“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (New International Version)
Traditional Ash Wednesday services focus on the brevity of life and remind worshippers that they came from dust and will soon enough return back to the earth, dust once more. For our many of our parents in the faith, Lent was typically a sad season in which they gave up something in order to prepare themselves for eternal life.
The salvation promised and hoped for led them to look away from the joys of Spring and the beauties of the earth. Faithful Christians, in generations past, trained their eyes on heaven, forsaking time for eternity.
Yes, life is serious and risky business, and no one gets out alive. Yet is salvation really all about escaping this world of constant grief and death? Or is it seeing everlasting beauty in each passing moment?
It could be that you struggle with Ash Wednesday services and the season of Lent precisely because of its focus on giving up something, or because when you were a kid this time of year seemed like such a downer. Maybe your typical approach to Lent in the past has been a shoulder shrug and a response of “meh.”
So, therefore, I want us to get a different take on the meaning of Ash Wednesday and look at it from a different angle.
I will take away the ashes on their head, and I will give them a crown. I will take away their sadness, and I will give them the oil of happiness. I will take away their sorrow, and I will give them celebration clothes.
Isaiah 61:3, ERV
The uncertainty of life can invite us to praise and wonder, to seize the moment—for this is the day the Lord has made and I will rejoice in it! All that I love and care for is mortal and fleeting, but mortality is the inspiration to celebration and love.
This is the sort of approach I saw in a dear friend who died fifteen years ago from a very long struggle with cancer. Bea always found ways to rejoice in her suffering, to be attentive to the working of God around her, and to bless those who needed God’s grace more than she did. More than once I found Bea, in one of her many hospital stays, out of the bed and in someone else’s room playing her dulcimer (she had once been a music teacher) and singing a hymn of praise to a fellow patient.
This Ash Wednesday, I’m not only fasting and giving up a few meals a week; I’m also letting go of everything that keeps me from rejoicing in the passing beauty of the earth.
Yes, we are dust, but we are real earthly sacred dust. Dust is good, after all, emerging from God’s intergalactic creativity. We are frail, but we are also part of a holy adventure reflecting God’s love over thousands of years.
Ash Wednesday is a time for us to pause, notice, wake up, and discover that God is in this place. This day invites us to take a much needed break and open up to the precarious yet beautiful world in which we live. So in this season of Lent, I plan on considering the lilies and the birds of the air.
In some Christian traditions, the imposition of ashes is accompanied by the words, “repent and believe the gospel.” And that I plan to do this year. I plan to turn around and be more present to the moment, appreciating God’s grandeur, and believing the good news—the embodied, everlasting, beautiful, wondrous, and gracious good news of walking with the Lord who is with me, surrounds me, and goes before me and after me.
Pastor and author, Jan Richardson, lost her husband to cancer several years ago during the season of Lent. She chose to cremate her husband so that his ashes might remind her and her family that there is beauty in the dust. She wrote the following poem at her first Ash Wednesday without him:
Blessing the Dust
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
Amen.
Rev. Tim Ehrhardt 