ash-wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

What you think about Lent has everything to do with what you think about God. For me, Lent is a reset button, but because I believe that the most important thing about God is that God loves the whole world unconditionally, that reset button isn’t like a switch that turns me into someone who, during Lent, believes God thinks we’re all miserable sinners. Lent is associated with penitence; penitence is regret or sorrow for something you’ve done. There are times when penitence is not only reasonable but appropriate, but setting aside a whole season for regret and sorrow seems a little excessive.

I like the word repentance better than penitence because it’s less about feeling guilty or ashamed, and more about deciding to turn around and go in a different direction. Depending on what your life looks like, maybe it isn’t so much of an about face as it is a course correction, maybe even a subtle one. We all tend to drift. We adopt good habits and they slowly fall by the wayside. This doesn’t make us bad people; as far as I can tell it just makes us people. Still, we know there are ways of being in the world that are better for us and better for God’s world. Lent is a good season for getting ourselves back on track.

“On track with what?” might be the next logical question. Matthew tells us God doesn’t want shows of piety. Joel tells us we are to rend our hearts, to break open our hearts, not our clothing. Isn’t that the perfect way to describe loving the world the way Jesus loved it? Break open your hearts. Break open your hearts to each other, to the stranger, to the suffering in God’s world, to the healing God offers, to hope and possibility, and especially, to the hope of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

In this angry, polarized, us-against-them world, that kind of love, vulnerable love, feels especially risky. It is risky. There are no guarantees of a result that anyone would call success. And so loving as Jesus loved takes courage. As Brené Brown reminds us, courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor, the Latin word for heart.

The willingness to show up with love in this world, in 2025, takes courage. Showing up with love changes us. It makes us a little braver each time we do it. And it changes those around us. Maybe even the world. And some things are worth doing, even if we fail.

Jan Richardson’s poem, “Rend Your Heart,” is the perfect Ash Wednesday invitation to Lent:

To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.

Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.

It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.

And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you

to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.

It’s Ash Wednesday evening, and you have attended an Ash Wednesday church service. Or maybe you’ve taken advantage of “Ashes on the Go” at the El Cerrito del Norte BART station, where I’ll be joining clergy colleagues this coming Ash Wednesday. You have a black smudge of ashes on your face. What do you say if someone tells you that you have something on your forehead?

In Scripture, ashes are a sign of mourning. Resurrection to new life, which we celebrate at Easter, is always preceded by death to the old life, and even if the promise of resurrection is the life you’ve always wanted, a whole-hearted life, life in the kingdom of God, any little change is a little death; any little death of ego; any little dying to thinking things are black and white is a little death. An even bigger change feels like an even bigger death. The ashes acknowledge the grief that goes with these deaths. So, you might say, “The cross of ashes reminds us that there are things we have to die to in order to live whole-heartedly. The ashes tell us that every little death brings grief.”

But in addition to announcing grief, those ashes proclaim resurrection. Astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” Joni Mitchell put it more poetically in her song covered by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young: “We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.” It is an act of resurrection to become aware that we are all connected, that we are all in this together, and that today, in our world, this connection is more important than being “right,” maybe more important than anything else. So, if someone asks you what’s on your forehead, you might say, “Stardust. Billion-year-old carbon. What’s on my forehead is my connection to the past, present and future of humanity and of the other approximately 8 and a half million species on this blue-green planet that God gave us as our home. What’s on my forehead reminds me that we are part of everything, and everything is a part of us, and that there are ways that we can celebrate that and embrace that and be open to that rather than deny it.”

When I make the mark of a cross in ashes on someone’s forehead, I say, “You are stardust, and to stardust you will return.”

Ashes on the Go is returning to Del Norte BART in El Cerrito on Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024. Come receive this blessing from local clergy, 4:30-6:00pm. All are welcome!

Solvitur Ambulando

Putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith

Ash Wednesday 2025

You Have Something on Your Forehead