Ash Wednesday – Mutual Consideration 

Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God our Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ, who considers our troubles and rescues us.

Today is a day of ashes, and chocolate: ashes for Ash Wednesday, chocolate for Valentine’s Day. 

What do ashes and chocolate have in common? They both involve temptation, which we’ll talk more about this Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, as we consider the temptation of our Lord in the wilderness.

We don’t have a tradition here at St. John, of having our foreheads marked with ashes on Ash Wednesday, but I was thinking maybe we should do it this year, but with chocolate, since it’s Valentine’s Day. 

We’d be touching it and licking our finger, and touching it and licking our finger. We wouldn’t be doing that with ashes.

Indeed, ashes remind us of our sin, something not to be relished.

Our theme for our midweek Lenten services this year is: Lord, be gracious to me.

Our messages will be built around Psalm 41. 

Tonight our theme is Mutual Consideration, based on verses 1-2: Blessed is the one who considers the poor. In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him; 2 the Lord protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.

Next Wednesday our sermon will be based on Psalm 41:3: The Lord sustains him on his sickbed; in his illness you restore him to full health. The theme will be: Sustained in Sickness.

The following Wednesday, Feb. 28, the theme will be: I Have Sinned – Lord, Have Mercy, based on Psalm 41:4: As for me, I said, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!”

On March 6, our theme will be Soon and Never, from Psalm 41:5: My enemies say of me in malice, “When will he die, and his name perish?”

On March 13 our theme will be Empty Words, based on Psalm 41:6: And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words, while his heart gathers iniquity; when he goes out, he tells it abroad.

And our last Wednesday night, March 20, will be based on Psalm 41:7-8: All who hate me whisper together about me; they imagine the worst for me. They say, “A deadly thing is poured out on him; he will not rise again from where he lies.”

But the verse that ties all these verses and themes together, and that is the theme verse for the entire series is Psalm 41:10: But you, O Lord, be gracious to me, and raise me up.

When sin would harm me, my own sin or the sin of others, “You, O Lord, be gracious to me and lift me up.”

And so the theme of our Lenten series: Lord, Be Gracious to Me.

Tonight we talk about the Mutual Consideration our Lord has for us, and we have for each other, based on verses 1-2: Blessed is the one who considers the poor. In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him; 2 the Lord protects him and keeps him alive; he is called blessed in the land; you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.

Who is the poor, and who is the blessed in our text? A hint is in the confession of our sins.

In our confession tonight, we prayed to God: be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being. 

In Divine Service Setting 3, page 184, in our confession, we say: I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You, and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment.  

The plight of our own sinful nature, all our sins of thought, word and deed, including our sins of omission, the good we have left undone, as we confess in Divine Service 1, all make us spiritually poor… morally bankrupt. 

In the end, our poor bodies are reduced to ashes, and return to the dust from which humanity was first formed by God in the Garden.

But thanks be to God, there is a blessing attached to our Psalm: Blessed is the one who considers the poor… 

… the One who concerns himself with the plight of those whose sin reduces the outcome of their lives to mere dust and ashes. The One who has consideration for us poor, sinful beings. 

God told Adam and Eve, and He tells us, From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.

This is our plight, and blessed is the One who has considered this for our sake, our Savior, who became poor for us, poor in spirit in our place… not that He sinned as we have sinned, but that He allowed His poor body and His spirit to suffer for us, and be punished for our sin. 

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

In His sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The poor in spirit here means those who have a humble heart, who repent of their sin against God and His Creation, and trust in His mercy for their life and salvation. 

Jesus, the blessed and holy One, became poor for us, because of His consideration for us, that we might be blessed to abide and rejoice in His Kingdom.

Living in repentant faith, we are, as our Psalm says, blessed in the land, in the Kingdom of God.

As we are blessed, so we bless our God… we praise Him, serve Him, love Him, and gladly obey Him. It’s a mutual thing – He blesses us, that we might bless Him, and one another.

As He has carried our burden of guilt for us, the greatest burden anyone could bear, He carried it to the cross and died to make us innocent in the eyes of His Father, our Creator, forgiven and worthy of salvation… so let us bear each other’s burdens, whatever they may be. 

Let us share in the forgiveness of our sins, repenting together and rejoicing together in the grace we’ve been given, and in the glory we will surely share.

Though our body will return to dust for a time, our spirit will live on in everlasting glory, until our body is raised in glory, and is reunited with our soul… 

… and our prayer in Psalm 41:10 is finally and fully answered: But you, O Lord, be gracious to me, and raise me up.

Lifted up by God’s grace, let us serve Him and one another in joy… 

… and in the peace that passes understanding, and guards our hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, our Savior, who became poor for us, that we might be forever blessed. Amen.