February 22, Ash Wednesday (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21)
Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return. But my sermons!
As i sit at my desk and write this, I have to laugh at the irony. This passage from Matthew is presumably about humility and doing things for the right reason. Practice your piety, but do it so that it is part of your relationship with God. No one else needs to know about it. Keep your piety checklist to yourself.
But to my right on my desk is a semipermanent reminder sheet titled “Publicity Checklist.” The members and friends of the church I serve receive their news about upcoming events in a variety of formats: bulletin insert, announcements during services, printed newsletter, email newsletter, social media, video, slides, website.
Contrary to Matthew’s admonition, that’s a lot of effort to make sure all that we do is not a secret. At the very least, when someone asks me why they had not heard about an event, I want my reward to be the ability to say the phrase that will be found on my tombstone: “It was in the bulletin.”
