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¥ﻻ1 اAshes Matter
Kimberly Bracken Long
Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia
Her name was Amma, and she was seven years old. For four days she walked aiound the house with a great big green smudge on her forehead. After her mother hnally sent her in for a good scrubbing, she returned all clean and freshly dressed from her shower… with another big green spot on her forehead. Her mother could stay silent no longer. “I give up,” she said. “What’s going on with the green blob’?” Amma looked up at her and said, “I’m a child of God, Mom.” Pointing to her forehead she further explained, “My green is to remember. So I can be brave.” Amma, it seemed, was marking herself, “recreating Ash Wednesday every morning .” Her mother later reflected that the gill was “making herself a sacrament, which is an outward reminder of an invisible tnith. Every morning she’s saying to herself and the woild: 1′ m God’s. So I can be brave.”1 I am not sure how children become prophets, but it seems to happen all the time. It ceitainly did with little Amma. It might seem counteilntuitive to think that being marked with ashes—a sign of our sure and impending death—would be anything like good news. But in fact, Amma had it light. To be marked with ashes is, yes, to be reminded of our moitality, which is also to be reminded that we are not on this watery orb alone. To be marked with ashes is to remember that we are claimed by the one who became one with US in death, so that we might also become one with him in life. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a season of repentance. The appointed texts are the same every year: a piOphet’scall to fasting; Psalm 51, the quintessential psalm of confession; Paul’s exhoitation to be reconciled to God in 2 Corinthians; and a call to trae piety from Matthew 6. The point is not to make a show of contiltion, but to come to terms with our need for God and to repent—to turn away from our selfsufficient , self-satisfied, self-centered ways and turn to the way of the gospel which, of course, means turning toward other people with compassion and care, food and water, as much justice as we can muster. In shoit, it means to pay attention. Worship on Ash Wednesday takes on a somber tone as we hear the call to repentance and face up to the fact that we will one day die. Both of these elements remind us of our profound need for God. Our songs and prayers express our contrition, plead for Christ’s mercy, and ask for the Spirit to change our heaits, because we are unable to do it alone. At the heait of the service is the simple ritual of marking one another with ashes. Some of US may want to settle for using “ashes” as a metaphor, since making them (or finding them) can be difficult. Plus, ashes are dilty. But I urge you not to only talk about them. Smear them. They may be too crumbly or too oily or too messy. It really doesn’t matter. And be sure to make the CIOSS right in the middle of each other’s foreheads, not on the hands. It makes a difference to see the truth on another person’s face—to see our own moitality reflected on the face of another. It matters that we are literally marked as Christ’s own, just as we were in baptism. It matters that we acknowledge our moitality before we stait on the path to celebrating our immoitality on Easter.
Journal for Preachers
Page 35
This is a countercultural thing we do as a church. Our culture does not like to speak of weakness, much less death. We do not want to be reminded that we cannot, in the end, do one blessed thing to save ourselves from despair or destruction. Of course, what sounds like bad news is very good news. At one level, it can be sheer relief to acknowledge our weakness. We spend so much time trying to convince ourselves and others that we have got this thing called life under control. We can do this! Until we can’t. One hospital chaplain tells of offering ashes to medical personnel all throughout the day, whenever they were on breaks. “It was a relief, even for a lot of the docs, I think,” he recalled. “All this effoit goes into looking good, and working hard, and pretending you’re in charge of life and death. What a relief to have a day when you’re just another person with a smudge of dilt on your head. ”2 Another chaplain in the same hospital carried ashes to the beds of patients who were too sick to come to the chapel. Quietly, she would enter each loom and mark the heads of the dying. “Remember you are dust,” she told them, “And to dust you shall return.”3 What a blessing to stare one’s moitality in the face, knowing that you have been claimed by the God who formed you from dust in the hrst place. In the sanctuary of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, people mark one another with ashy ciOsses. “Forgive me, a sinner,” one says, and another replies, “God forgives you. Forgive me a sinner.” “God forgives you.” A mother leans down to ask forgiveness from her young son; two women who barely know each other assure one another of God’s forgiveness. An older couple, long married, hold hands and look silently into each other’s eyes, hnally exchanging the words that must have held a lifetime of broken promises and reconciliations. Most of us will receive ashes in our familiar sanctuaries at the beginning of the next Lenten season. Like Amma, I will wear a smudge and remember that I am a child ol God. I will look at other smudged Laces and remember that they, too, are claimed by the same God, and maybe, at least for a time, my repentance will be real, and I will treat them as it they are the blessed children ol God that they are.
Notes t Glennon Doyle Melton, “T he Giftof the Green Blob,” at Momastery: Truth Tellers and Hope Spreaders, August 4, 2٥15, http:״momastery.com/blog/2٥15/٥8/٥4/the-gift-of-the-green-blob/ (accessed October 4, 2015). 2 Sara Miles, City of God: Faith in the Streets (New York: Jericho Books, 2014), 37. 3 Ibid.
Lent 2016
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