Ash Wednesday - February 18

A Beginning

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Surely the most memorable words from this Ash Wednesday service. And they have a sobering finality. They are meant to remind us of our mortality. Our nothingness. The bring us face to face with our death. With the end.

They are powerful words. And the ashes we impose on our foreheads at this service are a powerful symbol. The rituals of this liturgy have great power to literally bring us to that place of our end.

Is that why you are here? To experience that sense of finality? Of ending? Paradoxically, I think there is something seductive about the power of this service. There is something seductive about the sheer power of this service… even though that power brings us face to face with our deaths.

But you miss the true meaning of Ash Wednesday if you think that it is about getting to that place of death. You miss the real meaning of Ash Wednesday if you leave here thinking coming face to face with finality is primarily what Ash Wednesday has to offer. Ash Wednesday is a beginning, not an end.

Ash Wednesday is a beginning. Ash Wednesday is a dark day, but it is not about dwelling in darkness. It is not about abiding in the dark. This is the day we open a door in the midst of the darkness and see a sliver of light. This is the day we look through the darkness of night and see the smallest glimmer of light far ahead on the horizon. Quite a long ways ahead, perhaps, that is part of the power of this day… But today is about opening the door in the darkness and seeing light ahead.

Ash Wednesday doesn’t have any meaning at all without Easter. Ash Wednesday is all about Easter. Ash Wednesday is all about the promise of Easter and about God providing a way… God giving us a path to get to Easter. The journey towards Easter begins today.

Take that journey seriously, that Lenten journey. Today is both about the promise of light, of life, of renewal of Easter and about the work we must do to get there.

Do the work of Lent. Whatever you need to do to move closer to God. Whatever barriers you personally need to remove, whatever connections you need to enrich… Do the work of Lent.

For all of us, part of that work is repentance.

A bit later in this service, we will pray the Litany of Penitence. It’s sobering. We will confess our failure to love God; our unfaithfulness, pride and hypocrisy; our self-indulgent appetites and ways; our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us; our waste and pollution of God’s creation. Sobering words. Reminding all of us of the sin that separates us from God. But even at this service on this day, God grants absolution to those who are “truly penitent.” God offers us a path towards reconciliation with God.

Do the work of Lent. It is work that moves us forward. From darkness to light. From sinfulness to reconciliation and redemption. From death to life.

From the ashes of mortality to fullness, completeness of life.

Remember that you are dust. And remember that God resurrects dust.