.  A lot comes with it. 

So much of what we look to put our hopes in turns to ash.

The science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft once wrote a story about a couple that meets a genie, who offers them wishes, as genies in stories always do. 

The couple asks for eternal life, and they get their wish. 

Unfortunately, they forget to ask for eternal youth, and so their wish turns out to be a curse, condemning them to an existence in which they get older and older and older, without even the hope of an eventual end to their suffering. 

So much of what we look to put our hopes in turns to ash.

Along those lines, not for nothing do the ashes that we use tonight come from the remains of last year’s palms from Palm Sunday.

They are the somber residue of what’s left, one year later, from what is always one of the happiest days in the church calendar.

They remind us that crowds that cheered Jesus when they thought he had come to overthrow Rome were the same ones that came out just a few days later to celebrate his crucifixion.

They tell us that a cozy religion that merely confirms our preferences and prejudices can’t save us. 

Only an open and honest heart, willing to listen and learn, can do that. 

Only a conscience that cuts us to the quick can do that. 

Only a sense of purpose that knows we don’t have forever to get it right, and that today matters because tomorrow is not a given can do that. 

Only a life in God can do that.  

To a certain eye, this is a weird and gloomy thing to come do at church. 

But its meaning is that when everything else and everyone else falls away, the love of God in Christ Jesus will not fall away. 

Even in times when we manage to burn down our entire life, whether on purpose or out of sheer carelessness;

Even as the earthly governments or the material resources or the physical health we put our faith in seem to have suddenly evaporated;  

Even when, as Yeats once imagined, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”;

Even then, even now, the love of God in Christ Jesus will not fall away.

The point is not that, tonight, we wear ashes. 

The point is that, tonight, even the ashes must ultimately testify to the power of God. 

Ashes remind us of what endures and what can’t, and they call us to turn toward the good and away from the bad.

God’s love is a love cuts through our deepest illusions, meets our deepest longing, and offers us new life. 

And in that, there can only be hope. 

Amen.