Treasure These Things ...

Preaching my way through Lent over the course of three decades, I realize that I have been drawn every year to the same lectionary text to begin the season. It always starts with Psalm 51 whether the seasonal theme is "Create in Me a Clean Heart" or "A New and Right Spirit" or "My Sin Is Ever Before Me." The raw emotion of Psalm 51 has always drawn me in and opened up the possibility of a penitent season.  But Psalm 51 is not the only lection presented for the first week of Lent.  There are other possibilities.

Somehow, I overlooked the Matthew text: 6:19-21, which appears on Ash Wednesday in all three years of the lectionary cycle.  Why?  Instead of using this text in connection with the Lenten season, we have trotted it out each fall in service of stewardship sermons aimed at meeting a church budget.  "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  All these years I missed the connection so obvious to the saints who paired them as readings for Ash Wednesday.  "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth ..." "my sin is ever before me..." "lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven..." "put within me a new and right spirit.." "for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also..." "create in me a clean heart."   Lent is about more than acknowledging sin, it is about discerning where our hearts are, what we treasure, and whether our investments are piled in a trove where thieves may break in and steal or moth and rust consume.

So this year our Lenten theme is "Treasure These Things."  We have prepared our own devotional guides which focus on the lections, hymns and anthems for each Sunday of these 6 weeks. We will explore what is worth treasuring in our storehouses and what is not.  Tonight as I impose ashes on foreheads under the evening light of our rose window at UniPlace, I will say to each worshiper and to myself, "from dust you have come, to dust you will return. Treasure what is holy."