Ash Wednesday - why ashes?

(sermon follows after the liturgical readings)

From the 58th chapter of the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

Is not this the fast that I choose; to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

Psalm 51

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through and through from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my win. For I know my offenses, and my sin is ever before me. Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are justified when you speak and right in your judgment. Indeed, I was born steeped in wickedness, a sinner from my mother’s womb. Indeed, you delight in truth deep within me, and would have me know wisdom deep within. Remove my sins with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be purer than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; that the body you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my wickedness. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit. Let me teach your ways to offenders, and sinners shall be restored to you. Rescue me from bloodshed, O God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. For you take no delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a troubled and broken heart, O God, you will not despise.

from Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians

We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in eery way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

from Matthew 6

Jesus said to the disciples: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither most nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

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When I was in college, I took a year off in the middle to volunteer with a team of youth ministry musicians called “Captive Free.” We were the team that toured the Pacific Northwest, six strangers, all Lutheran, from all across the continent. We lived in a van together, ate our meals together, performed family concerts at churches, slept in strangers’ homes, relied completely on the hospitality of people we had never met before, and saw a lot of different ways people do church. Because I was the one of us in school studying theology, I got to be the one to answer the worship questions, like where in the sanctuary is it alright to set up the screen if we might block the cross or the altar, or can we sing for the offering at the second Sunday morning service and then leave for the next concert or should we stay through until after communion? And then came Ash Wednesday. In a strange church. I was surprised to find out that we hadn't all grown up with this tradition, when, just as we were invited forward to receive the ashes, during worship, my teammates turned to me and asked, “what does this mean? Why are we doing this?” In the moment, I mumbled something about repentance or humility or something, what do you say to a kid in line for communion when she’s two people away from the Table and asks that question? It was a rite familiar to me, but I hadn’t yet really put it into words, and under pressure I don’t remember what I said, but we all went ahead and got ash and oil smudged on our faces. It was the year Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion” was in theaters, and after worship we all went to see it, then took the next day in silent prayer, which is essential when you live in a van with five other people all year long.

What is it about these ashes, though? People are even passing them out on the sidewalks, on trains as folks commute to work, and somehow there’s a demand out there to be marked like this. To be ritually dirty in public. To stand out and be identified with other people who have also been so marked. Maybe it’s just a sign we’ve done our good Christian duty by going to church at the start of Lent, but ritual this old is hardly that shallow. Ashes and death are far more ancient than any single community or way of doing things. Repentance is something people have been practicing for centuries, turning away from bad behavior, turning away from the things that break down community, turning toward our better hopes for ourselves, turning toward repairing systems and seeking justice. Turning toward our death, inevitable and common to all that lives, as a way to reconsider our values and priorities. Every time someone public dies tragically, word gets around to hug your loved ones a little bit closer, right?

But it’s more than that. More than just deciding to ‘do better next time.’ If we do not look honestly at death, how can we look honestly at life? Public or private, death is a tragedy. It is not what we were made for. We were created for life, for abundant life, for freedom and interdependence and right relationship with the earth as stewards of a good creation. We just keep getting it wrong, though. Keep trying too hard to prove ourselves, or forgetting our place and making ourselves judge over others, or gathering more than we need until others go hungry or naked or neglected.

It’s the story of humanity, over and over again, which the prophet tells tonight. And it’s the story of our God, too, returning to us, calling us to turn away from selfishness and toward the life that is truly life-giving for all. It’s a reflection of God’s heart that we find in the prophets, the call to justice and mercy, kindness and peace, rebuilding the ruins. When our lives are broken by grief or illness or mishandled conflict or accident, we use that sort of language of ‘my world was shattered’ or ‘I’ll never be the same again’ or even ‘I can’t even begin to imagine going on without him.’ And yet life does continue, sometimes in fits and starts, sometimes surprisingly smoothly until it hits a road bump or two and needs to be rearranged again.

Ash Wednesday prepares us for those fits and starts. It’s the beginning of a season of learning how to die well so that we may also live well. It is marking the beginning of our intentional journey with Jesus, through the wilderness and to the cross. It certainly doesn’t stop there, but we can’t move past death as quickly as we would like to. In order to understand the depth of love which has shattered the ultimate power of death, we need to look death squarely in the face and acknowledge the power it does have. These ashes are made from the palms of Palm Sunday last year, waved over the crowd in celebration for the coming King who would dethrone the powers of Rome, but every party comes to an end, every celebration dissolves eventually into getting back to the daily grind, cleaning up the mess, moving on. That particular party came to an abrupt end when Jesus didn’t turn out to be the sort of King the people wanted.

He’s not exactly the King we want, either. If Jesus doesn’t make you uncomfortable, you’re not digging deeply enough into his story, not spending enough time with him in prayer. He upsets the world as we know it to bring us the world as it was meant to be, which is a tough adjustment to make, and we keep defaulting to the practices of death which trap us, again and again, in cycles of sin and fear and trying to save ourselves. We don’t want to die. God didn’t intend for us to die. But we chose to be our own gods, and death is inevitable for all that lives. Death breaks us all down. It returns us to the earth from which we were made, back into the cycle of things, and it does that to everyone, rich or poor, black or white, Christian and Muslim and Buddhist and Atheist and Agnostic, old and young. 

Ash Wednesday is the day we look death in the face, see it in ourselves and in one another, and mark our faces with the sign of the cross. The cross was a tool of Rome used to publicly humiliate and slowly kill anyone who threatened their political power. The cross in today’s culture would look more like a lynching tree. The cross was Rome’s answer to keeping its power, and God, in Jesus, let it strike him down as it had been used on so many hundreds of others. Why do we wear it, this weapon of death and abuse? Why adorn it in gold? Why hold it up?

We point to the cross, wear it on chains and on our foreheads, as a sign of how far God’s love will go to be with us. We hold it up to see what violence we are capable of, and what lengths God will go to in order to rescue us from our fear. We proclaim Christ crucified, not to glorify violence, but to announce to all the world that death, however it comes, is not the final word.

Ash Wednesday ashes are mixed with oil. Oil is a sign of gladness, or abundance, and of blessing. Oil is used to anoint kings, prophets, and priests. Oil is used to anoint the baptized, and will be used at the end of the Lenten season to mark us once again with the cross when we receive individually words of forgiveness on Maundy Thursday. God is always and forever mixed into our experiences of death, always and forever present in every loss and pain and fear, always and forever walking with us and carrying us through those valleys of dark shadow. The Gospel reading tonight finishes with the well-known phrase, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” And you, brothers and sisters, and all of the weary and violent and broken world, are God’s treasure — so God’s heart, Jesus, the crucified and risen one, is with you. 

We are marked with these ashes, reminded that we are dust, in worship of the One who created the cosmos out of dust. The One who has repaired the breach between us, between life and death, between each of us and each other, is the One who we follow through this Lenten season, on to Holy Week, to the upper room, to the garden of Gethsemane, to the trials, to the cross, the tomb, and beyond.