Beginning in Ashes

Many people, I think, find the experience of the Ash Wednesday liturgy profoundly indescribable. Profound and indescribable. A cross of ashes written on every forehead. Words spoken directly to each: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Participating in this worship service is an experience that resonates very deeply within our human nature. We come away from this experience somehow both more human and more holy than when we began. In ways perhaps difficult to describe.

The actions of the service itself are easy enough to describe. These words of description come from The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship: "The ceremony itself consists of a blessing or prayer over the ashes, traditionally made by burning the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, followed by imposition on the forehead accompanied by a verbal formula which is either a reminder of human mortality or an exhortation to faithfulness to the gospel or both. This combination of word and acted symbol can and should be a spiritually powerful inauguration of the season of Lent."

I hope that you will find the experience of this service spiritually powerful, that the combination of word and acted symbol that we will all share will enrich your soul. But Ash Wednesday, powerful as it is, does not stand alone. It is, as the dictionary reminds us, the inauguration of the season of Lent. Ashes seem an odd way to inaugurate anything. Even Lent. Yes, ashes are a symbol of penitence, and if you just leave it at that Ash Wednesday fits with Lent. A reminder of our need for repentance is an important part of Lent. Yet the experience of Ash Wednesday is also much more than that, more than just a call to penitence.

What does it mean that we begin our Lenten journey in ashes? Think about it. How can ashes begin, inaugurate anything? Ashes are the end. Final disposition. No more words, no more steps, no more story, no more existence. What has burned is gone. The only story ashes tell is of what was, but is no more. With ashes, there is only past. So how can Ash Wednesday inaugurate anything? If we are no more than ashes and dust, what is the point even of Lent? Where can we possibly go from here?

Ultimately, Easter, of course. But still we should ask, what of Lent? What about this time between today and Easter? I have a new image for Lent in my mind. Lent is a time, a span of time, for us to discover, to learn, that it is possible, even blessed, to live in the midst of ashes. God and the life God offers, are present, even if we are but dust. Even when we are nothing more than ashes, God is with us.

Lent is seeking for, and experiencing, God in the midst of ashes.

Lent is not new life arising out of the ashes. Lent is not the story of the phoenix. In the mythical tale of the phoenix, as you may know, the great bird builds a nest of spices, sings a doleful dirge, flaps its wings to set fire to the pile until all is consumed in ashes. Out of the ashes, the phoenix’s life is reconstituted, to be repeated (the same life) over and over again. For the phoenix, the ashes are nothing more than a good night’s sleep with life continuing and unchanged on either side.

Lent is about the ashes. Lent is seeking for God and life in the very midst of the ashes themselves.

Another image. I cannot help but picture news stories I’ve seen of individuals or families returning to their homes after a fire, searching in the midst of the ashes for mementos, some physical, tangible treasure that speaks of their past life and perhaps offers promise for life in the future. There is nothing wrong with that image, but it does not illustrate the task or story of Lent. Ash Wednesday is not meant to teach us that there are earthly treasures to be found within the ashes if we but look hard enough or in the right places. Today we are meant to find only ashes.

From today’s gospel: "Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume." Today, all of what we treasure on earth is consumed in ash. Everything. Absolutely everything. Symbolically, even our bodies, the earthly vessels of our lives are but dust.

And Lent begins.

Lent: a time of opportunity to discover that even with absolutely nothing, we still have God. That is not an easy process of discovery. It can take at least 40 days. But it is an indescribably valuable experience. Lent is a time to learn, a time to experience that God’s presence with us does not depend upon any of our earthly treasures, even the ones we might think of as sacred. And nothing on earth, not even the fiercest fire, can take the blessing of God’s life and presence from us.

On this day everything is reduced to ash. Everything. Come Easter, new green shoots will begin to rise and blossom and grow. Not the old life, but new life, will be reborn out of the ashes. That is the Easter story, and it does lie ahead of us. But today we have nothing but ashes. We are nothing but dust. And God is with us.