Joel 2:1 – 2, 12 – 17 / Psalm 103:8 – 14 / Matthew 6:1 – 6, 16 – 21
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on
Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022.
“SPIRITUAL BARNACLES”
(Homily texts: Joel 2:1 – 2, 12 – 17
& Matthew 6:1 – 6, 16 - 21)
A
common practice in many Scandinavian churches, and in churches whose history is
of Scandinavian heritage, is the suspension of a model of a sailing ship in the
front of the church, usually somewhere close to the altar. Such was the case in
St. John’s Lutheran Church in the very small village of Kronborg, Nebraska,
where I went to church for awhile as a young boy. My mother had attended that
church in her youth, at a time when Danish was still the language of the
services.
Seeing
that ship near the front of the church inspired me, once I’d gotten a little
older, to begin building models of sailing ships. I was fascinated by the
directions for painting them once everything had been put together, for the
directions called for painting the bottom of the hull a copper color. I
wondered about that until someone explained to me that in those days, it was
discovered that copper prevented barnacles from attaching themselves to the
hull. If enough barnacles managed to make the ships hull their home, the speed
of the ship and the energy needed to move it forward would be compromised. So
the hulls of those wooden sailing ships were covered with copper plates. (I
later learned that, nowadays, a copper-based paint is used to achieve the same
result.)
If
enough spiritual barnacles attach themselves to the hulls of our souls, hearts
and minds, we’ll be in trouble, just like those old sailing ships. The problem
with those spiritual barnacles is that they can become a problem little by
little. In fact, it’s possible that the growth of these spiritually-inhibiting
accretions on our hearts and minds is so gradual that we might not even notice
until some sort of a critical mass of these unwelcome “guests” becomes a
problem.
Lent
offers us the chance to allow God to pull our spiritual hulls into dry dock,
and there, to allow Him to scrape off all the spiritual barnacles that may have
managed to work their way into our spiritual condition. It’s quite possible
that this process won’t be a pleasant one. And, it’s also necessary for us to
be aware that the entire hull will need to be subject to this spiritual cleaning
process. Not one inch of our ship’s hull of faith can be neglected. I think
that’s the intent of the Old Testament prophet Joel’s call to ancient Israel:
In effect, he’s saying, “Don’t let anyone be left out of the process of
repentance, of confession of wrongdoing, of the need for reformation.”
The
spiritual efficiency of our ship of faith is at the heart of the continual need
we have for God to pull us into dry dock, and there to clean us up and refit us
for His service on the sea of life. No wonder that our Lord Jesus Christ calls
us to such a radical understanding of the righteousness that God expects of His
people. That, surely, is the blueprint that Jesus laid out for us in His Sermon
on the Mount, portions of which we hear each year on Ash Wednesday.
AMEN.
