Ash Wednesday is one of the most important days in the Christian calendar—it falls on a weekday and outside of Holy Week it is probably the biggest weekday devotion for Christians. So we come to church—it is more than a habit, more than a duty (though it is a ‘Red Letter Day’ in the Lectionary or a ‘Holy Day of Obligation’, if you prefer). There are words to say and actions to make.
The words that we speak resonate across the centuries. They are stark and unadorned, they are powerful. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ We face the reality of our mortality, we acknowledge that we are human, finite. And as a tangible reminder of this we allow ourselves to be marked with ashes.
In our reading Jesus reminds us of this by asking us to think about the things that we own, that we value. These very things will also decay, they will moulder, they will fall apart. Everything will—in the end—will decay. This is the truth of organic existence—we will all be dust and ashes. The world may try to convince us otherwise but as one writer says ‘these words of simple, absolute truth give us a perspective the world tries both to hide and to deny – and that we usually do our best to ignore’.
However, within the dust and ashes there can also be hope. Hope because we are created by God, and he gives us our lives as a gift. He breathed life into us, he moulded us, as Psalm 139 says:
For you yourself created my inmost parts; ♦
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; ♦
marvellous are your works, my soul knows well.
My frame was not hidden from you, ♦
when I was made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my form, as yet unfinished; ♦
already in your book were all my members written,
God hallows things—he makes them holy, even the humble dust. The ashes that we accept on our foreheads today are mixed with holy oil and blessed. If we look closely we can discern that being reminded that we are dust is another way of remembering that God has us encompassed all around, from beginning to end, in birth and in death. We receive his cross in oil at baptism, we receive his cross in oil at extreme unction—the ‘Last Rites’.
Each year we allow ourselves to receive the imposition of a cross of ash (which is the reason why the proper title for the act is an ‘imposition of ashes’ rather than ‘ashing’). In this we remind ourselves that not only do we receive the cross of ash, we do so willingly, remembering of what we are made, and of what Jesus was willing to surrender for us—his very life. In doing so we look forward both to Good Friday and Easter morning. For when we return to dust we do so—as our Prayer of Committal puts it—‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ’. In this, our cross of ash become a promise of salvation.
Salvation born of love—God’s great love of us, God’s great desire to draw close to us. And to allow that closeness to develop and grow, we take up our Lenten disciplines, whatever they may be. Prayer, fasting, spiritual or practical work, whatever resonates with us at the time and in this year, because every year is different. Whatever is right for you and me this year—whether public or private—knowing that our reward will be in heaven, not here. Knowing that there is no need to put on a dismal face or a pious display. Knowing that God knows the secrets of our hearts, he made us and he loves us, and we will grow in strength and love as we respond to him this Lent.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.