You may or may not be familiar with the recent phenomenon in the Episcopal Church known as “Ashes to Go.” It’s all over the Episcopal blogosphere and is even seeping into mainstream media. I gather Bishop Lee was on WGN this morning, although I didn’t get the change to hear him. Ashes to Go refers to church leaders, lay or ordained, taking ashes out into the public sphere on Ash Wednesday. They offer ashes on street corners or at Metra stations to anyone who would like them. Within Episcopal circles there’s some debate about whether this is a good practice or not. One commentator, somewhat tongue in cheek referred to the “media frenzy” surrounding the debate. People have gotten very defensive and judgemental…
I’ll give you my take on the debate some other time if you’re interested. But it has got me thinking this year about what this service, this community worship service, offers. The imposition of ashes is offered within the context of this service. But what does this service of common worship offer beyond the individual imposition of ashes?
Most fundamentally: Community, the existence of a faith community, and the experience of common worship, are an antidote to the pernicious sin of self-centered individualism. Society and culture tempt and tug at all of us all of the time to define ourselves according to culture’s standards. To become successful or strong or beautiful individuals at whatever costs. It’s a pernicious sin. And community, common worship, and maybe especially the common worship on this day, push back, provide an antidote to the pernicious sin of self-centered individualism.
Within this service, ashes are imposed as “a sign of our mortality and penitence.” Each one of us individually receives the ashes as a sign of our individual mortality and penitence. Remember that you are dust, the church says to each of us. And ashes work as a symbol, powerfully evoking our individual mortality.
But in this service, when we line up side by side, shoulder to shoulder, to receive ashes, we are reminded not only that each of us is ash, but that everyone else is too. Ash is ash. Dust is dust. Everyone gets the same ash. Everyone is the same. Penitence and mortality are totally egalitarian. Everyone gets them in full and equal measure.
When you receive ashes today, think about the person kneeling next to you. Move out of your own head for a bit and think about the others at the rail. You are in exactly the same place. No one person is singularly unworthy or somehow more mortal than anyone else. Nor is anyone person singularly blessed somehow in less need of penitence. The people next to you need your prayers just as you need theirs. They need God’s mercy just as much as you do. No more, no less. Each of us needs God’s forgiveness just as much as the “worst” among us. We are all the same dust.
Remember that you are dust, we say to the rich. Remember that you are dust, we say to the most humble and poor. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return, we say as ashes are imposed on old and wise and on the youngest and most innocent. Remember that you are dust. The deeply faithful; the negligent and indifferent. Remember that you are dust. The most annoying, and the kind. Remember that you are dust.
We are dust. We are all nothing without God. And nothing any individual can do will change that. The corporate nature of this worship service, reminds us of our total dependence upon God. There are no gradations in mortality and penitence. We are all dust, the same dry dust of the earth.
There’s one more thing that this community worship service teaches us. Noted by a blogger who is a bit skeptical about ashes to go:
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” only makes sense within the context of the Resurrection. Otherwise it is a truly depressing and deadly notion.
Ashes are deadly, depressing and pointless without the context of the resurrection. That’s good theology.
And we enact that theology in this service when we kneel at the same place to receive communion with the living Christ that we knelt to receive ashes. The same place where we face our mortality, we are connected with eternal life.
And, again, we all kneel. Side by side. We all get the same grace, too. Everybody. The same Body and Blood. Jesus died and was raised for the person next to you at the rail, too. All of them. The Body of Christ, the Bread of heaven… We say those words over and over again today, too. This day, Ash Wednesday, invites humility. But, I urge you, never get so lost in your sense of your individual lowliness that you imagine you are unworthy or less worthy of God’s mercy and grace than someone else. Never think you somehow receive a lesser measure of grace than others. Christ’s body and blood don’t come in partial measures. They are given fully to all.
The Body of Christ. The bread of heaven. The Blood of Christ. The cup of salvation. Given for all.
