Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - Ash Wednesday

“I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” (Job 42:6, New Living Translation) 

[Before I begin, everything which I said last week about anticipating a new grandchild in September now goes double.  Our daughter Katie and her husband Gary are also expecting in September. The more, the merrier!]

                Smudges!

                I don’t know about your childhood but I can remember my mother taking out a Kleenex from her purse, wetting it in her mouth with spit and giving me a spit-wash because there was a smudge on my face. It was yucky then and seems as much so today as I recall it.  But heaven forbid if I were to go into church with a smudge on my face – what would people think?

                Yet today, with it being Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, many a person will be leaving their churches with smudges on their foreheads. It is a symbolic action indicating one’s repentance and the beginning of spiritual preparation for Good Friday and then Easter or Resurrection Sunday. It may be accompanied by a day of fasting and prayer.  Some people will give something up for Lent – another symbolic gesture of self-sacrifice as one walks with Christ towards his Cross and the ensuing and unique gift of New Life and New Hope for all of us.

                What will people think if they see a person with a smudge on their foreheads today? I doubt that many will connect a little dirty smudge with faith or spirituality. This isn’t a part of my Baptist tradition but I have used ashes in many an Ash Wednesday service. For example, I have had people write down on slips of paper some hurt, grudge, personal problem, habit or sin which they would like to put away from themselves. Then we have burned those slips of paper with prayers of confession, along with prayers asking for forgiveness, and asking for God’s assistance for the future.  These actions can be very cathartic and liberating. They represent the “taking back” the things that smudge up our lives.

                Ashes are treated very carefully and respectfully in the Jewish rituals and ceremonies of sacrifice in the Old Testament. They are not just tossed to the side of the road and trampled upon and soon forgotten. The refuse of burnt offerings, the unseemly left-overs so to speak, need to be handled with utmost care and deposited in a special spot reserved just for this use, often near the altar. There were special ash buckets or pots used for the ashes’ removal. The priests had to change garments both before and after handling the ashes. In one instance a special purple cloth must cover those ashes. (Interestingly, purple is the liturgical colour of Lent.)

                At the beginning of the book of Job, our tragic hero sits on an ash-heap, ticked off at God and the world, facing his misery and torment with nothing like the patience of Job. From the ashes of his life he demands a trial or fair hearing in which God must state his case against Job and justify the reasons for Job’s pain and suffering. Job is a proud man and believes that he has done nothing to deserve such treatment. But out of his ashes Job never denies God nor abandon his faith. In the midst of his ashen protests he defiantly and faithfully speaks some of the most beautiful words in scripture, “For I know that my redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth and after my skin has been thus destroyed then in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25, New Revised Standard Version)

                In the end he is still sitting on his ash heap but he recognizes that the ashes represent his repentance and he discovers a new-found reverence and need for this great big God in his life. He doesn’t get an easy, simple or perfect answer to all his questions but he gets all the answer he really ever needs.  Job gets a new beginning and a fresh start.  This is what repentance is all about.

God is not giving away spit-washes. We need to take our ashes seriously and bring them back to the altar of God’s Love, Grace and Mercy.  His loving action as in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is a fully deep and thorough cleansing of our hearts, souls and spirits, as in the words of the Psalm, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:7, NLT) 

Dale