Ash Wednesday

I love Steve Earle's take on the words of Ash Wednesday: ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

So as Ash Wednesday unfolds here in the Berkshires the Sanctuary is prepared - communion bread is ready and the candles are set - all that's needed is a little olive oil in the ashes and we're ready for 7:30 pm worship. I like the way Gertrud Mueller-Nelson speaks of this observance:

Thinking about Lent is not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I rather hate it. Every year, when the subject comes up, I see myself resist. I can think about Advent, about expectancy. It holds some concerns, but to be impregnated with new life is a rather hopeful subject. During Advent we rejoice as we open ourselves to the mysteries of the marriage of heaven to earth. But in Lent we come to know that the only way to our own healing and wholeness comes paradoxically through dismembering - and appallingly painful process which life offers us, ready or not, and which Lent give us the form and meaning for. "They have piece3d my hands and my feet and have numbered all my bones.

It is a very old tradition of God's to pick his inept, reluctant, non-eloquent types to carry the message of change and atonement. Worse yet,peddling penance is unpopular. It doesn't sell. That makes anyone trying to carry his message home a candidate for painful ineptitude.

The good news about doing Ash Wednesday amidst New England congregationalists is that it is all essentially new territory for us. To be sure, we've seen our Catholic and Episcopal neighbors with their ashes marked by the sign of the cross, but in 246 years, our congregation has only observed Ash Wednesday twice - both on my watch - and this year will be round three. So there is a freshness in reclaiming this ancient ritual designed to help us practice dying to self so that the true self might grow stronger. I am intellectually and emotionally ready for the fast to begin but as is so often true for me: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And so we pray:

All Loving God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.