2-17-21 - Dust and Ashes

You can listen to this reflection here.

Welcome to Ash Wednesday – one of the weirder holy days in the world. What kind of religion asks people to wear a smudge of ash on their forehead as a reminder of their mortality? Who cherishes a reminder of insignificance, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return?” Granted, this is a faith that ritualizes eating the flesh and drinking the blood of its founder-God…

Some of our practices on Ash Wednesday are rooted in medieval piety. There’s more than a little of the hair shirt in our Ash Wednesday liturgy – we read the penitential psalm 51, which petitions God, “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.” We engage in a long litany of confession with no provision for the priest to confer absolution. We remind each other that we are no more permanent than dust – even as we glory in the promise of eternal life.

Why should we “do” Ash Wednesday? Why did I for so many years get up at 5 to stand at the train station offering commuters the briefest brush with the ashes and the dust? Partly because it’s good to mark our transition into the season of Lent. Lent can pass without notice – or we can allow it to become special, holy, consecrated, set apart, a time to remember that our lives revolve around the God who made the universe, not around ourselves or even those whom we love. The rituals and prayers of Ash Wednesday form a threshold over which we cross into this holy season.

And it’s never a bad thing to be reminded how temporal our lives are, how little impact we really make, so that we might stop defining success by how much of an impact we make. To hold together these two great truths: that God is all, and next to God we are barely discernible AND that this same God has deemed us so precious and beloved that he sacrificed what was most precious to redeem us… that takes more than a day to reconcile. It takes more than a season, and possibly longer than a human life span. That is our Lenten work, always.

The beautiful hymn, “Come down, O Love divine,” comes to mind – in particular these words:
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear, and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight, 

   and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

As we seek to allow the fire of God to burn away everything in us that is passing away, to embrace the ashes and the dust, let’s remember that we do this work in the glorious light of the One who showed us what it means to truly empty oneself. Lent is a season of sober reflection, not of stumbling in the dark. He will illumine our path.

You are welcome to join the Christ Churches for our Ash Wednesday service at 7 pm, online this year, with a symbolic imposition of ashes and home communion. Click here to join on Zoom, or watch on Facebook Live here.

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