Ash Wednesday

 A Sign of Failure and of Hope

Our parish is a wonderfully humble group of older Catholics who worship in a small, rented space from the Synod campus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Unfortunately, the Lutheran home parish, The First Lutheran Church of Glendale, no longer exists and the campus has become home to three very different Christian denominations: ourselves (Old Catholics), an evangelical Armenian congregation, and a congregation of Calvary Chapel folks. All of us rent and must seek permission to extend our activities on campus such as the temporary use of a classroom, or any space outside our lease agreement. It gives the whole thing a very tentative feel, a feel of not really having a home.

I think this fits well with our Lenten season that begins today, Ash Wednesday. While our folks come to Mass this morning, outside on the curb a Lutheran deacon (from the Syod office) will be offering “Ashes to Go” so folks can receive ashes without having to leave their car as they pull up along the curb in front of the church. Of course, our sign will also announce our Ash Wednesday Mass at the same time and the Synod plant manager was concerned that this will cause hard feelings on our part that our “competition” will be luring people away from Mass with the option of getting an Ash Wednesday marking on the forehead without having to attend Mass.

Is there anything wrong with skipping Mass and receiving “Ashes to Go”? Isn’t it a bit like wearing an “I Voted!” sticker without having voted? Well, no. What does the sign of the ash on the forehead symbolize? Does it symbolize having attended Mass and, perhaps, endured the homily (the ashes are distributed after the homily)?  The ashes are a reminder of one’s mortality and a sign that part of our mortality is that we are deeply in need of God’s grace. In today’s Mass there is no Penitential Act, or so it seems. Instead, the confession of sins and absolution are replaced with the imposition of ashes. The ashes are an outward marking of our public declaration of our humanity in all its spiritual frailty and need for forgiveness. While we declare very publically of our need for God’s grace with the ashen cross on our forehead, we privately enter a season where the discipline of our will towards fasting and abstinence will either convict us of our spiritual slackness or challenge us with being spiritually prideful in fulfilling the discipline of Lent. If we take this season seriously, we will face many challenges and likely fail. Maybe, instead of a cross on the forehead, we should stamp in big, bold letters of indelible ink that can’t be washed off until Easter: FAIL.

You may be feeling that I’m being a bit woefully dramatic and self-loathing. I suppose I would be without one thing: the ending of this season.  The ashes, Stations of the Cross, fasting and abstinence, and Lent's other disciplines and traditions are signs. These signs point us not towards despair when understood correctly, but towards joy; the end of Lent is our destination: Easter! Our humanity seemingly resigned to “unto dust you shall return” is more of a cautionary reminder to not abandon the hope of faith Lent is all about. Our destiny isn’t a return to dust, but we must become dust before we can be resurrected. We must be reminded that without Christ, all we are is dust; but with Christ, dust is simply a waypoint on our human journey to the Divine. Our Creed tells us as much: “We believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in the life everlasting,” but it does not tell us we won't die.

So, if you can’t spare the time for Mass today, but have to get your ashes fast-food style, then do it. And let the lack of time you have to attend Mass remind you of what we all experience: the imperfection of so many of our attempts to order our lives to fit an ideal. But let it also remind us of the willingness to wear our imperfections for a time as ash on our foreheads to remind the world not of our holiness, but of our need and our hope of resurrection. Tell others this when they ask you what is on your forehead.