“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . In sure and certain hope of the resurrection
to eternal life.”
“Ring around the rosie, pocket full of
posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”
Our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers
will hear this today/tonight when they receive ashes, “Repent, and believe in
the Gospel.”
What do the ashes placed on our
foreheads today/tonight really represent?
They represent sorrow:
In
the Hebrew Scriptures we see Tamar after her rape sprinkling ashes on her head
(2 Samuel 13). We see Mordecai, Esther’s
uncle, putting on sackcloth and ashes as he cried out against the order of King
Ahasuerus that all the Jews in his kingdom be killed. (Book of Esther 4)
They represent a plea to God:
The
prophet Daniel when faced with a royal order that would make him deny the
practice of his faith said, “I turned to the Lord God, pleading in earnest
prayer, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.” (Daniel 9)
They represent repentance:
Job
came to realize that his righteous life was not the complete answer to God that
he initially believed. God’s answer to Job told about the power of God in the
universe and overwhelmed Job. Job
responded, “I had hear of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes sees
you / therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42)
The
prophet Jeremiah called for the people to repent of their rejection of walking
in “the good way” of life God prescribed, by saying, “O my poor people, put on
sackcloth, roll in ashes,” (Jer. 6)
So today/tonight in accepting the ashes
on our foreheads, we acknowledge our sorrow, we cry out for God’s saving help,
and we promise to repent, turning away from our rejection of God’s teaching and
turning to following Jesus’ words: Love
your God, with all your heart, your mind and your strength; and love your
neighbor as yourself.
When at the time of the Reformation,
including the English Reformation, the practice of receiving ashes was
dropped. Although the practice had long
roots—by the end of the 10th century the custom of receiving ashes
as a liturgical practice was clearly documented—it appears that the reformers
felt the emphasis should be on the “utter depravity of human nature.”
Here is what the priest was instructed
to say to the people in the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549 and again in
1559: “To the intent that you, being admonished of the great indignation of God
against sinners, may the rather be called to earnest and true repentance, and
may walk more warely in these dangerous days, fleeing from such vices, for the
which ye affirm with your own mouths, the curse of God to be due.”
And he says further “Now seeing that all
they be accursed (as the Prophet David beareth witness) which
do err and go astray from the commandments of God, let us (remembering the
dreadful judgment hanging over our heads, and being always at hand) return unto
our Lord God, with all contrition and meekness of heart, bewailing and
lamenting our sinful life, acknowledging and confessing our offenses, and
seeking to bring forth worthy fruits of penance. For now is the axe put unto
the root of the trees, so that every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit,
is hewn down and cast into the fire. It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God; he shall pour down rain
upon the sinners, snares, fire, and brimstone, storm and tempest; this shall be
their portion to drink.” Are you
appropriately afraid now?
In a few moments we, too, will
acknowledge in the Litany of Penitence, our sin and—in great detail—our falling
short of God’s commandments. Yet there
is a major difference between what we say and do today/tonight in our worship
and the context of the confession of sin and repentance in the liturgy of the
Reformation prayer books. That difference
is this: our Litany of Penitence takes place within the context of a Eucharist
rather than in the context of a Morning Prayer service with the Litany.
A Eucharist celebration calls into our
hearts and minds the power of God’s love in God’s incarnation as Jesus of
Nazareth. We acknowledge the Real
Presence of Christ in our midst. We are
taking Christ into ourselves as we receive the blessed bread and wine. We do this not only today/tonight, but every
week! In doing so we give thanks for the
power of God’s love in our lives.
Yes, in so many ways we do fall short of
the person who God yearns for us to be. But God’s promise of forgiveness and
grace covers our sinfulness. We must simply reach out to receive the promise!
The theologian, Walter Brueggemann,
beautifully describes our reaching out to God in his poem, “Marked by Ashes.” Today/Tonight
I’ll close with an excerpt from that poem that uses “Easter” as a verb to
describe God’s action as we reach out for God’s grace:
“but all our
Wednesdays are marked by ashes—
we begin this day with that taste of ash in
our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our morality as we roll the ash
around on our tongues.
We are able to
ponder our ashness
with some
confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes anticipates your Easter
victory over that dry, flaky, taste of death.
On this
Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you—
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and
Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and
freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your
truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we
wait for the Risen One who comes soon.”
Let us pray: This day/night, O God, we
come to you in sorrow at the sinfulness and pain in our world and in our own
lives. We turn to you, O God. Restore us and restore our world to be fit for
your reign of justice and peace. Let our confession and our receiving of Christ
in the bread and wine, renew us to serve and peaceably fight for what is right
and just. May your reign come, your will
be done in us and in our world. Amen.
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