"The Sign of the Ashes" (Sermon for Ash Wednesday)

Today we begin the season of Lent, forty days, not counting the Sundays--forty days of preparation leading up to Easter. The word “Lent” is related to our word, “length.” This is a time of year when the days are getting longer; the length of daylight is increasing day by day. Just as nature moves from the deadness of winter to the new life of spring, so in the church we mirror that movement from death to life. The solemn season of Lent leads to the joy and vitality of Easter.

Lent is the time of preparation for Easter--penitential preparation. The whole season is a time for penitence. That’s why the liturgical color for Lent is purple, which stands for penitence. And within the forty days of Lent, if there is one day that emphasizes penitence more than any other--the one day in the whole year that is the most penitential--it is today. This first day of Lent is called, “Ash Wednesday.” For many centuries in the Christian church, Ash Wednesday has been observed as a solemn day of penitence. Mourning one’s sinfulness, recognizing one’s mortality, seeking God’s forgiveness and life--these are the themes of this day. Many Christians choose to fast on Ash Wednesday. On this day it is also fitting for Christians to see their pastor to make Private Confession and receive Holy Absolution.

Now the term “Ash” Wednesday comes from the traditional practice of placing ashes upon the forehead. As you’ve seen tonight, the minister applies the ashes in the form of a cross and speaks the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” What I want to tell you now is why this little custom of the ashes is such a fitting symbol for penitence; and how the kind of penitence shown forth by the sign of the ashes is important not only on Ash Wednesday but also during the entire season of Lent--indeed, all year long and the whole rest of our lives.

Ashes speak of death. Deterioration, decomposition, has to take place in order for there to be ashes. The life and the form that had been there now has been reduced to ashes. You start out with a big pile of palm branches--and they had been even bigger when they were fresh at Palm Sunday last year. Then you strip the leaves off the branches and tear them up into smaller pieces. You put the pieces into a can and burn them down. Then the ashes are put through a sieve and turned into fine dust. All you’re left with is a small amount that can fit into a dish. Ashes speak of death.

This is a picture in a powerful way of what happens to us. You and I are headed for death and decay. Our lives, our bodies, will be reduced to dust and ashes. Usually when I conduct a burial service, at the committal at graveside, I take a handful of dirt and toss it on the casket and say the familiar words, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” One day these words will be spoken over each one of us. We are all, every one of us, headed to the grave. The ashes, then--the dust is a sign of our mortality, of our own approaching and inevitable death.

John Donne was an Anglican minister of the 17th century. Once he preached: “The dust of great persons’ graves is speechless; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not look upon will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it thither. And when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again and to pronounce, ‘This is the patrician, this is the noble flour, this the yeomanly, this the plebeian bran’?”

Death is the great equalizer. And the dust of death has been with us ever since our first parents. The curse was placed on Adam, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The psalmist acknowledges the death sentence that God places upon us: “You return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’” Or to put it another way, in the words of the song, “All we are is dust in the wind.”

So this imposition of ashes tonight shows us our common mortality. And our mortality--the fact that we all die--shows our common sinfulness. Sin and death go together. Adam sinned; that’s why he was cursed with death. All of us sons of Adam--we all are sinners. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s why we die. “The wages of sin is death.”

As sinners facing death, what shall we do? In a word: Repent. We must put ashes on our heart and not just on our forehead. Penitence is saying to God, as David did when he repented of his sin, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Penitence is saying to God, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The mood of Ash Wednesday is solemn and penitential. At the same time, though, the joy of the gospel comes through. Even the custom of the ashes shows this forth. For the ashes are made by burning the processional palms from lat year’s Palm Sunday. So we’re reminded of what happened on Palm Sunday and that this Lenten season is leading us there. Christ Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He went there to die on the cross for us. On Good Friday, the sinless Son of God bore in his body our sin and our death. Thus he won forgiveness for all our sins. The result, as Easter shows, is life in place of death. And so the ashes, made from the palms of Palm Sunday, are applied in the form of the cross. “For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

As the custom of the ashes indicates, Christians are marked with the sign of the cross. But this is not the first time that has happened to you. In Holy Baptism, you received the sign of the holy cross upon your forehead “to mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.” This ashen cross, then, proclaims not only your mortality but also your Savior--Jesus, who conquered sin and death for you and unites you to himself in baptism. In baptism you were buried with Christ and raised with him to newness of life.

The benefits of Christ’s victory have been applied to us individually in Holy Baptism, when the holy cross first was placed upon our forehead, marking us as ones redeemed by Christ the crucified. And so now Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our baptism, of the complete cleansing from sin that is ours in Christ.

The ashes show our mortality. We die because we are sinners--but with one crucial difference: We are forgiven sinners. The ashes are applied in the shape of a cross. Although we are sons of Adam, sinners returning to the dust--nevertheless, in Christ, our Savior from sin, we shall live! The psalmist says of the Lord, “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” And Isaiah writes, from the perspective of the coming Christ, “He has sent me to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion--to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit.”

Tonight we wear the sign of the ashes. But tonight we also wear the sign of the cross. That sign is sure: Christ will redeem these bodies, even as he has redeemed our souls.

Thank you, Pastor. It's a moving sermon, and I found the following particularly so:

John Donne was an Anglican minister of the 17th century. Once he preached: “The dust of great persons’ graves is speechless; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not look upon will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it thither. And when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again and to pronounce, ‘This is the patrician, this is the noble flour, this the yeomanly, this the plebeian bran’?”

I think of John the Baptist during Lent because he prepared the way.

I sit here early in the morning with my coffee, free to partake of the peace and beneficence of this Country, and ably to enjoy the surfeit in my life that extends to every part of it, ad I want to thank God for it all.

The large-minded and large-hearted Hermann Sasse said that the Church lives from repentence, and that nothing speaks so well of the Church and her truth than the repentance of Her saints. Here's some more from the great theologian:

Today as always people ask, What does the church actually do? It prays. The praying church [ecclesia orans] is one of the constantly recurring themes of early Christian art. The church prays. Thus it was at the beginning. “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer” it says of the first believers after Christ’s ascension (Acts 1:14). “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” it says of the church at Pentecost [2:42]. “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they [were] … praising God and having favor with all the people.” (v.46). They founded no mission society, organized no city mission, wrote no books on “dynamic evangelism”. Instead, they celebrated the Sacrament and prayed continually. “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (2:47).

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