School of Theology, Ash Wednesday, 2003

“When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. . . .”

I. One of the short answer questions on the General Ordination Exams for the Episcopal Church in 2003 called for a response from a young person who wondered how the liturgical tradition of wearing ashes really fits with this gospel text. It’s a good question, and deserved more than a short answer, though a short and correct answer could be given. More on that later. But for now, How do today’s Ashes relate to today’s Gospel?

II. My own experience: I grew up in the Episcopal Church in a tradtionally “low church” diocese which certainly had no use for ashes on this day. I spent a year in England between high school and college, and in that year underwent my adolescent religion rebellion by becoming an Anglo-Catholic. Both at my school and especially, during Holy Week and Easter at the motherhouse of the Anglican Franciscans, I experienced the restored Lenten and Holy Week rites for the first time and fell in love with them. And fell flat into one of their traps. For many years I was guilty on Ash Wednesday of wearing my cross of ashes proudly, as a badge of honor saying to all “I’ve been to Church, have you?” It is still tempting to put a positive spin on this — think about the powerful witness of all of us going out into the community with our little ashy crosses visible, being very cool and saying nothing except when asked. But temptation it is. It is exactly what Jesus warns about in this gospel. It is for that reason that most churches of the Reformation abandoned the use of ashes on this day, and have only recently begun to bring the practice back. I approve of ashes on this day. Perhaps, as I said, too much. But what IS the relationship of these ashes to this Gospel?

III. All of which has led me to ask, what ARE we doing here anyway. What in heaven’s Name is Going On here today?

IV. Well, preacher, we are repenting of course. And a good thing that is, as the first of our scripture readings makes clear. But why now, why on this day? What are we really doing here, now? How does that help us understand repenting?

V. Well, as the preface to the ashing, which we shall hear in just a minute, makes clear, what we are doing is beginning the celebration of Easter. Note carefully. We are not getting ready to celebrate Easter; we are beginning the actual celebration. That’s what we are really doing. The rites, and perhaps Mardi Gras hangovers of today, and the forty days of fasting and discipline ahead of us may obscure that fact, but that is what we are doing: starting to celebrate Easter. The Lenten fast is not a general repentance; it is specifically spiritual preparation for celebrating the rites of Holy Week and ultimately of Easter; at the deepest level, it is the first of those rites.

VI. So, we are faced with two questions: Why begin a celebration with a fast, and what does the celebratory contextsay about our repenting?

VII. Why begin a celebration with a fast? Not because we fear God might not be merciful, but as Psalm 130 reminds us, because we know God is merciful, and we are afraid or in awe precisely for that reason: at verse 3: “For there is forgiveness with you; therefore you shall be feared.” Certainly we are here to repent, to clean up any messes prayer and discipline can help us notice and cope with. But not out of fear that mercy might not be found. Rather, in the fearful certainty that we shall find it, indeed, have already found it, have been found by it, and hence have been “found out” by it, found out by that dreadful mercy which will not leave us in peace with any joy less than complete.

VIII. This is the Easter context for repenting — so clear in the Epistle — we do not repent as those without hope. We do not repent as those who seek forgiveness, but as those who seek to be thankful for having been forgiven — at a terrible price and by an immense glory. We do not come before an angry, patriarchal God, begging for mercy, but stand in awe of a God whose very nature has been revealed to us as mercy and love as well as justice. It is not fear that should motivate our repentance, but love and gratitude that should motivate our fear. Because we have Easter to celebrate, we will begin the celebration by asking if we are leading our lives in loving and grateful response to cross and empty tomb, to the victory of God in Christ over sin, even my sins, your sins, our sins. Where I fall short, I will seek to ask for grace and discipline to make my behavior measure up to the love and gratitude I feel for the mighty acts we begin now to celebrate. I hope you will as well.

The place to start is with the bit left out of today’s Gospel, the middle of it, where Matthew places the teaching of the Lord’s prayer. In the middle of that prayer we find “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Does our knowledge of our own having been forgiven show itself in loving relationships with others in our lives, or are we harboring resentments and refusing to forgive others, thus receiving the grace of God in vain? I know well that forgiving can take a long time, and in many cases must not begin too soon. In the face of abuse or oppression, it must never include permission to inflict further trauma. But in the end, we must drink either from the cup of bitterness and resentment, or from the cup filled with the blood of Christ, poured out for us and for many for the forgiveness of sins. In the end, there is not room in our hearts for both; we must choose which cup to drink. In any case, Lent is not a time for sorrow and fear as such, but for asking if our lives are filled full enough of joy and gratitude, and for seeking to remove the obstacles to joy we come across in the light of this dreadful mercy which forgives even those we would rather not, and even sins of our own we would rather not be forgiven, or perhaps, even known.

IX. Of course, the ashes are appropriate “in house;” that powerful reminder of our mortality “to dust you shall return” is exactly the right way to begin the celebration of Easter, the mystery so well summed up in the other liturgical place for “to dust you shall return,” the Eastern Orthodox Kontakion for the dead, now part of our (Episcopal) funeral liturgy. You can find it on p. 499 of The Book of Common Prayer:

Give rest, O Christ, to your servant(s) with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All of us go down to the dust; [semi-colon] yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. And, why? Because as the Easter Kontakion puts it “Now is Christ Risen from the Dead, Trampling down Death by Death, and thus bestowing life on those in the tombs.”
What we live out in our fast is the mysterious space between the two parts of the Kontakion for the Dead, the space between “All we go down to the dust: ” and “even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia.” We spend forty days in the space of a breath, a mere semi-colon, not out of fear, but in joy, a joy to be even more fully expressed in the fifty days which follow. But the joy is already here and for now, in the very act of our repenting. That joy is the reason we fast and repent, the context in which we do it. That is the reason our best witness would not be going out of here with gloomy faces, saving the ashes as long as we can, hoping someone will be impressed with our piety. No, the best witness is faces awash in the Easter joy of the forgiven and the forgiving. So by all means receive the ashes and joyfully embrace our mortality. But as soon as you can, wash your face, anoint your head, and enjoy forty days of gratefully asking if you are doing all you can to let your life show the joy we shall celebrate together for the fifty days that follow, and for all eternity, from glory to glory. Repent as ones who embrace and love our nature as dust, yet even at the grave sing our common song, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.