Ash Wednesday 2021: Matter and Energy

​I come from a divided household.  When I was growing up, both of my Episcopalian parents took us to Ash Wednesday services.  We went to the early service with the bribe of a big greasy breakfast to follow at the Chase Café near our church.  So much for fasting, I guess, but after all, we were growing boys.
 
The divide was not in attending the service, but the tension arose right in the middle of the service.  When it was time to come forward for ashes to be imposed on our foreheads, my dad went up, and my mom did not.  Inevitably, we would ask why the divide?  My mom said that it was not her tradition.  My dad responded that we needed all the signs of humility we could get.  Growing up Presbyterian, he subscribed to the theory that people were, by nature, a damned mess.
 
If we pressed it further, mom would refer to the gospel lesson where it talks about not practicing our piety before others, not looking dismal, and washing your face.  It was a fair point and that has always been an ironic twist in the day’s lessons.  My dad came back with the belief that the ashes were not to show off to others, but for us to remember that we aren’t the center of the universe.  Neither could convince the other.  For familial compromise, I got the ashes, and then washed them off before I went to school.  In the end, that made it easier not to have to explain the whole thing to my mostly Baptist friends.
 
This year, we are not imposing ashes on foreheads.  These times call for creativity, but I am sure God understands.  Churches all over are being changing their practices like we are.  Some places are going back to an old tradition of sprinkling ashes on people’s heads to avoid direct contact.  That could get messy, but it is not a bad idea as that was done at one point in the Church’s history.  Our compromise is this: as you depart today, you will receive a bag in which we have imposed ashes on a card for you to take home and keep throughout Lent.  The bag has other resources as well. 
 
The ashes we use are made from burning the palms from the last Palm Sunday.  In doing a little research, I wondered about this practice.  As it happens, this is practical as well as symbolic.  Palm ashes are fine, very black, and free of much of the acid found in wood ash.  Thus, to get the best ashes, you can make your own, or buy them on the internet, which has made a market for just about everything.
 
As it has been really cold, and we heat with a wood stove as much as possible, we have plenty of ashes around our house, but apparently, those ashes with their high acid content, if mixed with water, form lye, and that is a powerful cleaning agent.  If we used wood ashes, we could, literally burn people’s foreheads.  While that is not a bad image, it might not be the best practice.
 
What we do know about ashes is that they are what is left over when all of the energy in matter has been converted to heat and light.  That science is also good theology.  When it comes down to it, we are at our best when we radiate the warmth of God’s love and show the light of Christ in our lives.  That is the critical energy of holiness.  That is what we are created to be for the world.  Thus, when time takes, all that is left of us will be ashen dust.  That is a sign.  What matters most is what we radiate in the fleeting life we given.
 
For a time, we put away the Alleluias, and we make our worship simple and unadorned.  We do this to make space, because sometimes, in our rush to be on our way somewhere, we forget to be still, and give some space to God growing us in love.  We may be a mess, but we are God’s mess, and if Easter will show us anything, it will be that there is nothing so dark, so rotten, so not right about us, that God cannot redeem it.  Amen.