Hi First Presbyterian,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! I want to remind you that tonight is our Ash Wednesday live-streamed service at 7:00 pm. You can find the live-stream just like you find our Sunday morning live-stream. The imposition of ashes is not going to be part of the live-streamed service, but, if you would like to receive the imposition of ashes today, there will be an opportunity for you to do so this afternoon. From 4:30 – 5:30 pm, Pastor Jacobson and I will be in the Locust Street parking lot to give out ashes. Drive through the parking lot at any point during that time window, and, while you are in your car, we will offer that familiar refrain, “You are dust, and to dust you will return,” and impose ashes on your heads (using COVID safety). This drive-thru is intended to supplement the evening service, not replace it. I hope to see some of you!
Someone once said to me, “Why do we celebrate Ash Wednesday? It seems very Catholic.” I think I understood what they meant by ‘Catholic’ (i.e., not very Presbyterian), and I tried to answer them in light of that. The truth is: God’s people have been putting ashes on their heads for thousands of years. Throughout the Old Testament, you can read about people putting ashes on their heads as a sign of grief, mourning, or repentance. Not even 100 years after the apostle Paul lived, historical records show that Christians were also using ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance during their worship. Today, the imposition of ashes is practiced by Christians all over the world to begin the season of Lent. It is true of all rituals, including the ritual of imposing ashes, that the ritual serves to point to a greater reality.
What reality is the imposition of ashes pointing to? Here’s how I like to think of it. Most people don’t leave their homes without making a little effort at improving their appearance. People sometimes comb their hair, check their teeth in the mirror, tuck their shirt in, or put on some make-up. We do those things to show a little respect to the people we’ll see while we’re out. We also do it for our own sake. It can be embarrassing when we realize after we’ve been with other people that we had some spinach in our teeth the whole time. We might look in the mirror after being out and look at our teeth and think, “That’s been there the whole time?! How did that happen!?”
The reason we put ashes on our forehead is similar. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been getting ready for bed on Ash Wednesday, look at myself in the bathroom mirror, and have a split-second thought, “How’d that dirt get on my forehead!?” Then I’ll quickly recall, “Oh, that’s right! I had someone put it there on purpose.” We dirty our appearances on Ash Wednesday to help us to think less about fleeting, temporal things, like how we look, so that we will replace those thoughts with deeper and more meaningful ones like, “What is the purpose of life?” “Why am I so broken?” “Why do I sometimes hurt the people in my life that I love most?” Ash Wednesday is a time to contemplate not just any questions about life, but questions having to do with our own brokenness. Contemplating those questions helps lead us to remember that God has provided us the way to repair our brokenness. God, who is full of love, looked down on our broken lives and considered them precious, precious enough to come to us, to live a life like ours, to die a death like ours, and to raise back to life in order to share that life with us. Our broken lives are precious to God. That is the meaning of Ash Wednesday.
Peace to you all,
Pastor Neff