Ashes to Ashes

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—

their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.

Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.

so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.

You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.

Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” At first glance these words seem critical of what we are doing right now. These are words from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Our Lord seems to warn against being pious in ways that others can see.

But on Ash Wednesday, millions of Christians around the world, including us here tonight, will do exactly opposite what the text says. The sign of the cross will be imposed on our foreheads, an extremely visible display of our piety. Even were we all to wash off the ashes before leaving church tonight, even if no one except those who are here sees us, we are hardly being secret about our faith in God. If we did not want to visibly express our faith, we would probably not be here.

I raise this issue because we need to think about why we are here and what difference our being here makes when we leave. The passage from Joel called God’s people to assemble in community even when the community experiences the darkness and gloom of God’s judgment. So we gather. But the gospel text warns about the dangers of parading our piety, even if we are parading just for ourselves. What are we to do?

I think the answer lies between Joel and Matthew in Psalm 51, so beautifully led tonight by Dave and Emilie and Jessie. If we want to understand Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent that begins now, we cannot do better than to read and sing and meditate day and night on Psalm 51. For if we understand Psalm 51, the practice of our piety will not go against what our Lord wants for us.

We need to understand Psalm 51 because it is honest about sin. The world is never honest about sin but Psalm 51 is. “For I know my transgressions,” the psalmist wrote, “and my sin is ever before me.” In a book of satire, A. Whitney Brown, who was a regular on Saturday Night Live back in the late 1980s, wrote, “Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It’s very embarrassing.”[1] Of course, Brown wasn’t writing from a religious viewpoint but neither Psalm 51 in particular nor the Bible in general would argue with his assessment. The story of human history is a long list of mistakes — a long list of sins, to put it theologically.

Many psalms have superscriptions — a few words at the beginning that identifies it in some fashion or indicates the context of its composition. The superscription to Psalm 51 connects it to the sordid story of King David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the king’s murdering Bathsheba’s husband Uriah. Although we know that most of the superscriptions in the Book of Psalms were written long after the poems to which they became attached, maybe this superscription is right.[2] But even if it is, Psalm 51 is about more than David’s sin. It’s about Israel’s sin and unfaithfulness to God. It’s about the disciples’ sin and unfaithfulness to Jesus. It’s about the church’s sin and our unfaithfulness to what the Lord calls us to do. It’s about my sin and your sin. When we are honest like Psalm 51, we know our transgressions and our sin is ever before us. It’s all very embarrassing.

This embarrassing honesty is why the church begins its journey to Easter with ashes. Who doesn’t like Easter? Easter signals springtime, at least in the northern hemisphere, and the renewal of life. Daffodils and lilies. It makes people happy, this renewing of nature. What’s not to like?

But the real Easter — Christ’s rising from the dead — isn’t natural. It doesn’t come about from the renewal of nature. Resurrection comes about because of God’s grace, God’s refusal to let the embarrassing sinfulness of humankind be the last word. But if we are not honest about our sinfulness and brokenness, Easter might as well be just about bunnies and bonnets.

So we start with ashes. In a meditation on Ash Wednesday, Susan Andrews, a former moderator of the General Assembly, reflected on the words she spoke at the memorial service of one of her parishioners. These are words that all ministers say hundreds of times over the course of our ministries. “Unto the mercy of Almighty God, we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

But Susan recalls that when the family took the ashes to be scattered, some were afraid to touch them. There they were, about five pounds of fine grey matter, with bits of white bone scattered throughout. They had picked them up at the funeral home, and then a woman named Mary held them in her lap as they drove back to Mill Run. Then it was time. They gathered on the bridge overlooking McClure Creek, and all the nieces and nephews were nervously running around. Then they opened up the box and unfastened the plastic bag inside. And for a moment, Susan wrote, time stopped.

How could it be? How could 44 years of elegance, energy, joy, sorrow, beauty, strength, pain — how could it be contained in that one small box? They all tentatively reached out and touched mortality. Then the children took fistfuls of ash, and let them fly — arcing over the bridge — into the water. There went Gregory — passing from death back into life — into the gracious and eternal arms of God. He, who had been killed by the cruelty of AIDS. who had been judged by the cruelty of society, who had been punished by the cruelty of his own guilt — there he was — floating, from the creek into the river, from the river into the sea — into the sea of God’s infinite grace and mercy. Gregory was finally free.[3]

Some might ask, why think about something so morbid? Why do something so silly as throw ashes into the creek? But in the ancient wisdom of the church, each Ash Wednesday we do what Gregory’s family did. We touch each other with the ashes of our mortality. We begin our Lenten journey by acknowledging our finitude, by offering to God our incompleteness, our brokenness, our sinfulness.

This is a brutal honesty that we so much need. And this is the painful honesty that keeps our practice of piety here tonight from being just a display for others. On Ash Wednesday the traditional words of blessing are, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is the honest truth about who we are. And we gather to remember that. And we gather to recommit ourselves to become the people God wants us to be, not by nature, but by God’s grace alone.

And so, my friends, let us journey together during these forty days of Lent — ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us tell the honest truth about who we are and let us look for the Lord. For in life and in death we belong to God.

[1] A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture: An American Commentary (New York: HarperCollins, 1991) 12. Quoted in J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. XI (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000) 887.

[2] McCann, 884.

[3] Susan Andrews, “Ash Wednesday,” Lectionary Homiletics 18.2 (2007): 2.