Tag Archives: Ash Wednesday

Ashes in the Public Square: What do they mean?

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There’s a lively debate in Episco-land about the appropriateness of “Ashes to Go” an effort that began several years ago to bring the liturgy of Ash Wednesday into the streets. Here’s a press report from USA Today (last year).

Here are views from several priests. From Scott Gunn:

The world is more full of seekers and wanderers than it is of disciples. Our task, as Christians, is to share the Good News and preach a gospel of hope in a world without much real hope. If we limit ourselves to those who would cross our thresholds first, we will be limited indeed. The imposition of ashes is not a sacrament. One need not be baptized to receive them. And, it seems to me, the act of receiving an ashen cross and a reminder of one’s mortality is as good an invitation to repent as many will ever receive. That gray cross is a powerful sign, even when that’s all there is.

From Susan Brown Snook (she wants to take Easter to the streets, not Ash Wednesday):

But Ash Wednesday?  Surely there are more enlightening ways to touch people with God’s grace.  Leaving aside the facts Everett points out – that this quick “ashing” comes without repentance, and directly countermands what Jesus tells us to do in the Ash Wednesday gospel – that is, don’t wear your piety on your forehead for all to see and congratulate, but practice it quietly – there are other problems.  After all, what is the most immediate experience of getting “ashed”?  It is a reminder of our mortality:  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

In past years, I’ve written about my own experiences sharing ashes on the sidewalk as well as my ambivalence about doing so.

As I’ve continued to reflect on it as well as on the arguments pro and contra, I’ve come to think about another aspect of the rite, the imposition of ashes, and of carrying around that sign of the cross on one’s forehead all day.

The liturgy itself focuses on our individual piety: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” But immediately upon departing the church, especially if we receive the ashes in the morning or in the middle of the day, that smudge on the forehead becomes a very public display. The gospel of the day cautions us against displaying our piety in public but unless we immediately remove it, the ashes will linger as a reminder to all of what we have done this day. It is a public act and whatever its meaning for us, people who encounter us throughout the day will also attach meaning to it.

This is where it gets interesting, especially in our current American context. With the public face of Christianity so often shaped by people who preach messages of hate, exclusion, and who claim to know what is true and right both for themselves and for the world, people who engage in culture wars over things like “Merry Christmas,” what does it mean to enter the public square with an ashen cross on one’s forehead? That sign of humility and repentance, borne in silence, can offer a powerful counter testimony to the loud and shrill voices of conservative Christianity. What might it convey to passers-by who struggle to make sense of their lives and are struggling to make ends meet? How might the sign of the cross help us bear our public Christian witness with humility, and grace, and repentance?

Even more, while the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, and certainly popular understanding of it, may tend to focus on individual acts of repentance, there is also in the liturgy a powerful communal aspect. The lesson from Joel emphasizes communal repentance: “Call a solemn assembly, gather the people.” My understanding of Ash Wednesday has been re-shaped by my experience observing it in the midst of Wisconsin’s protests two years ago.

There was a time when American civil religion involved public repentance–presidents, governors, legislatures would proclaim a day of prayer and fasting. No longer. If they do it today, they are likely ridiculed. As a society, we have lost the ability to repent. We lack appropriate rituals, even language for it. Public repentance is left to politicians or celebrities who have been caught doing something wrong, and for which they will publicly state, “I take full responsibility.,” and go about their merry way. The sinful acts we commit as a society, as a human race, go un-noticed and unconfessed. The very public act of bringing ashes out on to the street can be a prophetic act–a reminder to all those who pass by as they go about their daily business that there is a higher calling, a higher claim to our allegiance than the gods of money and power. It can be a call to our cities and our nation to repent of the sin and violence that occur in our midst and that we commit.

I think there may be no better message that we could proclaim in the public square, in 2013, than an invitation to a holy Lent, a call to repentance, and a reminder that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”

 

 

Contentious rituals, contentious ashes–seeking meaning in a secular world

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I’ve been reflecting on Ash Wednesday–my own experience of it as well as its place in American culture the past couple of days. I’ve especially been intrigued by the growing popularity of “ashes to go” as well as the pushback. This movement has generated considerable publicity, both in traditional media and onlne and it has given rise to some interesting thinking about Ash Wednesday’s significance in post-christian culture.

I’ll dust off my former “religious studies scholar hat” for a moment or two. The power and meaning of rituals are much debated, both within and between religious communities, and among scholars of religion. In the west, in contemporary American Christianity, there are relatively few rituals that use real matter as powerfully and dramatically as Ash Wednesday. Think about it. The water of baptism leaves no physical mark after one has dried off; the bread and wine of the Eucharist are often reduced to faint imitations of real bread and wine. Even burials are rarely accompanied by the sight of real dirt (astroturf covers the open grave and if dirt is needed to sprinkle while saying “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the funeral director provides a small vial of sand).

Ashes are real. Of course one can buy them from religious supply houses but most of us like to go the whole nine yards, burning last year’s palms and grinding them up. Ashes are messy. I have yet to figure out how not to leave a trail of them throughout the church and as often as not, while distributing them, a few will fall on the nose or cheek of the people.

We rarely touch ashes or find them on our bodies, except on Ash Wednesday, or if we are in the midst of cleaning out a fireplace. Ashes are dirt; they are evidence of disorder and destruction and have no place in our daily life. Certainly they do not belong on our foreheads, or in a church. But there they are.

There is a deep anti-ritualism in Protestant Christianity that has extended itself to mainstream American culture. It’s only a ritual, we say; or that’s empty ritual. At the same time, there is a deep yearning for meaning, for authenticity, and for connection. Ash Wednesday offers all of those things. What is more real, more authentic than the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”? What deeper connection is made between the one who says those words and distributes the ashes, and the one who receives them? It may be a momentary connection, no more lasting than the touch of a thumb on a forehead and a shared glance, but in that moment there is connection, between priest and people, in an individual (their past, present, and future) and with an individual and their God, Creator and Redeemer.

Nothing about Ash Wednesday has surprised me more than the demographics at our services. There was a higher percentage of students and young adults at all of our services on Wednesday than there are on Sunday mornings. Clearly, the ritual of Ash Wednesday resonates.

There is a great deal of discussion about young adults and religion. Are they losing their religion? Are they disconnected and flying solo? How can we reach out and share the good news of Jesus Christ in this post-Christian world where people are seeking meaning and connection?

I think an answer might be here, in Ash Wednesday. To offer rituals, worship that are deeply authentic and connecting, not just with God, with other humans, or with our own emotions. To offer rituals that are authentic and connect us with the real–like ashes–that connect us with our humanity, our deepest selves, and show us that at our deepest selves is the desire and love of God, such rituals, whether performed in a a traditional space like a church, on a streetcorner or a subway stop, such rituals can offer hope, direction and grace, for broken people in a broken world.

More importantly, we can’t know what effect our actions might have on those we touch, we cannot know how God might be at work, whether those actions take place at an altar rail, or at a bus stop. Those effects are in God’s hands, in God’s grace, something for which I am endlessly grateful to the God I love and serve.

Ash Wednesday 2012: Ashes to Go? or Ashes to Stay?

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Last year, I stood outside the doors of Grace Church before Ash Wednesday services to offer ashes to passers-by. I wasn’t self-consciously participating in “Ashes to Go.” Rather, I did it because it was another way I saw of reaching out to our community during the protests and political upheaval.

This year, as more jumped on the bandwagon and the practice received considerable publicity, I pondered my own participation and decided in the end against. My reasons paralleled those of Tim Schenck. In addition, Grace is situated such that passersby could easily come in for the service–office workers or students headed to lunch, for example. Today was a nice day and as is my custom I stood on sidewalk before the service in my vestments, greeting people as they came to church and greeting passers-by as well.

As I stood there, I was greeted by a man who asked me if I had ashes. He had been among those who received them from me last year and was hoping to receive them again. He was very disappointed. We chatted for a few minutes and he stopped inside the church to pray, although he couldn’t stay for the service.

It was a powerful encounter for me, a reminder that the assumptions we make about the effects of our actions, liturgical or not, are unpredictable. We all know that sermons we struggle over and think are awful are often experienced as transforming; we know that pastoral encounters we wish we could have done over sometimes are healing moments. We know that even the liturgies that we botch can be channels of God’s grace. There were people in both of our services today (so far) that I’ve never seen before, and probably will never see again. How different is that from an encounter with a passer-by, a brief prayer, an ashed thumb-print cross, and the words “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” God can use that, even that as a channel of grace, and who am I to prevent it?

So next year, I’ll be on the street corner again, offering ashes to go. I won’t be participating in the hype, however.

Ash Wednesday: The Changing Drama of a day

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Earlier, I posted a photo showing what the Capitol looked like at 6:45 this morning. We received an unexpected snowfall. I wasn’t sure at 6:55 that anyone would make it to our 7:00 service, but a few hardy souls arrived. The beauty and silence of our surroundings made our worship meaningful, allowing us to reflect on the day, our human nature, and the God who created us. I had prepared a homily, but instead of preaching it, I reflected on our human nature, laid bare for us in the ashes of Ash Wednesday, and in the love of the God who created us.

What a difference eleven hours makes. It was obvious from the noise outside that as we prepared for our 6:00 pm service, things were heating up. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hoped to use the Joel reading to think about the  significance of social and communal sin.

I’m not sure it worked, but the incongruity of it all struck home after the exhortation (“An Invitation to a Holy Lent”). There is an instruction in the prayer book for silence following the exhortation and before the imposition of ashes. We kept the rubric, but there was no silence. We could hear the chants from the capitol, but even more distracting were the horns of passing cars.

We could still hear the chants and the horns as we began the Litany and prayed:

We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord.

We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us,
We confess to you, Lord.

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us;
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,
That we may show forth your glory in the world.

By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,
Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.

To put the debates over the budget and collective bargaining in the context of Ash Wednesday and Lent is no easy thing but knowing what is occurring outside our walls as we pray meant we were praying not only for ourselves but for our whole state.

The past weeks have been interesting, challenging, and incredibly stressful. Lent brings with it its own intensity. Given what happened tonight at the Capitol, the task of reconciliation will become even more difficult; our task as Christians, to respect the dignity of every human person, to love our neighbor as ourself (and our enemy as well), and in the midst of the cacophony, to trust in a God who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Sanctify a Fast: A Homily for Ash Wednesday, 2011

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March 9, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church

When I was a grad student at Harvard, one of my work-study jobs was helping to catalog a vast collection of what librarians and archivists call ephemera. In this case, it was material related to the history of religion in America in the first half of 19th century. Almost all of it was from New England, and in keeping with the historical roots of Harvard Divinity School, almost all of it was related to Unitarianism or Universalism. Continue reading →

Ash Wednesday on Capitol Square

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Here’s what the Capitol looked like from Grace this morning:


Quiet and beautiful.

It’s hard not to think about the protests when preparing for Ash Wednesday and Lent, particularly when dealing with a text like Joel 2. I attempted in my homily to make a connection between the communal repentance advocated in Joel and our usual focus, on Ash Wednesday and Lent, on personal repentance. I’m not sure whether I pulled it off, but I’ll post the homily in any case, in a few minutes.

I spent some time before the 12:10 service offering ashes to passers-by. A couple of protesters saw me from across the street and ran over. They were clearly from out of town, for one said, “I hoped somebody would be doing this.” There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic on the square, the weather probably kept people inside today but my little gesture of bringing the ashes out onto the street met with smiles, laughter, and acceptance. A number of people thanked me, and as one woman passed by, I heard her say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot it was Ash Wednesday.” I hope my presence there didn’t make her feel guilty.