Up until a couple years ago, we had
three services on Ash Wednesday. It’s
not uncommon for churches to have multiple services on Ash Wednesday. For the longest time, I just took it for
granted that we had multiple services on this holy day. But then I started wondering, why is it this
holy day and not others? Since it is a
week day we are trying to accommodate people who are going to work and I admire
people who take time to come to this service.
Yet we only have one service on Holy Thursday, one service on Good
Friday. Those are both weekdays. There are other holy days on weekdays
(Ascension Day, Feast of the Annunciation, Epiphany, The Feast of St. John….). We don’t have any services on those
days. The Roman Catholic Church has ten
holy days of obligation and Ash Wednesday isn’t even one of them. Did you know that some churches have begun a
practice called “Ashes to go” where they bring ashes to public places and offer
them to anyone who might be passing by.
People partake in it, even when they have not been in church in years.
What is it about Ash Wednesday that appeals to people?
The cynic would tell you that people
just come for the ashes so they can show other people that they went to
church. But come on…being a Christian
isn’t exactly the most popular thing to do anymore. It’s not what you do to impress people. Most people think you just have dirt on your
forehead and stare at you while trying to figure out if it is worth telling you
that you have dirt on your forehead. So
what is it…what is it that makes this the one day out of the year (besides
Christmas and Easter—when most people are not at work anyways) when people feel
they need to be in church? I think there
is something deeper going on, something deep and profound that draws people to
church in the middle of the day/at the end of a long day.
The use of ashes goes back thousands
of years. We read about it a lot in the
Old Testament. When someone had
committed a sin and was seeking repentance, the person would roll in ashes or
sit in ashes. In some instances an
entire town or community would roll in ash, wear sackcloth (which was
apparently very uncomfortable and humiliating), and fast in order to seek God’s
forgiveness or favor. Sometimes
wallowing in ash was an act of mourning.
In the Gospels, Jesus refers to the use of ashes and sack cloth as a
means of repentance. While now it
probably seems a little silly, maybe even unnecessarily demonstrative, for most
people it was a very sincere act of humility.
While that is a nice lesson in
history and Biblical precedent, I am not sure that it explains why we still use
ashes today. In ancient Israel, ashes
also represented that which was burned out and wasted…that which once was, but
is no more. Has anyone here ever felt burned out or
emotionally and physically depleted? You
don’t need to raise your hand, but think about it.
We define sacraments as an outward sign of an
invisible grace. While faith requires us
to believe in things that cannot be seen, Jesus knew that humans needed things
that they could touch, feel and even smell.
We need to have things that can be experienced. When we talk about sacraments, normally that
outward sign is something pleasant to the senses. It might be wine, bread, water, or oil. These allow us to have some tangible
understanding of this inward grace.
But what about those things that are
more unpleasant: guilt, sin and sorrow.
Do we need something tangible for that?
I think we do. In fact, I think
that one of the reasons why so many people come to church on Ash Wednesday is
because it is the one day in the church year when we present a tangible symbol
of pain and loss. We recognize the sin and
loss that each one of us holds. We don’t
try to sweep it under the rug as our culture is so fond of doing. No, we smudge it on our foreheads and in
doing so we say, “You may be burned out. You may be hurting. You may be angry. You may have sinned and are having trouble
asking for forgiveness. God is here for
you and as hard as this may be for you to believe, the church is here for you
too.” We are in this together. We all get smudged together. There is no one in this church who is without
sin. There is no one who is without pain.
It’s one of the only days in the
church year where you leave dirtier than you arrive. That is how we start Lent- by being honest
about our sin and pain. We start Lent
together and then during Lent, we do the hard work of repentance, so that we
can wipe that ash away. We won’t ever be
completely free of it, but we can certainly try. We can ask for forgiveness. We can partake in the body of blood and
Christ. We can experience moments of
grace where we are able to see past the soot.
One of my favorite hymns is called
Ashes. The third verse says: We
offer you our failures, we offer
you attempts, the
gifts not fully given, the dreams
not fully dreamt. Give our stumblings
direction, give our visions wider
view… This is the day when we
can be honest about our failures. We can
offer them to God and God will accept them for what they are, a gift freely
given in humility and love. Sometimes
the gifts we give do not come in pretty packages. Sometimes they are covered in grime. Thankfully, God is not frightened by a little
dirt and grime.
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