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Ash Wednesday- February 6, 2008
The Rev. Mark Byers
Episcopal Church of the Apostles

I don’t have a lot to say today. I hope that as we move through the season of Lent, that in addition to whatever observances or disciplines we are each making, we’ll also use this as a time of imagination and searching.

We are, at Apostles’, Kingdom people. The purpose of this church is participation in what God is doing. And so what Isaiah tells us God says today makes sense:

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

The community that I envision here is one that is limited only by your choice to devote yourself to it. Faithful disciples can do amazing things. Twelve followers of Jesus Christ are responsible for the existence of the church in which we find ourselves today. We sometimes marvel at the accomplishments of great figures in history. Yet what separates us from those people is only this: they took the opportunities presented to them by Providence and made the most of them. Sometimes what scripture asks of us, what God’s vision involves, seems very large: scripture spends a lot of time on big things, like INJUSTICE, and the YOKE, and OPPRESSION, and POVERTY.

So Lent is a time of personal rededication in order to better accomplish God’s purpose: seemingly small things that we do, in order to be better prepared for bigger things. It is not spiritual redecoration so that we look better inside for God. It is more like repairing ourselves so that we are better able to be used by God in the building of the Kingdom.

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