I read a story recently about Sojourner Truth that reminded me of Ash Wednesday. One of our local heroes, the former slave turned abolitionist preacher lived in Battle Creek, but she traveled all over the country giving speeches and teaching people about the sins of slavery and racial prejudice. The story I read was about a time she was scheduled to preach in Angola, Indiana when she received the news that someone was threatening to burn down the town house she was to speak in if she continued with the meeting. Undeterred, Truth responded, “then I will speak on the ashes.” I cannot imagine the courage, the confidence in her convictions that Truth would have needed, as a black woman and a former slave in the tinderbox of the years before the Civil War, to make such a bold statement. “Then I will speak on the ashes.”
I don’t think it is a far step to say that we too live in a tinderbox world, live in a world aflame. More connected than ever before, we seem as divided as ever. Protests this summer in Ferguson and New York. The recent shooting deaths of three young Muslim-Americans in North Carolina. Economic inequality, so clearly displayed in the reports yet again coming from just down the street from us in Triangle Trailer Park. The growing threat of extremism. And a government so divided that it seems only able to agree that things are not working. The flames of hatred, of poverty, of prejudice, of inequality, leave behind a world of ashes.
And the truth of life on this ashy sphere is that no matter how far away the evil, the violence, might be, the world is an insular place, and we are complicit in this brokenness. After killing his brother, Cain asked God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And God responded with a resounding yes. On this ashy sphere, we are bound up in each other, dependent on each other, connected to each other, in blessing and in brokenness. And so, on Ash Wednesday, we gather. To confess our brokenness. To confess the ways in which our sin, our brokenness, contribute to the enslavement of our fellow humanity. We make corporate confession this day for sins close and far, not just what we did, but what we allowed to happen in our name, what we benefited from in ways we did not know. We confess the ashy remains of broken lives, of a broken world.
We confess and then, in an ashy cross drawn upon our forehead we find that God was here all along, we find a God who is, as the prophet Joel proclaimed, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” In this ashy cross on our forehead we are reminded that God speaks on the ashes. That from the burnt out remains of sin, God speaks life where there was death, hope where there was suffering, light where there was darkness. In this ashy cross upon our foreheads, we hear the resounding voice of a God who says “You are my Beloved,” and there is no burn of sin or death or darkness that can ever change the power of that voice.
God speaks on the ashes, because that is what God has always done. Our God is a God of new life, a God who is always speaking into the ashes and bringing something new. From the dust of creation, God formed humanity, breathing life where there had been only mud. When the Israelites stood between the Red Sea and the fires of Pharaoh’s army, God spoke through Moses, parting the sea and leading God’s people from slavery to freedom. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God spoke over the dry bones and life, and breath, came over those bones again. Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale, then God spoke and Jonah was spewed onto high ground, free to bring good news of God’s mercy to the people of Nineveh. King Nebechanezzer threw the servants of God into a firey furnace, but God was with them in the furnace, and not a hair on their head was scorched. God speaks on the ashes and brings new life, because speaking on the ashes and bringing new life is what God does, it is who God is. It is God’s story, a story that finds its completion in a cross.
Ash Wednesday leads us to the cross. It leads us to the most powerful manifestation of God’s overwhelming love for humanity. At the cross we see a world so divided, so embattled, so fearful and full of hate that it led God’s own Son to death. But more than that, at the cross we see a God so committed to us that God turned death into everlasting life. In the death of Christ death itself was broken open, so that never again could death contain us. And then, God raised Jesus from the dead so that we too are raised. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God spoke on the ashes of all death, so that death would not have the last word. So that wherever there are ashes, there is life.
These ashy crosses make that promise visible. They make visible the promise of our baptism, that for us Christ died and through Christ we too are raised. These ashy crosses proclaim that nothing can separate us from the love of this God in Christ for us. These ashy crosses are not about marking our sorrow, or marking our shame, marking our brokenness, or marking our pain. These ashy crosses are about marking us as God’s. These ashy crosses are about a God who dances on the graves of all that hold us captive, a God who says not just that a different way is possible, but who promises that from the dust is where God always forms God’s best creation, from dust is where God always brings new life. These ashy crosses proclaim that we who are dust are God’s handiwork, the creation which God calls good. That we who were slaves now are free. That we dry bones have life again. Long after the ashes have worn of your face this evening, may you feel the presence of that promise, made visible tonight, but always there, always with you, always marking your forehead through the promise of the waters of baptism, and may you know, now and always, that your God is with you. Amen.
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