We have come down from the mountaintop. On Sunday, we experienced Christ’s Transfiguration, saw him through the eyes of his disciples, unveiled in glory, his face shining like the sun, even as his friends have just learned that he will go to Jerusalem soon and he will be arrested and killed there.
Last night, many of us celebrated our last hurrah before these 40 days in the wilderness of Lent, eating pancakes, wearing masks and costumes and beads, and dancing to jazz. Then we stepped out into the chilly evening air, onto the labyrinth, and burned palms for ashes, one liturgy creating the material for the next.
Today, we leave the celebrating behind, and we take on the ashes. Today, we bow our heads. Today, we face our sinfulness. Today, we face our mortality. Today, we listen to the rain on the roof of the church and the tolling of the bells. Today, we remember that we are not forever on this earth. We are dust, and to dust we shall return.
The first time I preached on Ash Wednesday, a few years ago in Roanoke, I was doing some digging online, as you do, and came across poet, artist and ordained Methodist minister Jan Richardson for the first time. She writes[1]:
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…
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
While today’s Ash Wednesday liturgy reminds us, over and over, that we are dust, it is not a liturgy simply about death or endings. Ash Wednesday is a liturgy about returning to God, returning to ourselves, about understanding where we fall short because we are human beings – mortal and imperfect, about preparing ourselves for the difficult and life-saving journey that we are about to step into.
Ash Wednesday is really, in many ways, a liturgy about beginnings.
What can the Holy One do with dust?
When we come down from the mountaintop and prepare for the wilderness, we enter a liminal space, a sort of time in between. These in-between places are holy, profound. They give us time to reset, to slow ourselves down, to set intentions for the journey to come, to ask ourselves, How do we carry today’s ashes into Lent?
What can the Holy One do with dust?
In a few minutes we will hear the words inviting us into a holy Lent – an invitation to observe this season in “self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” You may already have set some intentions for these 40 days and nights, chosen a daily devotional to read, or some other practice that nourishes the mind, heart, and body. Maybe it’s walking or swimming or eating more nutritiously, keeping a journal, reading the daily offices, setting aside time for silence and prayer. These are good ways to spend the journey.
Today’s scripture readings also remind us that our Lenten practices of prayer and meditation and exercise are meaningless if we forget that we travel Lent together, that we share the road with all whom God has made and whom God loves, and that our work of penitence and fasting and prayer is not just about ourselves.
The prophet Isaiah reminded the powerful of his time: “You serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers… You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.”
Practicing the gestures of faith does nothing if we do not practice the spirit of faith.
Seven hundred years later, Jesus warns his followers, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” He goes even further when he says to pray and give alms and fast in secret, which seems like a mixed message when we walk out of the church and into the world with ashes on our foreheads.
But Jesus is reminding them, and us, of the teachings of the prophets. The most beautiful liturgy, the most eloquent prayers, the most sacrificial Lenten practice, is a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal – it is nothing – if it does not include an active, giving, sacrificial love for those who travel the road with us.
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?”
What can the Holy One do with dust? How do we carry our ashes into the world? How can these teachings from two thousand years ago shape our Lenten journey today?
Is the focus of Lent on giving up things, or in giving away?
Is Lent about giving up the comfort of social media and our favorite foods, or is it about giving up the comfort of our own views of the world, the comfort of not taking risks, the comfort of inaction?
Let these ashes be a reminder of our mortality, a reminder that we return to the dust, yes; but let them also be a reminder that we are not alone in our dying and in our living. Let them shape our worship, our meditations, our prayers, and our journey together in the world, doing Christ’s work in the world, knowing that after the wilderness, resurrection, light, and life are the true end of the journey.
Amen.
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Readings: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
[1] paintedprayerbook.com/2013/02/08/ash-wednesday-blessing-the-dusthttps://paintedprayerbook.com/2013/02/08/ash-wednesday-blessing-the-dust
