Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

3/5/2003

The Rev. Valerie A. Hart

St. Alban's, Brentwood, CA

I remember the first time I had the opportunity to be the celebrant at the Ash Wednesday service during the first year that I served here at St. Alban's. I remember how incredibly powerful it was to place the ashes on each person’s forehead while repeating “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Over and over I said those words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” With each repetition it moved deeper into my heart and my soul. The old stalwart of the community, whom I had grown to respect and love, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The vital and very alive young mother, who had become my friend, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And hardest of all was when I came to a young child, three or four years old, looking up at me with the eager expectancy of childhood. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Each of these people whom I had come to love and deeply care about I was reminded were but dust and ashes. At this service, with those words, we are all reminded that we are already dust, reminded that this physical body that we hold so dear, and the physical bodies of those we love, came from dust and will become but dust and ashes.

Before this past summer I had never seen gangrene. My father-in-law, who has diabetes and circulation problems, developed an infection on his toe. An innocent beginning, an ingrown toenail that had been trimmed by a podiatrist, but it never fully healed because of the lack of good circulation to his foot. Once it became infected, even with the best of modern medicine, it would not heal. Without blood flowing to the toe there were no resources with which to fight the infection. A black spot developed and began to grow. Soon the entire toe was black. Gangrene is horrible to look at, for the infected part quite literally dies. The toe became shriveled and black. It was like a corpse with a unique odor, and it was excruciatingly painful. The only treatment was amputation. To see what a toe looks like when life-giving blood is no longer flowing through it was for me a vivid reminder that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

This community has known a lot of grief this year. We have watched parents, siblings, and dear friends die. We have lost jobs, financial resources have shriveled, dreams have been crushed, and relationships have been shattered. We have known what it means to feel things turn to dust in our hands. We have been painfully reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Throughout the Bible images of dust and ashes reoccur. Adam is formed from the dust of the ground, and Abraham refers to himself as but dust and ashes. When Tamar has been raped by her brother she put ashes on her head and tore her robe as a sign of grief. Mordecai, upon learning of plans for the destruction of his people, puts on sackcloth and ashes. Job, that one who knew unbearable grief in the loss of all of his children and all of his material possession and finally his health, sat among the ashes. The psalmist, in psalm 102 writes “For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink.” Jesus uses the image saying  "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

And so today, we take ashes and put them on our foreheads and are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, the first step on our journey to Easter. Why, you might ask, do we remind ourselves of our own mortality on this day? In fact you might wonder why anyone would ever want to remind themselves of their own mortality. What could be the advantage of thinking about our own and our loved ones deaths?

There is something incredibly powerful about confronting death. Human beings have a tendency to live in fear, and the foundation of all the fears in our lives is the fear of death. There are many kinds of death, the death of this mortal body being the most obvious. But there are many little deaths in our lives. Any time we are confronted by the impermanence of the things of this world we experience a little death. When our pride is hurt, when someone we trusted lets us down, when we can’t have what we want, when we lose what we do have, all of these are kinds of death. And we don’t like it. These experiences are painful. We want to shield ourselves from experiencing this pain, and so, over time, we create a cocoon around ourselves. Bit by bit we weave a self-protective coating, a veil that shields us from truly feeling the pain in our lives.

Each person’s is unique, but you can recognize it easily. It is the false pride and bravado that keeps us from feeling the discomfort of not being the best. It is the anger we use to keep love away. It is the disinterest that keeps us from disappointment. It is the addictions that numb the pain through drugs or alcohol. It is the busyness that keeps us from stopping to really feel.

Over the years we create this cocoon, and it helps to keep the pain away, but it also numbs us to the joy and isolates us from love. If we build a shield to keep the pain out, we have also built a shield to keep the joy out. We may feel safe from the pain of experiencing the transitory nature of life on this earth, but it comes at the cost of being kept from experiencing the blessed and transcendent joy of life.

But there are moments when this cocoon is rent. Times when our best defenses are breached. Such is the grace that can come with grief. Grief sometimes comes upon us with such intensity that we can no longer hold onto the presumption of being in control. Deep loss tears away the levels of protection and leaves us stripped, emotionally naked, and feeling deeply. If we have the courage to be with that grief, to let ourselves experience the pain, we discover that we are more alive. It sounds odd, but many people who experience intense grief also describe moments of intense joy. After a deep and cathartic night of tears, the morning may bring a dawn more beautiful then you ever remembered.

The same is true of experiencing and acknowledging our own mortality. After my brain surgery, where I had consciously confronted the possibility of my own death, on the way home from the hospital the colors of the trees were a multitude of vibrant greens, the blue of the sky was iridescent, and the touch of my children was an unspeakable delight.

When that cocoon we develop to avoid the fear of death is stripped away we come to experience the world more directly. Our hearts are freer to receive the love of God that always surrounds us, and we also more clearly see the ways in which we have not lived our lives in harmony with that love.

Our attempts to protect ourselves from pain often end up inflicting pain upon others. It is impossible to truly love others and remain safe, for love always involves a reckless abandonment of oneself. And so, our fear of death, our attempts to be safe, interfere with our ability to love God and to love others. And that is the foundation of all sin.

Lent is a preparation for Easter, a preparation to receive the gift of the resurrection. One cannot acknowledge resurrection without acknowledging death. We cannot know the light of Easter without walking through the shadows of Good Friday. We cannot know love, without risking everything. We cannot know the freedom of forgiveness without acknowledging our sinfulness. We cannot be free to love and forgive without acknowledging the pain we have experienced.

Paul states in the reading today “We are treated as…..dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

Lent is a time to acknowledge our nothingness so that we may receive everything. Lent is a time to acknowledge our sinfulness so that we may know we are forgiven. Lent is a time to know our dying so that we may live the resurrection.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”