Ash Wednesday

As a father has compassion for his children,

   so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.

For God knows how we were made;

   the LORD remembers that we are dust.

As for mortals, their days are like grass;

   they flourish like a flower of the field;

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

   and its place knows it no more.

We slowly walked to the front of the sanctuary and Sue began the invitation to the imposition of ashes. Christians have been doing this since the ninth century, so this is not the first ash-rodeo of Christianity. It became complicated today, and it is unclear if human or holy hands were at work.

Sue didn’t attempt the trite words often offered on Ash Wednesday but instead gave us thoughtful, theological words that recognized the gravity of sin and the promise of grace. Hers were a poetic summation of the Heidelberg invitation to die to the old and rise in the new. She was unafraid to call us to death and penitence. She prayed, "May these ashes remind us of our mortality and penitence and teach us again that only by your gracious gift are we given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.” She then invited the assembly to walk forward, move the hair from the forehead, and receive the imposition of ashes. 

Then she turned to me as demonstration. We were both holding urns with the ashes of burnt palms. She dipped her fingers in one urn, smudged the dust on my head and proclaimed, “You are dead to sin and alive in Christ.” The shadows of the lighting, the compassion of her smudge, and the gravity of her words unfolded Lent in my body. It is an odd thing to be receiving words of death while trying to live. 

Then, in almost slow motion, she lowered her right hand to her side and as she did, her hand collided with mine, and I let go. Ash leaped from my hands and covered the carpet beneath us. There was a gasp from the gathered. 

So many thoughts ran through my head. We dropped the ashes; it wasn’t quite the dropping of a casket nor the dropping of the communion bread, but it felt similar.  I had no judgment of my colleague nor of myself, but laughter was also not my first response. Instead, the moment felt significant. It was good and right to drop the ashes, for the weight of sin and the power of the cross won’t fit on my forehead; there is not enough room for the needed amount of ash, so we simply dumped it on the floor. It was a mistake to some, but a liturgical mystery to others. I count the Spirit at work in the collision of our hands and the crash of the urn to the floor.

We continued, and as I placed the ash on each person who came forward, I could see the ash-heap in my periphery. I wondered if the ash would remain there for days, weeks, months, and years to come. I was certain we ruined the carpet. I wondered how long my clumsiness would be remembered? But in my liturgical hopes, I wondered how long we would be reminded of our mortality through the stain on the carpet? How would this oversized smudge call us to those saints who knew living mortality? How long would the words of Job, who thought all was lost, be remembered through the ash-heap; or how long would Tamar’s misery, which she covered with ashes, be remembered in the carpet? Would the ashes remain throughout Lent and would we remember all those in Scripture and all those today who are marked with the signs and tragedies of death amidst trying to remain alive? The widow; the orphan;The homeless; the raped; the illegal; the incarcerated; the adulterated; the addicted; the schizophrenic? So many of us carry ash on our backs. It lasts beyond one-day-in-forty. 

I returned to the chapel several hours later and there was no sign of the spill, whether you call it the Spirit’s liturgical dance or our mess. It was washed clean. Humans hands removed the ash puddle from the carpet and it was made clean. The significance needs no explanation. 

I went to chapel today, day two of forty. The ashes were gone but Lent continues. My eyes were fixed to the place that was ashen yesterday; I gave gratitude and I remembered. I have gratitude that through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we are made clean; I remember because sin still has its sway, and many of us cannot find the freedom to make it clean. You can't save yourself.

I dropped the ashes, or maybe she did. We all needed it. The stain-now-removed is a mark of the wholeness of Lent; may we hold it all in gratitude; may we remember those for whom it is still grave.

*Grateful to Dave Becker and crew who somehow managed to clean up the mess.

*Photo credit to Sue Rozeboom