Remains

The propers for Ash Wednesday are the same every year and can be found here.

Every year on Ash Wednesday, I have the beautiful and terrible honor of imposing ashes on the foreheads of the people I love and serve. I will remind you that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. I will see and name your mortality, and with every face I will be reminded of my own, marred with ashes of my own.

I have heard that there are people who are unfamiliar with this practice, who have assumed or been led to believe that the ashes we use on Ash Wednesday are the ashes of human beings. It may sound a little funny to those of us who have grown up with this tradition, but it is true that most people only really hear of ashes in the context of funerals and fireplaces. I can see how they might have gotten there. I must admit that before I went to seminary, I hadn’t really given much thought to the ashes themselves, where they come from or how they’re made. Do you know that the ashes we use today come from the burning of the Palms from Palm Sundays past? The reminder of our mortality comes from the symbols of our hypocrisy, the palm fronds waved to welcome the Messiah, only to be thrown down and forgotten when he didn’t act the way we thought a Messiah should. We mark one another’s faces with the ashes of our fickle humanity, of hope that was not fulfilled in the way we had planned. The ashes are what remains of our unanswered prayers and insincere hosannas.

There is an odd symmetry to it, that we begin our Lenten journey with the cremated remains of last year’s Holy Week, the end of our previous Lenten fast. Even as we admit our mortality, that everything we know will one day end, we are wearing on our faces the promise of death’s defeat. What has died is alive again, and what is alive will one day die. And again, and again we follow this cycle of life, death, and resurrection. Not only for ourselves, but for one another.

After all, we started covering our faces with ashes long before we all had mirrors and the ability to take selfies. For most of church history, we could not see the ashes on our own foreheads. We could only see each other’s. We heard “Remember that you are dust” and then we turned and saw all the dusty faces around us, bearing the marks of mortality like crowns. I think we need to see the cross on one another’s foreheads, need the reminder of one another’s impermanence as much as we need a reminder of our own.

Remember she is dust. Remember he is dust. Remember they are dust. Remember that to dust we all return. Our mortality is not negotiable, it is not variable, it is not more or less important because of where we live or what language we speak. It is because we are all dust that we need one another, it is because we are all dust that we need God. Being reminded that we will all return to the dust is not just a reminder for our own personal gain. We need the reminder that the person across the road, across the aisle, across the ocean is mortal too, is grieving too, is afraid too. We need to look at each other and see the cross of ashes, the memento mori, the impermanence of our present moment. We need to look at each other and remember that the particles of earth that make up who you are are the same particles of earth that make up who I am. We are not separate. I am not guaranteed tomorrow and neither are you. So we must make the most of the time we have. We must not waste one precious moment on hatred and fear. There will always be regrets- we all have them. But as long as you are here, until you have returned to the dust, you can start again. You can make that phone call, have that conversation. You can apologize. You can make a different choice. You can live a different life. You can repent, turn around, make amends. It is not too late. Thanks be to God, because of the hope we have in Jesus, it is never too late. But look at their faces, the faces of your families and neighbors and enemies and friends, and picture the cross of ashes. Remember that they are precious, fragile, mortal dust, beloved of God. Then treat them accordingly.