Ash Wednesday
17 February 2010
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a day of repentance to begin a season of repentance. For more than a thousand years Christians have been keeping this day, when they receive ashes on their foreheads as a sign that they acknowledge their personal need for repentance.
Why ashes? From ancient days, long before the time of Christ, people used ashes to express sorrow and penitence. In the Old Testament Job (42.6) said, ‘I melt away; I repent in dust and ashes.’ When the prophet Jonah (3.6) declared God’s judgement of the people of Nineveh, we are told that the king of Nineveh ‘rose from his throne, stripped off his robes of state, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes.’
In keeping with the ancient association of ashes and sorrow, the Christian church uses the burnt palm branches from Palm Sunday in the previous year to make a paste of ash and water. On Palm Sunday the branches signified joy and celebration; now in Lent, burnt and crushed, they stand for sorrow and remorse. The priest uses the ashes to mark his or her forehead with the sign of a cross and then offers the same to all the people, administering the ashes with the words: ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return’.
But why should we feel sorry, penitent? Why should we have our heads marked with ash? What have we done? In the season of Lent we hear the story of Jesus’ suffering and his unjust death on a cross. When we receive the sign of the cross on our heads, we confess that the cross on which he died should have been for us, not for Jesus. He was crucified by people who had charged him with abusing the name of God and rebellion against God. But the people of Christ believe that nothing could be further from the truth. As St Paul said, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself….Christ was innocent of sin and, yet, for our sake, God made him one with the sinfulness of humanity, so that we might be made one with the goodness of God himself.’ (II Cor. 5.19-21)
We are the ones who abuse God and rebel against him. We, all of us, are people who put ourselves at the centre of our lives. We are twisted inward, as Luther said. We carry on as if we are looking in a mirror and barely see God and his creation beyond ourselves. Even when we do take account of God, often we still twist in on ourselves, supposing that we have within us the ability to get God on our side, to make him love us. We think that we can hold up before him our achievements, our wondrous deeds, our pious striving, so that he takes note of us, smiles at us and blesses us with his gifts. In other words, we believe that we have the power to reconcile God to us; to change him so that he will love us and do good things for us.
We humans have always been like that and we still are. Being like that is called sin, which arises from our desire to build ourselves up while looking away from or belittling God. Only God could deal with that deep, sinful side of us. For that reason God came to us as a man, Jesus, the Christ. He came not so that we could influence him to accept us but, as St Paul said, to reconcile us to himself – to draw us into himself by his love. God took action. Everything that needed to be done, God did, in Christ. Through Christ we are assured that God accepts us even in our sin, because God is love and solely on account of his love he embraces us and blesses us. It is not because we have goodness within us but only because he is good and gracious. In Christ we see how God really is: he gives himself to us as a gift.
When people hear and receive that good news, it transforms them. It makes them, as St Paul says, ‘one with the goodness of God himself.’ When they believe that God’s love for them is an eternal reality despite their self-centredness and abuse of his love, men and women begin to be reshaped after the pattern of Christ. Trusting God, they show forth Christ-like love to their sisters and brothers in the world, looking less at themselves and more at their neighbour. That transformation started in our Baptism, when we died with Christ and were recreated to a new life in his name.
We can, however, never put away our self-centredness completely; it will always be a force in our lives as human beings, pulling us away from God and our neighbour and urging us to twist back in on ourselves. So, as Luther commended, we should daily look back to our baptism, where we find a gracious God who comes to us with new life. Baptism also reminds us that we have a daily need for repentance, as our old selfish instincts remain active in us, even as we are being re-formed as little Christs. We are still inclined to put ourselves at the centre and push God to the margins, even when we know that he has done everything for us and we cannot really claim any credit for the goodness within us.
This is how Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent can help us. We are weak people, God has done everything for us and we should keep that before our eyes. On Ash Wednesday and throughout Lent we are reminded of the basic truth of who we are and who God is. He gives, we receive. He gives richly and graciously. When we give of ourselves, it is often grudging and sparing, though we know, as people of Christ, that God wishes us to follow him as our pattern. We were marked with the cross of Christ when we were baptised, a symbol of God’s out-reaching love and the transformed life to which we are called. On Ash Wednesday, we are again marked with the cross of Christ, in acknowledgement that often we do not live as people who know the love of God at work in our lives, but as people who are twisted in on ourselves.
Do you remember the story by Hans Christian Anderson about the Emperor’s New Clothes? Two rogues came to the city and claimed that they were makers of the finest clothes in the realm. They told everyone that they could weave the most beautiful apparel. Their reputation came to the attention of the emperor’s steward, who visited the two so-called weavers. They assured him that they produced wonderful garb but it was done in such a way that persons who were dim-witted or who occupied a position beyond their capabilities could not see the clothes. It would be invisible to such persons; everyone else would marvel at is beauty.
The rouges let the steward watch them as they worked on their loom, supposedly weaving the magical fabric, but there was in truth nothing there. They commented on how gorgeous it was but the steward could not see any cloth – he kept very quiet about this, of course, because he did not want to let on that he must be dim-witted or incompetent. He agreed that the clothes were marvellous and said that he would recommend them to the emperor. So, the emperor ordered a full set of robes from the weavers, for his birthday procession. When they arrived the two weavers helped dress him, so to speak; the emperor commented on how wonderfully light weight the robes were and he looked in the mirror. He saw himself naked and was appalled that he must be either dim or incapable. Still, everyone else was telling him how fabulous he looked in the robes, so he set off into the streets. All of the bystanders, who had heard that only stupid or incompetent people could not see the clothes, shouted out that the emperor looked superb in his fine robes. A small child, however, who was innocent and unaware of the ruse, shouted: ‘Look, the emperor is naked!’
Ash Wednesday is a bit like that small child, shouting at us. We might think that we are dressed in ‘wondrous finery’ that will impress everyone, both our fellow humans and God, that we are full of goodness and cleverness and wisdom. But the truth is that in the eyes of God, we are naked; we have nothing of our own; he gives us everything. Pride and pomp are misplaced. Give us a cross made of ash, marking our heads, our public confession that we are sinners and all our goodness comes from God, who alone gives us worth. Amen.
