Ash Wednesday: Student Pastor Sam Rapp

Well, good evening.

Welcome again to Christ the Redeemer.

Uh my name is Sam Rapp.

I serve here as a student pastor.

Uh, it's a joy to be in this room, particularly, because typically on Sunday nights, there's about 80 to 100 middle schoolers and high schoolers with a lot of BO and doing a lot of middle school and high school things.

So it's wonderful to be here with grown-ups and students as well.

Uh well, I'd love to pray uh before we dig into God's word.

Would you pray with me, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Lord, you are a God not far off upon the mountaintop.

But Lord, you are a God who entered into dust.

So, Father, tonight, I pray that as we dig into your word together, you would speak.

Lord, we all come into this room with a weak load of burden, maybe anxiety, loneliness, depression, shame.

And Lord, I'm just so grateful that Jesus entered into our story.

He knows what it's like to be us.

He knows the discomfort.

He knows that it's hard and scary to be a human.

And so, Lord, I pray tonight that you would anoint this room, that you would let your spirit fall.

And I pray that, Lord, we would receive from your word what you have for us.

Pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, when I was a little kid, I had a lot of stomach issues.

I was also a pretty anxious kid.

My mom used to tell me that I was a very deep thinker, that I was an old soul, even from a really young age, which which sounds really cool, like on the surface, but it just means I'm probably pretty anxious generally.

Uh, but uh my anxiety definitely made my stomach worse.

Of course, our brains and stomachs are very connected, but I came to find that this wasn't just like the normal nervous stomach butterflies that we all deal with.

I knew that there was something deeper going on.

Uh there were a few times growing up where I would I would eat what I felt like was a normal amount of food, and then a couple hours later I would get sick.

Uh, and then the running joke in my family was, oh, there goes Sam overeating again.

Uh and I was like, guys, I think I'm eating a very reasonable amount of food here, but apparently uh my family didn't think that.

But in their defense, one of those times it was absolutely true that I ate too much because eating about 20 or so creamed menth brownies on Christmas is never a good recipe uh for your stomach.

Now, most of the time, again, I was eating a completely normal amount of food or so, I thought, but I'd still get sick.

And so I knew even as a kid, like at age 10, 11, 12, that something was a little bit off.

Things got really bad at the end of my sophomore year and into that summer of 2014.

Uh, I lost about 35 pounds, and I wasn't like a super fluffy guy to begin with.

I was still pretty skinny lean.

Sam, here's actually a picture of my dad and I from that summer.

So, in in that picture, I look fine, but I weighed about 125 pounds standing at six feet tall.

So, not the BMI that you uh you know aim for.

Uh, but I was eating about 600 to 800 calories a day at that point, and that was me like forcing myself to eat.

There was just something going on.

I had no appetite.

So, my mom and I, of course, spent hours in the doctor's office and the doctor's chair.

I went through pretty much every test you can imagine, and a few things you probably don't want to imagine, like stool samples and the horrifying process of getting stool samples.

Um, that is something we don't talk about enough.

But for months, nobody could figure out what was wrong.

Every doctor, we went through doctors, I mean, stool samples, colon.

I had a colonoscopy at 17.

You take that to the bank.

Blood tests, all of it.

They were essentially guessing.

They were like, maybe it's acid reflux, Sam, maybe you have a parasite.

I was like, great, go in peace.

Uh but then finally, I saw one doctor who said to me, You have abdominal migraines.

And I was like, You went to med school.

You're telling me my stomach gets headaches.

And I thought he was joking, but it turns out he was right.

Uh, abdominal migraines are a thing, in fact, if you didn't know that.

And they're apparently really common in kids under 10, which 17-year-old Sam did not find very comforting.

So he prescribes me a medication, and truly it changed everything.

I started taking it, and I've taken it every morning since, coming on 11 years of taking this medicine.

And even if I miss a day or two, I feel like a burn in my chest.

And what I've learned through all of this is I didn't and couldn't get better until I knew it was wrong.

Without the right diagnosis, my life was essentially a guessing game of eating certain foods, avoiding certain foods, being anxious, all in the middle of the mess of it, hoping I wouldn't get sick.

And now, tonight, as we mentioned, it's a special night in the in the life of the church calendar, Ash Wednesday.

It is a night where we will receive ashes upon our foreheads, where Pastor Matt will recite the verses that Grace just read over you, that you are dust and you will return to dust.

And tonight, what this service offers us is a diagnosis, not just of our bodies, but of our souls.

To, and the diagnosis is honest, it's simple, and it's meant not to shame us, but to bring us to healing.

And here's our diagnosis.

We are sinners, we need a savior, and we are all going to die.

Aren't you glad you came to church tonight?

But Ash Wednesday doesn't just diagnose us, it leads us deeper to Christ, our great remedy.

Because, beloved, if we don't get the diagnosis right, our inner life with God is going to feel unsettled.

And so we'll we'll spend our lives grasping for false saviors over and over again.

And actually, we live in a society that essentially tells us the exact opposite of the biblical diagnosis, right?

We're told that we are all basically amazing, and that if we try really hard and work really hard, we can make our lives perfect and comfortable.

And also, our society tries with everything in its power to hide us from death, right?

We don't have to look very far to see that.

Plastic surgery, nursing homes, new amazing research about how to extend days, weeks, and years to your life.

We love to ignore the reality that all of us will be gone one day and forgotten.

And beloved, it is part of the purpose of Ash Wednesday, this holy night, to bring us right back into the biblical story that we live in.

With the goal of seeing Jesus as more personal, more sufficient, and more lovely to us.

So tonight's homily is gonna have three points, each of which explaining through the imagery of ashes, how we can posture ourselves tonight and through the season of Lent before God, ultimately landing on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.

So, our first point ashes are a sign and symbol of repentance.

So repentance is essentially the essence of this season of Lent.

And this is why uh Lent and Ash Wednesday begin with the act of repentance or turning around.

We see this connection between repentance and ashes in quite a few places in the scriptures, but one of my personal favorites is in the book of Jonah, the book with the big fish, right?

So Jonah, he's called to go to Nineveh, right?

Get up and go to Nineveh and preach the gospel to them.

Turns out Jonah doesn't want to do that.

So he escapes, but then finally he obeys God's call to preach the gospel to the people of Nineveh.

He goes and preaches a very unimpressive sermon.

It has eight words total in the Hebrew.

God can use even the small things.

And this is what we see in Jonah chapter 3.

Jonah 3 · chapter mention

The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

So you notice such brilliant writing by the author.

The king removes all of the physical things that defined him as a king and made him feel special.

He got off his throne, he took off his royal garments, he actually put new clothes on, put on sackcloth, which in this day was a very heavy, uncomfortable black garment only used for the most intense moments of grief.

It's kind of like how we wear black clothes to a funeral.

It's kind of a symbolic gesture of grief.

Repentance, like this king of Nineveh, is turning away from and turning toward.

Much like how he took off his royal garments and got off his throne.

We too are invited in repentance to recognize the things in our life that we're grasping onto for identity.

It's probably not a kingdom in a royal robes that you're wearing.

But maybe it's sin, maybe it's a restless attachment to others' approval.

Maybe it's an unhealthy relationship with food or alcohol or undealt with anger, whatever it is to turn away from and towards turn towards the God of grace to get off to get off our throne and put him on his.

Listen to this.

It is about a God who intervenes on our behalf to rescue us from our sins.

There is no other religion that claims that.

Every other religion demands you ascend the mountain.

This is the only religion in Christianity that says God descended for you.

God became dust for you.

So the season of Lent might might include fasting.

It might include giving something up.

But the very heart of Ashwednesday is for you to return to your first love.

For you to forsake all the broken cisterns and come back to the river of living water tonight.

First Peter 2, Peter writes this: For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

He, Jesus, committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

Listen to this.

See, repentance is turning away from your own effort, from your own striving, from your own religious goodness, and turning onto a God dead on the cross for you.

That's where your gaze can meet.

The season of Lent is meant for our gaze to, yes, turn inward to see some of the places that might be a little off, to have grace and compassion on those places, and then ascend to the cross again and again and again.

Our third and final point ashes bring the sobering reminder that we are going to die.

Each ash Wednesday, we will walk down this aisle and have Pastor Matt look us, maybe your child, in the eyes tonight, and tell us that we are dust.

And beloved, it is intentionally heavy.

It's a reminder of our diagnosis, right?

Back in Genesis 3, the verses Grace just read, right after our first father and mother, Adam and Eve, ate of the fruit of the tree.

This is what God told them.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you are taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

There is something genuinely scary about facing our death.

Even for those of us who are fully confident that we are in Christ, that we will be in the new heavens and earth, even if we are dead set in our assurance of our faith, there is still still some level of fear and wandering, right?

Fear and wondering what's it really all gonna be like when we pass to this next life.

After my dad died, my mom and I had so many conversations like this, right?

Heaven and eternity feel like a far-off conversation until someone close to you goes there, right?

We wondered what he's doing.

Is he playing golf?

Is his redeemed golf swing better than the earthly one?

We wondered if he thought about us.

If he missed us.

In the season of grief that I'm still very much wandering my way through, I can confidently hold on to verses like this in 1 Corinthians 15.

Oh death, where is your victory?

Oh death, where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of this of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And I just want to say, I can hold the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be true.

That sin and death are conquered from this day forward and forevermore.

I can hold that.

And I can hold at the very same time the ever-present sting that death still brings to the world.

We can hold both.

That's the great paradox of Ash Wednesday.

It's the great paradox of Christianity where we don't shy away from the sting of death, but we also hold and cling to the hope of the resurrection.

And while there is fear, anxiety, a real sting because of death, there is some sobering relief it also brings, right?

A couple of days after my dad's death in September of 2021, my family and I were sitting at Mays Ward, just right here on Church Street, in one of the sitting areas.

My dad was lying on a bed in one of the closed rooms.

And each of us, my sisters, my mom, one by one, we went through kind of the mental journey, wondering if we should go in the room and see him.

Um, see him like that, right?

To say, say our goodbyes.

We each internally were battling so many questions, right?

Would it be too traumatic?

Would uh would it change the way I view him forever?

Would I regret going in there?

Would I regret not going in there?

It was exhausting.

And it felt like no option was the right one.

So we each decided to go in.

Uh, and as we went in, we were in no hurry.

Nobody was knocking on the door, telling us to hurry up.

Nobody was uh expecting us to go at a certain level or time.

And as I pulled a chair right next to my dead father lying in the hospital in the room, the rest of earth vanished.

All the stress of seminary exams faded.

All the financial stress that I had been carrying in the weeks leading up vanished.

That relationship that could use some healing, my golf game, my own sinfulness, my anxiety over whether the next student retreat would be well attended, all of it vanished.

All of it faded behind the reality laying right before me.

That this life is not all there is.

That we are dust.

And there's actually something beautifully relieving about remembering this.

That we're made for another home, that we're made for another world.

Our culture tells us to make our life all about us.

Live a life that you'll be remembered for, and that's honorable.

But there's something relieving about remembering that hey, we're going somewhere else.

That's what the resurrection offers for us.

So on this Ash Wednesday, beloved, as we journey to Good Friday, as we journey to resurrection Sunday, may we be a people who are honest about our diagnosis.

Not pretending that we're better than we think, because after all, we're more broken than we originally thought.

And that's what Ash Wednesday invites us into.

So I'd encourage us in the season to bring to the Lord a Psalm 51 broken heart, being honest about the ways that we've fallen short, not trying to numb ourselves away from those places, not trying to pretend those doors and the closets of our heart aren't there, but looking in there and letting all the junk come out and staring at the love of Jesus.

So what I would encourage you is in the season of Lent to arrange your life in such a way that you're more and more convinced that the cross of Jesus Christ is sufficient for your salvation.

Arrange your life in such a way that by Good Friday, the cross is that much more beautiful than it is today.

And I'll close by reading Paul's benediction to the church at Thessalonica.

I would say just let these words wash over you, beloved.

Feel them deeply in your heart and spirit.

The Apostle Paul writes this.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.

And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And here's the good news He who calls you as faithful, he will surely do it.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this sobering and heavy and beautiful evening.

Lord, I don't know what everybody uh has come into this room carrying, but you are a God who knows all things.

Lord, you are a God who has a much deeper love for sinners than we could fathom.

Father, I pray for each of us in this room that as we journey through this season of Lent into Holy Week, into Good Friday, where we stare at the cross and into Resurrection Sunday, Lord, would we be a people who for the next 40 days are really honest about the places in our life that are a little out of out of touch, the places in our life that are a little off.

Lord, I pray that you would reveal to us like a check engine light some of the places where we're grasping onto idols and false identities for holiness.

Lord, would we be a people who are brutally honest about our diagnosis and thus leading to Jesus, our great remedy?

I pray this in his name.

Amen.