Ash Wednesday Reflection
February 18 2015 - St. Andrew's Chapel - 6:30 PM
Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite
holy days of the church calendar.
As much fun as Shrove Tuesday was last night, and the joy of Christmas
and Easter, I have come to enjoy this day more and more. One of the reasons is that this has
remained our holy day. It hasn’t
been co-opted by the larger culture and turned into something else. It hasn’t been claimed by our god of
consumerism. As Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote
so well, “there are no Door Buster sales at 4 am on the first day of Lent. There are no big, garish displays in
the middle of the mall with mechanical children in sack cloth and ashes.”[i]
Ash
Wednesday isn’t a holiday that can easily be co-opted into a lucrative cash cow
for our culture. I think the same
thing is true about both Christmas and Easter, by the way, when we grasp the
full story. Christmas includes
quite a bit of suffering and hardship, before the celebration, but we are able
to gloss over the poverty of Mary and Joseph, the injustice of Rome, and the
dangerous flight to Egypt, in light of the celebration of such glorious life in
Jesus. Easter, as well, is
centered around death before the resurrection, though the flowers, the bunny
and the colorful eggs seem to push the emphasis forward.
But
Ash Wednesday holds us back and forces us to consider the truth of our
mortality, and our brokenness. Ash
Wednesday forces us, thankfully, to stop and consider our need for God.
It
is especially helpful in times like this week, when we have been confronted by
the brutality that exists within us, as 21 young men in Libya had their lives
taken by 21 other young men, who had forgotten their shared status as
brothers. It only takes a little
bit of honesty to recognize how easily our own relationships are broken, and how
the cycles of violence of all types escalate quickly and seemingly beyond
repair. When we are honest, we can
see that same story play out in our own lives in different ways. We can see ourselves in both the victims
and the perpetrators. When we do
that, we understand how much humility, forgiveness, sacrificial love, and
non-violence are needed to heal what divides us.
As
we heard a moment ago from Isaiah, the worship that the Lord requires of us is
a recognition that we forget our own sisterhood and brotherhood with all. Isaiah says that we oppress, that we
quarrel, and that we fight. We are
called to look just at ourselves first, in humility. The worship that the Lord requires is to loose the bonds of
injustice, to let the oppressed go free, share our bread, our housing, and our
clothes. God teaches us that
humility is necessary to overcome our brokenness, a humility that requires such
great strength that we need God’s help, which is promised at the end of that
reading. “The Lord will guide you
continuously, 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.” (verse 11). In
times like these, it is helpful, it is necessary, to embrace humility, to let
go of ourselves, to empty ourselves, so that God may fill us with love and forgiveness
for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of all.
So
may we do that tonight with this ritual.
May we hear these words of blessing for the dust that we are and to which we will return.
Blessing the Dust
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
All those days you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
Did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do within the dust,
within the dirt, within the stuff
of which the world is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge we bear.
–Jan Richardson
