Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is a wake-up call.  It hits us squarely between the eyes, forcing us to face our own mortality and sinfulness. 

On Wednesday we will hear Scripture readings that are urgent and vivid.  The Prophet Joel tells us that God wants us to return to Him with our whole hearts and to acknowledge our sinfulness with fasting and weeping and mourning.  In the Gospel reading Jesus reminds us that our fasting, our prayers and our almsgiving are important ways to atone for our sinfulness, but we must do so in such a way that only God sees what we’re doing.   Jesus criticizes pious self displays, not pious actions.

We have black ashes rubbed into our foreheads, ashes from the Palms that we so excitedly waved last year on Palm Sunday.  We recite a Litany of Penitence that takes our breath away, or should.  It’s a tough day, but take heart!  This is one religious day that won’t fall into the clutches of retailers.  There aren’t any Hallmark cards celebrating sin and death; no shop windows are decked out with sackcloth and ashes.

On Ash Wednesday we come to church to kneel, to pray, and to ask God’s forgiveness, surrounded by other sinners.  Human sin is universal; we all do it, not only Christians.  But our church tradition sets aside Ash Wednesday as a particular day to address sin and death.  We are ALL sinners, no better and no worse than our brothers and sisters. This is not a day to compete ("my sins are worse than yours are"), but to a day to confess.

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about death.  But death is the great equalizer. In death there are no CEO’s, no janitors; no rich, no poor. All of us are in the hands of the loving God—that's it. The trinkets of honor and position of this world are but dust and ashes.  When we remember, to dust we shall return, we remember that we are made for more than trinkets or honor.  We are made for life with God - now and forever.

Ash Wednesday is the gateway to Lent.  We have forty precious days to open ourselves up to God, to examine ourselves in the presence of the one who created us, knows us, and loves us.  We have forty days to face ourselves and learn not to be afraid of our sinfulness.  We are dust, but with God’s grace we can learn to live this life more fully, embracing our sinfulness, allowing God to transform us.

Ash Wednesday gives us the opportunity to gather in prayer, not so much to inform God of our needs – but to express our dependence upon Him.