Must be More : Ash Wednesday

The first day of the season of Lent, Ash Wednesday (coming from the ancient practice of placing ashes on worshipper's heads as a sign of humility) holds a vital reminder that I have previously written off as, well...depressing.  


This is it:  You, me, from the kings of the world to our chubby cheeked children... all are dust, and to dust we will return.


In the early years of the church, Lent was only a forty-hour fast, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, fasting the time that Jesus was in the grave.  Eventually, it become a forty day stretch (not counting Sundays which are feast days).  It no longer was just an expression of sorrow over Christ's death, but instead an expression of sorrow over what CAUSED His death: my sin.

In the early church, ashes were only used to mark the foreheads of those who had made a public confession of sin and sought to be restored into the fellowship of the church.  But, over the years others began to desire to show their humility and identification as a sinner by being marked, as well.  

Why is it so important to dwell on being dust?  On being sinners?


Because the whole season of Lent is compressed in these: The painful reminder of our mortality, the sadness that comes from the reality of having to let go of all we hold dear, and the agonizing proclamation of Jesus' death on our behalf, thus the hope of resurrection. 


Here's what Kimberlee Conway Ireton believes (The Circle of Seasons), and I believe she is right:  "The hope of resurrection is not yet realized.  Lent has now begun, and I need--we all need--to live in this space, the dark place between the ashes and the bread and cup, between the declaration of our mortality and the declaration of Christ's redeeming work on our behalf.


"That is what Lent is--a time to reckon with the reality of darkness and death.  We do so with hope, because this season of darkness ends in Easter, in resurrection, in new life.  But we can be raised to a new life only if we have first died to the old one.  THAT is the challenge--and the gift--of Lent."


Ash Wednesday not only prefigures the mourning at the death of Jesus, but also places us in a position to realize the consequences of sin.  It is a somber day of reflection on what needs to change in our lives if we have fully died to ourselves, and are to be fully alive in Him.  


It is fitting that Lent begins with a soot cross marked on our foreheads because from it's earliest, Lent has been a season of dying, of giving up, of clearing out, of emptying...


Not emptying for the sake of emptiness, but so God can fill us with Himself.


Tomorrow...the journey of Lent, and then, what Lent is shaping up to be around here.