Youth director Mandy Jones, left, the Rev. Mark Welshimer and missions director Diane O'Brien of Houston's First United Methodist Church burn palms for ashes on Monday.
Posted on 02/06/2008 6:07:23 AM PST by NYer
Roman Catholics grow up hearing the words on Ash Wednesday as they receive a sign of the cross in ashes on their foreheads:
"For dust you are and to dust you will return."
But Christians at many Protestant churches around the city will be hearing those words from Genesis 3:19 today as they, too, are marked by ashes on the first day of Lent, the 40-day somber season leading to Easter.
Protestant churches in recent years have increasingly turned to the rite to increase spirituality and devotional preparation for Easter Sunday among their members.
"There is a trend ... toward more sacramental forms and it is not surprising to see the recovery of imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday," said the Rev. Daniel K. Dunlap, vice president of Houston Graduate School of Theology and a liturgy expert. The rite was generally abandoned by Protestants after the Reformation, although Episcopalians continued to observe it, he noted.
Among Protestant churches observing Ash Wednesday today are:
•First United Methodist Church, where 600 to 800 members will receive ashes made from burned palm fronds during services at both campuses.
•Memorial Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), where about 225 students at the church's school and more than 200 church members are expected to be given the sign of the cross in ashes.
•Memorial Drive Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), where associate minister John Malget will distribute ashes to 70 members. He estimates that up to half of his denomination's churches in the Houston area now distribute ashes.
While most Baptists do not observe Ash Wednesday, the Rev. Jeremy Rutledge, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church, will administer ashes at a Rothko Chapel service tonight.
"I put my thumb into a bowl of ashes and I put the ashes on someone's forehead and tell him he is going to die,"said Rutledge, a member of the Amercian Baptist denomination. "It is incredibly powerful."
"By now it is a familiar ritual that is a meaningful service to me," she said. "It definitely reminds me of the fact that we are all mortal and it calls me to be a better person."
And along with ashes, Lenten sacrifice also has increased among non-Catholics, although it may be in the form of additional work at church or more prayer devotion rather than giving up something like candy, Dunlap said.
Before Associate Pastor Bart Day arrived at Memorial Lutheran 10 years ago, the church did not observe Ash Wednesday. He said the rite draws people into faith and helps keep their minds focused.
The Rev. Steve Wende introduced ashes at smaller churches he served in Kingsville and San Antonio, but found the rite already was in use at First United Methodist Houston when he arrived in 2001.
"It has been around for a while, but it wasn't as popular," said Wende, who fasts one day a week during Lent. "It has been much more widely practiced in the last 10 to 15 years."
The imposition of ashes officially became part of Methodist observance in 1992 edition of the denomination's Book of Worship. The practice is optional, however, and congregations are not required to use it.
"We ask the people to receive the ashes first as a sign of their humility to Christ and second as their witness to the world," Wende said. "Its power has been rediscovered. It is the power of humbling yourself before the cross."
Why did the Protestant churches stop performing the rite following departure from the RC Church?
They are now discovering that they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
This is not as bad as the Puritans in England smashing all the stained glass windows and statues, not by any means, but it's the same thing in a much lesser degree. As one of Kipling's characters said, "Man needs ritual."
Not Methodists. (No disrespect intended. My husband used to be one - his grandfather was a Methodist minister and a lovely man. Just good clear through. I hope he's speaking up for us in Heaven, even if we have turned Papist on him.)
This is truly a sign that the Holy Spirit is working to bring the Christian believers much more closer to unity as Jesus prayed on the night before he suffered. Never doubt the power of the Holy Spirit. Also a sign that the Protestants need those important guide posts of ritual observance.
It seems that the more radical Reformers has a dislike and distrust for anything bodily or emotional in religion. They thought of Faith as the response of a mind to a concept, not the response of a whole person to a Whole Person. And therefore the bodily and symbolic aspects of religious practice, including incense, ashes, oil, candles, frescoes, flowers, bells, vestments --- all that was done away with.
The Puritans abolished ashes on Ash Wednesday, feasting on Christmas. As in the following
"For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."
From the records of the General Court
Massachusetts Bay Colony
May 11, 1659
Contemporary commentary on the Puritan Iconoclasts:
The World Turned Upside Down
To the Tune of, When the King enioys his own again.
1. List to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.
Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
2. The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christ's Nativitie:
The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.
Let all honest men, take example by them.
Why should we from good Laws be bound?
Yet let's be content, &c.
3. Command is given, we must obey, and quite forget old Christmas day:
Kill a thousand men, or a Town regain, we will give thanks and praise amain.
The wine pot shall clinke, we will feast and drinke.
And then strange motions will abound.
Yet let's be content, &c.
4. Our Lords and Knights, and Gentry too, doe mean old fashions to forgoe:
They set a porter at the gate, that none must enter in thereat.
They count it a sin, when poor people come in.
Hospitality its selfe is drown'd.
Yet let's be content, &c.
5. The serving men doe sit and whine, and thinke it long ere dinner time:
The Butler's still out of the way, or else my Lady keeps the key,
The poor old cook, in the larder doth look,
Where is no goodnesse to be found,
Yet let's be content, &c.
6. To conclude, I'le tell you news that's right, Christmas was kil'd at Naseby fight:
Charity was slain at that same time, Jack Tell-troth too, a friend of mine,
Likewise then did die, rost beef and shred pie,
Duck, Goose and Capon no quarter found.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.
A somewhat melancholy melody, but can be sung in an upbeat style, as by Maddy Prior. This was the tune said to have been played by the British army at the surrender at Yorktown. You can see why!
I grew up in the conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. Our mommas made sure we were in church on Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Palm Sunday and Easter.
Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday), btw, commemorates the institution of the Eucharist on the day when Jesus partook of His last supper with the Disciples.
For most of us conservative Protestants, Ash Wednesday is an important Holy Day the same as it is to Catholics, except we don't do the ashes on the forehead.
If my church did ashes, I would wear them as an honor and reminder of the gift of Holy Communion.
Leni
Interesting to say the least.
Ash Wednesday: Our Shifting Understanding of Lent
Ash Wednesday: Preparing For Easter
Pope will preside at Ash Wednesday Mass, procession; act will renew ancient tradition
Every Ash Wednesday comes the question about ashes: to burn or to buy?
Ash Wednesday and the Lenten Fast-Family observance Lenten season [Catholic/Orthodox Caucus]
Where does Ash Wednesday get its ashes?
“More Protestants turn to Ash Wednesday”
When I saw the headline, I thought judgment had come on a segment of Christians, reducing us to ash!
Just look at the Super Bowl. It's the high holy Mass for sports fans. And I don't mean that to sacrilege our sacrament - it's a manifestation of our need for ritual that has grown more and more as people have left their respective faiths. It's a sign of searching that can't be satisified by instruments of man.
. . . or their faiths have left them.
My grandfather-in-law would not recognize the UMC as it exists today - with trendy political causes, pro-aborts, female preachers, etc. etc.
And we used to be Episcopalians before we sought refuge across the Tiber. The destruction of that denomination is apparent to all . . . 'gay' bishops, worshiping the U.N. "Millenium Development Goals" in place of the Stations of the Cross, and scorched earth lawsuits against parishes that don't toe the new party line!!????!!!
Because they (re)discovered that it had no apostolic authority, therefore the church had no basis to invent such a practice.
It's too bad the modern "protestant" prelates subject their flocks to such spiritual abuses.
. . . you just sawed off the limb you were sitting on.
I think the mainline protestants have always observed Ash Wed. It’s those with Anabaptist and Puritan roots who think it’s too “popish.”
Anything to feel religious. Vanity, vanity...(sigh).
“But all their works they do for to be seen of men....” Matt.23:5
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