I’m always struck as a preacher by just what a weird day this is liturgically. We read this Gospel where Jesus talks on and on about how not to be like the hypocrites who sound a trumpet as they give alms, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues, and who distort their faces to show they are fasting. And then we stand, and say long prayers, and take an offering, and I put dirt on your faces. So that everyone you come across for the rest of your day will know that you went to church. OK, so, some people will just think you have gunk on your head, but a lot of people will know you were in church. Either way, it will make for some awkward conversation, when someone politely tells you that you have dirt on your face, and you have to say, yes, I know, I like that dirt there. With this ashy cross, I’ve labeled you for the rest of your day until you get to wash your face, as a person who prayed today, and isn’t that exactly the thing that Jesus is telling us not to do? It is a weird day, this Ash Wednesday.
And let’s go to this hypothetical conversation with this polite stranger who shares with you that you have something on your face. So you tell them, no, that’s ash on my face from the Ash Wednesday service at my church. And what if they ask you, oh, and what is Ash Wednesday, why do you do that? What will you tell them? Will you tell them, this is the day that my pastor marks the sign of a cross on my forehead to remind me that someday I will die and become dust. And before that, we confessed all our sin for a long time. What response might you get to that? Gee, remember that you are dust, your pastor sure sounds like a load of fun!
Maybe you’ll get that response. But maybe you won’t. Maybe instead the person will be intrigued by a community where people feel safe enough to admit our failures, or comforted by a faith tradition that is not afraid to speak openly and honestly about what it means to be human. Because that really is what Ash Wednesday is all about. It’s not, like the hypocrites Jesus warned us about, about covering our faces in ash and saying long prayers so that people will know how faithful we are. Nor is it about confessing our sins so that we can feel sufficiently bad about ourselves to properly repent. No, Ash Wednesday is like a big deep refreshing breath of honesty. So much of our lives are spent trying to dodge our own mortality. And I’m not talking just about death and aging here, although, stand in line at the grocery store and any number of magazines will barrage you with the next best product to look ten years, twenty years, thirty years younger. We certainly are a society that over-values youth. But by mortality, I also mean that innate desire to try to earn our own salvation, to earn God’s love and forgiveness. To clean up our souls, get our lives together, so that we can be good enough for God to love us. Every Sunday we come to church, we confess our sins, and then we go out and screw up throughout the week, get mad at a family member, lose our temper while driving, say something hurtful to a friend, and then we come back the next Sunday, do it all over again, and promise that this week will be the week we’ll finally get it all together, and we don’t. We fail at this whole Christian thing over and over and over again. And it might feel frustrating and exhausting.
But Ash Wednesday is the day where we just claim it. It’s like finally letting out your breath when you’ve been holding your stomach in. Like slipping into sweatpants after a long day in the office. Ash Wednesday is the day when the church takes a collective deep sigh and says, we are human, we are mortal, and we screw up sometimes. The best description of Ash Wednesday I’ve heard is if we imagine our lives as a long piece of ribbon, with our baptism at one end of the ribbon and our death at the other, Ash Wednesday is the day when the two ends of the ribbon touch. It’s a day when we see how God holds the whole collective span of the ribbon of our lives together in almighty hands, and everything, all parts of it, are under God’s care. It is a day for us to relax into the simplicity of it, that we are human, that we are mortal, that we are broken, dusty, sinful, and that is OK because all of that is held together in the span of God’s care. I hope, I pray, that today as we say the confession together, as you receive the ashes on your forehead and hear the words that you are dust, that you experience all of this not as condemnation, but as relief. That in this place, in this experience, in this day, you are welcomed here just as you are. In the words of confession, in this proclamation of your own mortality, may your soul find rest in the promise that you are enough.
On Ash Wednesday we proclaim that we are mortal. But Ash Wednesday is about more than that. The bulletin doesn’t say it because sometimes the Holy Spirit works outside of convenient worship planning schedules, but we’re actually going to come to the rail twice today. We’re going to come once to receive ashes, and then I’m going to invite you forward again and we will receive communion together. Because on Ash Wednesday when we proclaim that we are mortal, we also proclaim that God is not. On Ash Wednesday we rest in the reality of our mortality, in the truth of our brokenness, because God is the one who holds the ribbons of our lives. God claims us in the waters of baptism and who holds us in the moments of our death. And in every moment in between there, God is the glue that mends the broken pieces of our lives. The cracks, the weaknesses, the things we’ve done, and things we’ve failed to do, all of the things we will confess, those are places where God comes and binds us back together, filling in the holes and mending the tears. And so we come together to the table, to the banquet feast that the Lord has set, with ashes on our foreheads, a mingling of the palm fronds of Palm Sunday and the oil of our baptisms. We come, hypocrites with hands outstretched and smudged faces and we receive into our hands the very body of Christ. Jesus broke bread with Judas who betrayed him and Peter who denied him, and today, around this table, Jesus breaks bread with us. That bread of life fills the hungry places in our souls and it is available again and again. There is nothing we can do to keep God from offering us this gift of grace.
So today, may you feel safe enough in the presence of our loving God to let your guard down and be truly human, with all the beauty and grace, cracks and pain which that entails. May your forehead be marked with the ashes of death intermingled with the oil that anointed your head in baptism. After your mouth forms the words of confession, may you leave with the sweet taste of wine on your lips. Because God, who is grace beyond all knowing, holds you. Amen.
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