Dealing with our Mortality | Ash Wednesday Sermon | Rob Hurkmans

Long before a skull was a symbol of poison or a symbol of a motorcycle gang or a symbol of a pirate ship,

a skull was actually a Christian symbol used by monks.

And you might say that actually it was for centuries when a monk would go into their room and into their cell,

their little room to pray, and they would go up to their prayer desk and they would kneel down.

There would be, say, three things on their desk.

One, of course, there would be the scriptures.

Even this picture I found shows a monk with the scriptures at his prayer desk.

There would probably also be a candle of some sort just to provide some light so they could read the scriptures and meditate on the scriptures.

But there would also be a skull.

And it wasn't like the skull that I'm holding here, which I ordered from Amazon this week.

It would have been a real skull.

And actually, it would have been the skull of someone that the monk knew,

probably one of the brothers from the monastery who had passed on.

So, yeah, they would have known whose skull it was.

It might have even been someone they knew well.

It might have been their former roommate, Brother Jim.

And now I have Brother Jim's skull in my room.

Now, why did monks keep skulls in their rooms?

Well, it was to remind them of the ultimate reality, which is death.

Right. It could be 50 years from now or it could be half an hour from now.

But I am going to die.

And you're going to die, too.

The stats on death are pretty impressive.

One out of every one person dies.

And one day the bell will toll for thee.

And one day the bell will toll for me.

In the sixth century, a Benedictine, well, a monk by the name of Benedict,

he created this order of monks and he wrote this document, the rule of life,

the St. Benedict's rule of life, which became the founding document for this whole very large order of monks.

And in that document, he encouraged his brothers in the order with these words.

He said this. He said, day by day, remind yourself that you are going to die.

Day by day, remind yourself you're going to die.

That sounds pretty morbid. Sounds pretty awful to some of our modern ears.

But his point was very important.

Don't waste your life on trivial things.

Remember what really matters.

Life is fleeting.

Life is precious.

Don't squander it.

Keep your death ever before your eyes.

You know, Benedictine monks, they also wore black robes.

They went about in these black robes.

It was almost like their discipleship to Jesus was this constant symbol that they one day were going to lay down their lives as followers of Jesus.

Death was part of the discipleship process. Following Jesus was a preparation for death, a preparation for eternity with God.

And actually, in Benedictine monasteries, they were often surrounded by graveyards.

So those who died were buried around the monastery because you took an oath to be a monk for the whole of your life,

which meant that you would die there as well.

And as the rumor goes, some monasteries would leave the very next grave to be used, dug and open and ready, just waiting for that next person.

And so every day you would walk by and you would see that hole in the ground.

You would say, that could be me.

Maybe I'm next.

Maybe I'm going to go and join my brothers very soon.

Archaeologists have found catacombs where there are bones of Christians, early Christians.

And in the catacombs, there's a plaque that is quite famous now, but it says this.

It's like the bones are speaking.

They're saying what you are now, we used to be.

And what we are now, you will be.

I think I'm going to keep that guy on my desk and my office, actually, to to remind me that I'm going to die because it is so easy in life to just waste our lives.

Right.

Especially in our day and age.

Way back in 1985, a guy named Neil Postman, he wrote a book that was called Amusing Ourselves to Death.

And in that book, he lamented the fact that the television had caused people to become so distracted that they weren't capable of thinking critically about the world anymore, thinking critically about life anymore.

And I just think, man, oh, man, if he could see us today, if he could see how we disappear into a black hole of Netflix for hours and hours and hours, if he could see how we scroll through our phone, wasting hours and hours of our time on social media,

if he could see how some of us have become just workaholics in our lives and we're just constantly at work, we're trying to earn money, we're trying to gain fame or reputation.

We are constantly distracting ourselves.

But the argument would go that we are making ourselves so busy.

Partly.

To deny the reality of death.

Distraction becomes a coping mechanism for the reality of death.

As Ronald Rollheiser put it, he says we are distracting ourselves into a spiritual oblivion.

But guess what?

You can distract yourself all you want, but you are still going to die.

A few years ago, Pope Francis, in his Ash Wednesday homily, he talked about how that small little mark of ash that you're going to get on your foreheads tonight is a subtle and yet very real reminder about the many things that are occupying your thoughts tonight,

about the many worries that you have on your mind, and things that you think about day after day after day. None of it will remain. None of it will remain.

He said this, he said, no matter how hard we work, we will take no wealth with us from this life.

Earthly realities are going to fade away like dust in the wind.

Possessions are temporary.

Power passes.

Success wanes.

It's like a blaze, he said.

Once ended, only ash remains.

I don't know what it is for you.

Maybe for you, it's like the success of a business.

Or maybe it's the joy you get out of your family.

Or maybe it's the pursuit of knowledge you just love, like going to school and learning things and so on.

I have to tell you, all these things are temporary.

Even some of our religious pursuits are all very temporary.

We'll not stand the test of time.

The way we try to earn our righteousness through kind of good works and the way we kind of undertake religious rituals sometimes over and over again, those things will not stand the test of time.

They too will go poof in the end.

The skull teaches us all of these lessons tonight.

But it actually turns out that right next to the skull on that monk's desk were the scriptures.

And actually, the scriptures told the same story as the skull did.

As we heard read tonight, as Al just read for us, we read in Isaiah chapter 40, all people are like grass.

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

Like all their faithfulness is like flowers of the field.

The grass withers, the flowers fade because the breath of the Lord blows on them.

Surely people are grass.

The writer is doing a little metaphor here saying, you know, there's grass and then there's the flowers on that grass.

And human beings are like the grass.

And all of our achievements and all of our accomplishments are like the flowers on those grass.

But they're all going to eventually fade away.

You know, we may think human beings have pretty long lives and we may marvel at, you know, the length of time that different nations and races and the human civilization has exist.

But if we were to place human history, if we were to place human history just next to the vast expanse, the eternal perspective of God, we would laugh at ourselves.

We would laugh at ourselves for thinking that we were any more than a speck, a blip in comparison to the eternal, endless ages of God.

It's funny when I read this, I think we look at it and we think, oh, grass, so short lived, flowers, so, so short lived.

But actually we have more in common with grass and flowers and bugs than we do with God.

They are like our cousins in a way, right? Sure, they might last a few months or a few years.

Maybe we last seventy five years, but it's the same thing whether you count by years or months or days or whatever compared to God.

We've got more in common with them than anything else.

We're just like little bugs floating in a beam of sunlight.

And one day, poof, we're gone from the land of the living.

Charles Spurgeon said the one who died yesterday is as much dead as the one that died a thousand years ago.

And with that death, so go our hopes and so go our achievements and so go our most cherished relationships.

All those things are subject to the passing of time.

Now, that all sounds very, very depressing.

In some ways, that's what Ash Wednesday is about to bring us face to face with that unapologetically to show this to you and say deal with it.

Deal with it, right?

But we're not going to end there because in the very same piece of scripture that tells us that life is fleeting and life is short.

We actually also discovered that not all things are temporary.

There are some things in this world that last and stand the test of time.

And here's what I mean.

We read this today.

The grass withers.

Yes, we heard the flowers fall.

Yes, we heard that too.

But the word of God.

Endures forever, forever.

Yes, for ever.

Now, what does that mean?

Just in the next the last few minutes here, I'm not going to go on at length this evening.

I want to share with you just maybe three different ways we can understand what it means that the word of God lasts forever.

One way to understand it would be to say that the written word of God never gets old.

I mean, there are lots of philosophies and lots of books and ideas that have gotten old and did not stand the test of time.

Every once in a while, I clear out books from my own bookshelf.

And it's true that some of them made great sense 25 years ago.

The ideas, some of the theories, some of the the authors had had wonderful ideas, but they just don't make sense anymore.

The world has changed and they no longer fit the paradigm that we're living in.

But the holy scriptures continue to speak to us today, even though they were written 2000, 4000, 6000 years ago.

They are filled with promises that still hold true to this very day.

And I want to tell you that if this world of ours were to exist for another ten thousand years, right,

every promise in this book would still be as good as the day that it was made.

None of God's promises grow stale.

Right. Paul said this. He said all scripture is God breathe.

And it's important to know that when he says that and when we read that, he's not just saying that thousands of years ago,

God breathed these words into existence when they were originally written.

No, he's saying that when we read them today, when you go home and kneel at your desk and open the scriptures and read them,

God breathes them into your life in new ways.

When we're faced with new challenges, God breathes them in a new God inspires them a new at Trinity.

As we proclaim these words week by week, God is inspiring them new again, fresh again.

Words that were spoken by prophets thousands of years ago have not lost their effect on us today.

In fact, I would say that some of the words in here have been fulfilled hundreds of times, thousands of times,

ten thousands of times already.

But that does not mean they can't still be fulfilled again in our life.

In our church and in our time, I don't want to be overly simplistic.

I'm not saying that you should read the Bible just completely literally and without any kind of scrutiny.

I think the more we chew it over and wrestle it over, the more we study it and exegete it

and really try to unpack what these words mean, the more God speaks to us, sometimes in new ways.

So what am I saying? While we are like dust and while we are all destined to become skeletons,

the scriptures are forever flowing like a well, like a well of water for thirsty people to drink up

and that well will never run dry.

So the word, the written word of God never gets old.

That's, I think, one thing that that phrase means.

But I think when we read that the word of God endures forever, it also means this.

It also means that the gospel word never fails, never fails.

You see, the good news that Jesus proclaimed 2000 years ago is still good news today.

It continues to be good news.

And again, I would say 10,000 years from now, Jesus's words will still be good news.

That ancient gospel that the apostles recorded, that good old gospel that your grandparents sang about

is still the gospel today and it will be the gospel tomorrow as well.

So, for example, when Jesus said the kingdom of God is here, repent and believe the gospel,

believe the good news, that is still our proclamation today and that will be our proclamation in the future.

Or when Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

I want you to know that is still the gospel.

And Jesus continues to say these words and always will continue to say these words eternally.

Or when Paul wrote this down, Paul said, Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

And he was buried and he was raised on the third day and then he appeared to people.

This, my friends, is still the substance of the gospel today.

You can't advance beyond this.

What are you going to add to this?

Right?

There's been all sorts of discoveries, archaeological discoveries, biblical studies has found out new things.

There's new techniques and preaching.

There's new forms of worship music.

But none of these things will ever eclipse or overshadow or change the words of Jesus or the words of Paul or the words of Peter.

The gospel, the gospel remains the same.

We do not remain the same.

We are destined to become like dust and skulls.

But the gospel has been put through the furnace many, many, many, many times.

And it always comes out like silver, shiny and new.

So that's the second way we can understand that the word of God endures forever is that the word of the gospel never, ever fails.

I want to show you just one more way we need to understand that the word of God endures forever.

And that is, yes, the written word never gets old.

And yes, the gospel word never fails.

But more than this, the living word never, ever dies.

Now, what do I mean by that?

Often we call the Bible the word of God.

Right?

And of course, that's fine.

We're right to call the Bible.

That's true enough.

But the true word of God is not the Bible.

The true word of God is Jesus Christ.

Right?

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

He was with God in the very beginning.

And then John tells us the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And that is Jesus, the living word of God, who never dies.

Now, say never dies.

Rob, I thought you said, you know, that we're all like flowers and we're all like grass and we all wither and we all perish.

And we're all going to have skulls one day.

And I would say that, yeah, that is true for every human being, every human being.

And we're going to leave behind one of these skulls, one of these skeletons, except one person never did.

And that was Jesus.

For even though Jesus suffered and he died, his body did not turn to ash and and and he did not become a pile of bones.

Easter morning came and he and he alone, he rose from the dead.

Not as a ghost, not as a spirit, but as a body.

I don't know if you guys know this, but there are relics of saints all around the world that you can go and you can visit.

You can go and see the hair, some of the hair that they claim was left behind from St. Mary.

And you can go and you can actually see a bone that is one of the last pieces that remain from St. James.

And actually, according to what they say, St. Mary Magdalene, there is a skull that they claim to be actually St. Mary Magdalene's skull.

And people flock to these places to see these relics and these left behind things.

And people flock to the tombs of saints who have died because those are that's where they died.

And those are their bits and pieces. But but of course, there are no relics of Jesus.

There are no bones. There is no hair and there's no tombs to flock to because he was different than every other human being who ever existed.

He was resurrected. He was the living word that never dies.

So while human life is fleeting, fleeting, the written word of God never gets old.

And while our health may fail, right, the gospel word never fails.

And while our life will come to an end, the living word of Jesus Christ never, ever dies.

Just as I wrap up, I want to let you know that this Lent at Trinity, we're actually going to be studying the word.

We're going to be studying some of the most famous written words that were spoken by the living word Jesus Christ.

When Jesus hung on the cross, he uttered and spoke six or seven very profound statements,

some of the most important words that were ever spoken by a human being that became written down in this book we call the Bible.

And and we are going to look at those words in the weeks ahead.

I just want to show you that starting this Sunday, we're going to begin by looking at some of Jesus's last words, which is, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

And then every Sunday after that, we'll we'll take a look at another one of Jesus's very last words spoken from the cross.

I hope you'll join us. I hope you'll journey with us throughout all of Lent as we really come to grasp this enduring word that never fails.

The living word that never dies. So again, let's end where we started on the one hand, Lent is a time for us to remember our mortality,

to stare at this skull and to remember that we are dust and to dust, we shall return.

And that means that Lent is a time where we should focus less on outward appearances and on our money and career and achievements,

because all those things are going to pass away. Right. But Lent is also a time for us to attach our heart to those things that do not perish.

The written word, the gospel word, the living word, because only the written word and only the gospel and only the living word will stand the test of time.

Only the living word of Jesus Christ will give us the hope that we need, knowing that even though we will turn to skulls and ashes,

death is not the end. Death is not the end.