Repent, dear Christians! Today is the day of ashes. Of dust returning to dust. Today is the beginning of the season of Lent. Today is a day for tearing and shredding your sinful heart. Today is a day for returning to the Lord your God. Jesus says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Listen to those words! Hear them! Pay attention to them! Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So Jesus says. And the prophet Joel tells us to rend, to tear and shred our hearts and return to the Lord. Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are a time to stop and take a look at our lives and see all the treasures that our hearts go chasing after. Our money. Our hobbies. Our toys and games. Our free time. Our sinful lusts and pleasures. What things does your heart long for? What treasures does you heart seek and run after to be satisfied? What is it that you can't live without? What is it you have to have to be happy? Whatever those things are, brothers and sisters, lets cast them aside into the dirt right now and grab hold of Jesus. Let us come before Him and beg His mercy that He will not damn us for treasuring all of those other things. Let us turn away from those treasures with repentance and with faith let us turn to Jesus, whose heart was pierced thereby winning us back for the Father.
Acts of mercy: helping others in need! Praying: crying out to the Father for all your needs and the needs of others! Fasting: giving up or having less of those things which you are sure you cannot live without! Mercy, prayer, fasting: these are the disciplines of Lent. Why does Jesus teach us to do these things? He knows we need to do them from time to because such disciplines remind us that our hearts are usually attached to the wrong treasures. He urges these disciplines upon us so that we would learn to live by His grace and Word alone and to see that by His grace we can actually live without the things we can't live without! With these disciplines, Christ living in us fights against the devil: by praying to our true Father! Against the world, by serving others instead of being selfish! Against our sinful flesh by putting aside those things we seem to think we must have at all costs. Beware of these enemies, brothers and sisters! Be aware of them. Know that they are there. Know that they seek to destroy you. See how they each entice you with some glittery treasure that you just have to have! The world and all its goodies that you should have for yourself and never mind anyone else! The devil who teaches you to trust in him instead of your heavenly Father! Your sinful flesh who is not satisfied until he gets to gorge himself on as much food or sex or booze or complaining or our toys or any other stuff of this world and life as he can get! Watch out for these enemies because they have a treasure that glitters and sparkles but will rot and disintegrate and drop you into hell. Repent, Christians, of lusting after such treasures. Instead, make the Lord your treasure. Get treasures in heaven by casting off yourself and clinging to Christ and serving others.
But understand this: works of mercy. Prayer. Fasting. These things won't save you. They won't make God pleased with you. They won't erase your sins. They won't overcome your shortcomings. They will teach you to run away from the treasures of this world. They will give you a chance to do something for your neighbor. But these Lenten disciplines won't save you. The only way to have the treasure of heaven is to have Christ. And the only way to have Christ is when He gives Himself to you. So above all else in Lent, come to Christ's temple, to His church, where He gives you salvation from all your sins. Where the Spirit turns you in repentance from your earthly treasures to faith in Christ who is our heavenly treasure. Christ gives you Himself as your heavenly treasure by coming down Himself from heaven into the womb of Mary. He grows up to be taken away to the cross in the place of sinners. On that cross, it is JESUS' heart that is pierced, torn, shredded for you. In your place. The Lord rescues us from our sinful hearts which love to run after the shiny things of this world by giving His heart, His life, for you. And then He does what you I cannot do. He dies but does not turn into dust. Today we remember that we are ashes and dust. But Jesus did not suffer that decay and corruption but rose again the Third Day. That Easter hope is what keeps us from despairing all the way back here on Ash Wednesday. Our dust and ashes wake up call is a call to stop trusting in the things of this world that rot and decay and disappear and to trust in Jesus who suffers even death but cannot be destroyed or kept down by death! Then He who has claimed you as His own by His death on the cross, rises from the dead and ascends into heaven. And now you dwell there with Him! He is your "treasure in heaven," not just a deposit of cash in a heavenly bank, but the Lord Himself, your Savior, is yours.
Christ's heart is pierced on the cross for your sins. And it is that pierced heart is what treasures YOU. For when that blood and water flowed out, it wasn't spilled uselessly onto the ground and wasted. No, the water that came forth flows into the font and marks you as one who is the treasure of the Father. The blood flows into the cup so that you may drink it and be filled with your treasure in heaven, Jesus. During Lent, take these extra opportunities to come and hear that you are the treasure of God's heart in Jesus Christ. Come and receive the Lord's acts of mercy done for you: His reminding you of the gifts given in your Baptism, His absolving you from all your sins, His feeding you with His Word and body and blood. Come and pray, hear the promises of Christ and speak them back to the Father, calling upon Him in faith and trust. Come and break your fast by feasting upon Christ for the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.
Lent is here, brothers and sisters in Christ. It is a time for repentance. A time for God's Word to tear up your heart and to tear it away from your false gods and moth-eaten and rusting treasures of this world. Lent is a time for hearing God's Word and repenting, that is, turning away from the things we are just sure we cannot live without. But Lent is not only for repentance because repentance by itself does no good. True repentance, the kind worked by the Holy Spirit through word, also includes faith. Faith and trust and a lively hope and confidence in Christ and His heart given for you. His heart pierced for your sins. His heart gushing forth water and blood that saves you and gives you heavenly treasure. Remember, O Man, on this Ash Wednesday, that dust you are, and to dust you shall return. But Jesus did not turn into dust. He was not made into snake food. And that is what saves you. And that is why Jesus is the treasure nothing on earth can destroy. He is your treasure because you are His treasure. You will return to dust. But you are marked with the sign of the Holy Cross. And that means you are a child of God, the treasure of His heart, and you will rise from the dead as Jesus did. So do deeds of mercy for others. Pray often. Fast from something. But above all, have more and more of Jesus' heart. He gives it to you in His means of grace and that makes you His. Even through dust and ashes. Amen.