Ash Wednesday

It seems eons ago that the mainline Protestant churches rediscovered the value of certain liturgical rites. I remember when Ash Wednesday services began to happen again in United Methodist Churches I attended, and much of the rhetoric (including from me) was that it was a Christian version of the Jewish Feast of Atonement, known as Yom Kippur. It is not that at all. Yom Kippur is a day of solemn awareness of one's failings before the God of the covenant. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, in which Christians discipline themselves, preparing for the strange and wonderful event we call Easter. In order to begin the Lenten disciplines - which popularly involve "giving something up" but involve much more than that - Ash Wednesday calls us to remember something far more significant than our sinfulness: we are called to remember that we are mortal, and as mortals, we shall die.

The word "death" in this context is freighted with an ontological and theological significance that goes far beyond the end of our bodily life. Death here refers to the permanent separation from God. As creatures created from dust, to dust, represented in the ashes placed upon our forheads (ashes were chosen because of the old belief that cremated bodies could not be reconstituted for the final resurrection from the dead, again signifying that total separation from God our Creator), we shall return. It is the recognition of the fallen state in which all creation exists, an endless cycle of birth, death, rot, and decay. While creation is good, and God seeks to redeem all life (even mosquitoes, according to theologian Jurgen Moltmann), as it stand now, we live under the judgement signified by ashes - we are separated from God and there is nothing we in our own power can do to restore that relationship.

The Lenten journey begins tomorrow, as we seek to embrace our deaths not as the end of a journey, but as the beginning of new life, lived here on earth, for others, as we are called to do by God through Jesus Christ. This takes work. It takes prayer. It takes releasing any notions we have that our agendas, our wishes, our desires, our very beings, have any worth other than the worth granted through the grace of Jesus Christ. We are to live and love and serve as if we were already dead - not heeding our own desires, but seeking first, and always, the Kingdom of God.

At our service this evening, as we prayed the prayer of Invitation to Lenten Discipline, my wife had us actually bow, as if we were bowing before the very throne of God. We announced the reality of our sin, and our desire to open our hearts - to cleanse ourselves of all the dark, dank, horrid things, secret and not-so-secret, that plague us, drag us down to the depths. For me, this was a significant moment; my eyes could not lift up, because I felt I was right there, before God - how could I do that and live? What could I say, what could I offer, what could I do? The answer, of course, is the disciplined response of Lent.

As we move from this day to the passion, death, adn resurrection of Jesus, I leave you with these words, from the closing hymn:

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to thee my blessed Savior
I surrender all