“Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall
return.“
Recently I
got a Facebook message from someone who grew up Catholic, asking if we observe
Ash Wednesday and have ashes. That’s a
good question.
In much of
the Protestant church, Ash Wednesday wasn’t really observed until the last
thirty years or so. For a lot of
congregations, the imposition of ashes was a new thing. But I think the practice has been growing, as
people have recognized that it’s a gift to be reminded of our mortality.
Thinking
about this, I was reminded of an interview I heard with novelist Yan Martel. In both The
Life of Pi and his newest book, The
High Mountains of Portugal, Martel explores faith, religion, and death and
grieving, so the interviewer asked him about some of the influences in his
life. Martel mentioned that he has spent
a lot of time volunteering in a palliative care unit, which has brought some
things into focus for him.
That has a
ring of truth for me and I imagine for those of you who have spent time in
“walking people home.”
In her book
Accidental Saints, Nadia Bolz-Weber
reminds us that “until the late
nineteenth century, the front room in houses, called the parlor, was where one
would receive guests, but it was also where the bodies of the dead would be
laid out for visitation. People used to die at home, at which
point their loved ones would lovingly wash and prepare the body and lay it in
the parlor. Neighbors, friends, and
family would come to see the body and perhaps stroke the hair or kiss the
forehead of those who had gone to their rest.
Death was a part of life. The
advent of funeral parlors as businesses changed all that.[1]
Nadia tells
how she found herself doing a funeral, preaching about Jesus and suffering and
love, a few days before Ash Wednesday a few years ago, and then going to the
hospital on Ash Wednesday to visit new parents and their baby.
Nadia held
baby Willa in her arms and thanked God for brand new life. Then her parents asked for ashes. For them and for baby Willa. She pressed ever so gently into her
forehead, onto this brand new skin that had only been exposed to air for a few
precious hours and said that even she, full of beauty and hope and just hours
from her mother’s womb, even she will return—return to dust and the very heart
of God.
And then,
Nadia says, she knew. She knew more than
any other Ash Wednesday in her life, that the promises of baptism and funerals,
the promises of birth and death are so totally wrapped up together. For we come from God, and to God we shall
go. And that there is so much that gets
in the way of that simple truth. At
times like funerals, we’re more aware that all that other stuff doesn’t matter any
more.
Ash
Wednesday and Lent aren’t about punishing ourselves for being human. It’s about peeling away layers of insulation
and anesthesia that keep us from the truth of God’s promises. Lent is about looking at our lives in as
bright a light as possible—the light of Christ.
It is during this time of self-reflection and sacrificial giving and
prayer that we make our way through the over grown and tangled mess of our
lives. We let go of defending ourselves. We let go of our self-loathing. We cut through our arrogance and certainty
and cynicism and ambivalence.
What’s so
wonderful about Ash Wednesday and Lent is that through being marked with the
cross and reminded of our own mortality, we are free. We’re reminded that the God of our salvation,
the same God who created us from the very earth to which we will return delights in
the truth that you are God’s very own redeemed sinner, beloved, in all our
broken beauty.
So, as we
receive these ashes and hear the promise that you are dust and to dust you
shall return, know that it is the truth, and that the truth will set you free.
Thanks be
to God!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
March 1, 2017
[1]
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong
People. Convergent Books, 2015.
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