Ash Wednesday
+ May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Today, Ash Wednesday, is the first of day of the forty-day season of Lent. The first thing I should say, in case some of you are doing arithmetic in your heads, is that Ash Wednesday is actually forty-six days before Easter, not just forty. The forty days of the season of Lent don't include Sundays, because there is a very ancient Christian tradition, more ancient than the idea of Lent, that Sunday has to be a day of celebration. We Christians can spend the other six days of the week feeling as repentant as we want to, but on Sundays we are obliged to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So Lent includes forty weekdays of penitence and six Sundays of celebration-pretty solemn celebration, in a lot of places, but celebration none the less. In fact, if you give up something for Lent, you can technically resume doing that whatever-it-was on Sundays, though many people, I suppose, don't bother to do so. (I always make a point of setting aside my Lenten rule on Sundays, but that's just because I know the human body can only go so long without Diet Coke.)
So, then, Ash Wednesday. As Christians begin to observe these forty days of Lent, if we begin by going to church for Ash Wednesday, we will hear this lesson that we just heard this morning. It is a lesson in which Jesus warns against public displays of repentance, and specifically against going out in public with a dirty face. Putting that lesson up against the tradition of ashes on the forehead is, to put it mildly, a bit ironic. To stand up in church, read Jesus's command not to do something, and then to turn around and do exactly that at the very least draws attention to that thing. So let me say something specifically about ashes: it seems like a trivial subject, but the lesson and the ritual together sort of force us in that direction.
As is the case with many Christian rituals, the roots of this business of ashes lie in Jewish culture. It was a custom on hearing terrible news to show one's sorrow by ripping one's clothes and scattering ashes on one's head. (Indeed, some people still make a tear in their clothing as a sign of mourning.) Very early on, however, those symbols of sorrow got transferred from sorrow over bad news to sorrow over one's sins, so that they took on the additional meaning of symbolizing repentance. It was in that sense of repentance that the scattering of ashes on one's head got taken over by Christianity. Originally, Christians put the ashes on the top of their heads, following the older Jewish practice; but then in the Middle Ages the ashes sort of migrated down to the forehead, so that they reproduced the cross that was marked on a person's forehead at baptism.
Now that switch from ashes on the crown to ashes on the forehead doesn't amount to much in practical terms, and I don't necessarily think that the people who first made the change meant to make any great profound point by doing it. But it seems to me that, whatever they intended, they in fact changed the symbolism of the thing entirely, changed it so much that it's not even really the same thing Jesus was talking about in the lesson. The original sense, the original feeling, behind scattering ashes on one's head as a sign of sorrow must have been, I think, something about being ground down into the dirt. The idea was a kind of reminder to oneself, and an acknowledgment before God, that human beings are no better than dirt and have no right to argue with God, even when bad things, terrible things, happen. And, in fact, that sense of being no better than dirt is still there today in the modern Christian ceremony: when the minister traces the cross of ashes on the person's forehead, what he or she says is "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
But here's the thing, here's the subtle point, that I think the change in the action makes. The minister puts ashes on my head and says, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." That part fits with the old traditional sense of the ashes. But the minister puts the ashes on in the shape of the cross, and makes that cross in the same place that the cross was made on me at my baptism. And the cross, if it is anything, is a sign that we are more than dust, that returning to dust is not the last word about being human. The cross points beyond death and decay to resurrection and immortality. Baptism, if it is anything, is a dying with Jesus in order to share as well in his rising from the dead. The words of Ash Wednesday remind us that we must die: but the actions of Ash Wednesday remind us, rather, of the most basic Christian hope, our hope in the resurrection of the dead.
If we come to Ash Wednesday, or perhaps I should say if we come away from Ash Wednesday, with that sense of hope, then I think we can see Lent as we are probably supposed to see it. These are not forty days of pure sorrow over our sins, not forty days of despair over the horrible state of human life in general, as if the forty days somehow had meaning in themselves. These are, rather, forty days of preparation for Easter, and it is only the empty tomb of Easter that gives them meaning; if Christians feel forty days of sorrow, it is not sorrow that grows out of despair, but rather, somehow, sorrow that grows out of hope, and out of gratitude: it is sorrow that has its roots in a deeper vein of joy.
--John Wm. Houghton
+ May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Today, Ash Wednesday, is the first of day of the forty-day season of Lent. The first thing I should say, in case some of you are doing arithmetic in your heads, is that Ash Wednesday is actually forty-six days before Easter, not just forty. The forty days of the season of Lent don't include Sundays, because there is a very ancient Christian tradition, more ancient than the idea of Lent, that Sunday has to be a day of celebration. We Christians can spend the other six days of the week feeling as repentant as we want to, but on Sundays we are obliged to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So Lent includes forty weekdays of penitence and six Sundays of celebration-pretty solemn celebration, in a lot of places, but celebration none the less. In fact, if you give up something for Lent, you can technically resume doing that whatever-it-was on Sundays, though many people, I suppose, don't bother to do so. (I always make a point of setting aside my Lenten rule on Sundays, but that's just because I know the human body can only go so long without Diet Coke.)
So, then, Ash Wednesday. As Christians begin to observe these forty days of Lent, if we begin by going to church for Ash Wednesday, we will hear this lesson that we just heard this morning. It is a lesson in which Jesus warns against public displays of repentance, and specifically against going out in public with a dirty face. Putting that lesson up against the tradition of ashes on the forehead is, to put it mildly, a bit ironic. To stand up in church, read Jesus's command not to do something, and then to turn around and do exactly that at the very least draws attention to that thing. So let me say something specifically about ashes: it seems like a trivial subject, but the lesson and the ritual together sort of force us in that direction.
As is the case with many Christian rituals, the roots of this business of ashes lie in Jewish culture. It was a custom on hearing terrible news to show one's sorrow by ripping one's clothes and scattering ashes on one's head. (Indeed, some people still make a tear in their clothing as a sign of mourning.) Very early on, however, those symbols of sorrow got transferred from sorrow over bad news to sorrow over one's sins, so that they took on the additional meaning of symbolizing repentance. It was in that sense of repentance that the scattering of ashes on one's head got taken over by Christianity. Originally, Christians put the ashes on the top of their heads, following the older Jewish practice; but then in the Middle Ages the ashes sort of migrated down to the forehead, so that they reproduced the cross that was marked on a person's forehead at baptism.
Now that switch from ashes on the crown to ashes on the forehead doesn't amount to much in practical terms, and I don't necessarily think that the people who first made the change meant to make any great profound point by doing it. But it seems to me that, whatever they intended, they in fact changed the symbolism of the thing entirely, changed it so much that it's not even really the same thing Jesus was talking about in the lesson. The original sense, the original feeling, behind scattering ashes on one's head as a sign of sorrow must have been, I think, something about being ground down into the dirt. The idea was a kind of reminder to oneself, and an acknowledgment before God, that human beings are no better than dirt and have no right to argue with God, even when bad things, terrible things, happen. And, in fact, that sense of being no better than dirt is still there today in the modern Christian ceremony: when the minister traces the cross of ashes on the person's forehead, what he or she says is "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
But here's the thing, here's the subtle point, that I think the change in the action makes. The minister puts ashes on my head and says, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." That part fits with the old traditional sense of the ashes. But the minister puts the ashes on in the shape of the cross, and makes that cross in the same place that the cross was made on me at my baptism. And the cross, if it is anything, is a sign that we are more than dust, that returning to dust is not the last word about being human. The cross points beyond death and decay to resurrection and immortality. Baptism, if it is anything, is a dying with Jesus in order to share as well in his rising from the dead. The words of Ash Wednesday remind us that we must die: but the actions of Ash Wednesday remind us, rather, of the most basic Christian hope, our hope in the resurrection of the dead.
If we come to Ash Wednesday, or perhaps I should say if we come away from Ash Wednesday, with that sense of hope, then I think we can see Lent as we are probably supposed to see it. These are not forty days of pure sorrow over our sins, not forty days of despair over the horrible state of human life in general, as if the forty days somehow had meaning in themselves. These are, rather, forty days of preparation for Easter, and it is only the empty tomb of Easter that gives them meaning; if Christians feel forty days of sorrow, it is not sorrow that grows out of despair, but rather, somehow, sorrow that grows out of hope, and out of gratitude: it is sorrow that has its roots in a deeper vein of joy.
--John Wm. Houghton
