On Clean Hearts and Good Starts: Some Thoughts for Ash Wednesday

Psalm 51:1-17

Last year on Ash Wednesday I happened to be one of the chaplains on call at our local hospital. It was early afternoon when a nurse called from the maternity ward to ask if I could bring ashes. One of her patients had requested it.

And so I put some ashes in an airtight container (I have since acquired something more appropriate) and I bundled up and headed across town. I confess I was a little nervous as I had not been told just what I would be walking into.

I made my way upstairs and rang the doorbell to be let in. The nurse at the desk greeted me and sent me to a room halfway down the hall. I knocked on the closed door and heard a faint voice invite me in. I entered to find a young woman in the bed, cradling her infant son. She was surround by family: her aunt, her grandmother, her cousin, her sister.

I told this young mother who I was and that I had ashes.

She was overjoyed. She had been in labor all night the night before. She was distressed that she was missing Ash Wednesday and its accompanying rituals. She wanted the ashes for herself. And she said she wanted to get her infant child off to a good start. And so ashes were imposed, one by one, on each and every family member gathered there, including that little one who was but a few hours old. I said good-bye and made my way out. Before I left the hospital, I was greeted by another staff member who knew why I was there. She asked if I would be willing to share ashes with others and then she picked up the phone. Within minutes I found myself in the corner of a busy emergency room where one after another, nurses and doctors broke away from whatever or whoever had been demanding their attention a moment before to pause and receive a cross of ash and to hear the words,

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And I have to say, this seemed especially resonant in a place where the frailty of life is witnessed day after night after day every day.

Now while it is so, of course, that the tradition of imposing ashes is undoubtedly rooted in the ancient tradition of donning sackcloth and ashes which in another time were signs of profound mourning, I was interested this week to make the connection with ashes as a cleansing agent. Indeed, check out this list of all the ways ashes can be used: to clean laundry, to remove odors, and to wash one's hair, to name a few.

So while most years I have lived in the certain reminder of mortality in the words we speak over those ashes, maybe it is really this understanding which keeps bringing people back. Perhaps it was precisely this which had a young mother and her family and a whole lot of emergency department medical staff yearning to receive those ashes. Indeed, perhaps it is this:

• Deep down, when we pause to consider it, we recognize our own frailty, which is of course, tied to our mortality.
• And when we are safe to admit it, we surely know our living could and should look and be better than it is. 
• To be sure, if we are honest, we are deeply aware that we have been the instruments of broken hearts. 
• Of others, yes, 
• Of our own, perhaps. 
• And certainly of God's.
• And we yearn for the promise receiving the sign of Christ's cross traced on our foreheads bears for us all. In touch and sound and residue of ash the promise of grace, forgiveness, a fresh start is ours. Or in the words of a brand new mom last Ash Wednesday: "a good start" for her infant boy.

And in those times when we failed to remember, we can be reminded in the pleading words of today's Psalm, which I, for one, have come to know by heart:

Create in me a clean heart, O God.
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence
And do not take your holy spirit from me...

I can recite these ancient words certainly because I find my lifelong home in a liturgical tradition which sang these words Sunday after Sunday. But even more than that, they belong to me and all of those who find they speak to our heart's longing. They speak to my knowing I need to be made clean.

And so this Ash Wednesday I will gather with my congregation and share in this ritual once more. And mid-day I will travel to the hospital and offer this reminder, this gift, this promise to any and all to whom this ritual speaks: to those who yearn once more to hear Christ's promise of grace and forgiveness in sound and touch and residue of ash.

My prayers join yours this season as we yearn for clean hearts and good starts and fresh starts. May God's grace and forgiveness be received as gifts which will have their way in our lives and through us in the world. Indeed, may this be so. Especially this year may this be so.

• How does Ash Wednesday speak to you? What place does it have in your faith journey?
• Do you see the ashes as a way of experiencing a 'fresh start' or a 'good start?' Why or why not?
• If you are so privileged as to be one who traces the cross of ash on the foreheads of others, take a moment to recall those hundreds or thousands or more who have received this gift via your hand. What stories stand out for you? How do they inform your understanding of this day, this ritual, these gifts of God? 

A Cross of Ashes and Another Cross

Psalm 51

"For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me..."  Psalm 51:3

This story comes to mind most every year on Ash Wednesday.

I was six, maybe seven years old.

We were on a family camping trip.  The fold out camper had been backed into its spot and unhitched from our station wagon.  My mother had taken my sisters to find the rest room and I was back at the campsite with my dad, 'helping' him get things set up.

This is what happened next. My dad caught my eye and very directly told me to watch my step.  He nodded his head towards the ashes of the fire left behind by the last occupants of that space and he said to me, "Don't walk there.  It's probably still hot."

It was.

For you see, no more than a few minutes passed before I forgot his warning and barefoot, I walked right through those still hot coals.

I sometimes still feel like that little girl who was duly warned and then forgot it altogether.  Oh yes, how often do I still do the same --- walking through fire as though it's not there, or believing that somehow it can't hurt me --- entirely disregarding a voice of protective, loving-kindness which only wants good for me.

I do it all the time.  And so it is that along with a multitude of others across an unending spectrum of time and space on this first Wednesday in Lent I kneel with you and receive that smudge of ashes and hear the words once more: "Remember that you are Dust and to Dust you shall return."

For, yes, it is so. I am dust.  I am frail and flawed and often so very broken and I am in desperate, yearning need of the certainty that while I am all of these things, God is not.  Oh yes, I am one who will walk through hot coals immediately after having been told not to, and I cling to the certainty that Jesus is there waiting to bind up my wounds and set me back up on my feet once more.

Those many years ago when I walked through those white-hot ashes, I stifled my cry so that no one would know for in that very first instant, I knew I had done exactly as I had just been told not to do. And for the longest time I never said a word.  Somehow I must have been able to disguise my limp and yes, I do know how fortunate I am that healing came on its own in my silent shame. 

On Ash Wednesday, though, we all wear the crosses of our frailty, our disobedience, and our brokenness right on our foreheads for all the world to see.  As much as we would like to hide our sinfulness so that no one else will know, we know that we cannot. For we are all the same and so very able to recognize in each other even what we may refuse to acknowledge in ourselves. But ashes or not?  God sees and God knows and God does not leave us in our shame.  Instead, God acts to bring healing and hope and with God's promised forgiveness, new beginnings.  Indeed, this precious promise make it possible for me to acknowledge the truth.  And so I do.

For I am frail and flawed and often so very broken.  I do what I should not, sometimes as soon as I'm told not to and the scars are mine to live with in this life now.  I walk with a limp --- disguised  --- hoping that no one will know and all the while I ache for the pain to stop, for my shame to be erased, and for healing to come.

And God hears my cry, God hears our cry, and God answers.

For with a smudge of ashes in the sign of a cross I am reminded that Christ Jesus paid the price for my frailty and my flaws and my brokenness.  On another cross.

• What does the ritual of ashes on Ash Wednesday mean to you?  Is it comforting, frightening, or something else altogether?
• Do you have 'sins' of which you are so ashamed ---whether those of a seven year old or a fifty seven year old ---  that you would want no one to know?  How are you disguising your "limp" and aching for healing? What difference does it make to you that God sees and God knows and God still and always loves and forgives?

Ashes and Dust and Broken Hearts

Psalm 51

It's an old story, this one, since the young man in question turned eighteen not long ago.  And yet, I remember it like it was yesterday the Saturday morning when I broke my nephew's heart.  I am telling you the truth when I say that I had a three-year-old standing at my feet weeping as though his world was coming to an end.  It even brought tears to my eyes to see him cry so, even though it would seem that the cause of his pain was no great reason for heartache.

For you see, I had cut Andrew's carrot in half.  His mother was busy and he had marched into the kitchen that morning and asked for a carrot. Thinking this was something I could certainly handle, I went to the crisper drawer in my mother's refrigerator, pulled out a carrot, washed and peeled it, and while he stood and waited, I asked if he want me to cut it in half. Truly, I did.  Certain that he had nodded yes, I did so. Apparently one of us misunderstood, though, for after I turned and handed it to him, he began to cry and begged me to fix it.

It was no time for reasoning.  I simply started over.  I went and got another carrot and washed and peeled it and handed it to him whole.  And though it may be making something large out of something small, as Andrew certainly did, still, I'll not forget that moment of pain and my own helplessness when a three-year-old demanded that I 'fix it' and I knew that no matter how hard I tried I surely could not put that carrot back together again. So I did the next best thing, grateful that it was not the last carrot in the drawer, and I started over.

It was a small thing, to be sure, and Andrew forgot it immediately as he went off to watch Saturday morning cartoons with his cousins.  And yet, it made me think then, and it does still, of all the ways in which we fail each other --- intentionally or not.  Of all the times we think we have heard what the other has said --- when we really haven't heard at all. Of all the times hearts are actually broken because of what we have said or done or failed to do or say.  At the very least, there regularly come those times when another begs us to 'fix it.'  And all too often, we discover that we cannot.

And so Ash Wednesday is upon us once more.  A day when we are called upon to remember all the hearts we have broken, intentionally or not.  To recall those moments we have yearned to fix things and make them right and yet, have found that we could not.  On this day we are reminded of our frailty and our limits, our sins, and our failed attempts to make things right.  We are reminded with ashes on our foreheads that there are simply some things we cannot fix.  That more often than not, matters of life and death are, in the end, simply out of our hands.  So on Ash Wednesday as we would do well to do every day, we throw ourselves on the mercy of God. God who is the source of our life and our comfort in death. God who assures us that through his Son, all that we have broken, all that we have cut in half, WILL be put back together again through God's love and mercy.  For we are reminded not only of our frailty when those ashes are traced on our foreheads.  No, indeed, it's not just a shapeless smudge that is traced there, but the sign of the cross.  The same cross on which Jesus died for you and for me.  The same cross which was traced on your forehead on the day you were baptized.

On a Saturday morning a long time ago it was no time to try to convince my nephew that the carrot would taste the same in two pieces as in one.  The best option was to go to the crisper drawer and begin again. It turns out that in that way it was an easy fix.  Not so true always in the rest of our lives.  And yet, where there is forgiveness ---- as it comes to us through Christ's cross, then even this can be so. As we seek God's forgiveness and that of one another.  As we do so not only with our speaking, but also with our doing... by giving back, building up, or at least standing still to acknowledge the pain we have caused.  In the midst of our lives, by the grace of God and the forbearance of one another, we get to start over, too.  As we join with all those of all the ages who pray,

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:1-2)

And having thus prayed, the promise is that it is so.

1. When you hear the words, 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,' what comes to mind? 
2. In your understanding, what is the intention of this ancient ritual?  What impact does it have on those who practice it?
3. Can you think of times when all you could do was rely on the grace promised to you --- grace that may have let you 'begin again' by 'blotting out' your sin or by repairing your brokenness?  How do thoes experiences relate to Ash Wednesday