Blog

One of my favorite services each year at Liberti Collingswood is Ash Wednesday.  As we’ve currently constructed things, it’s one of three “special services” that we offer each year, the others being Christmas Eve and Good Friday.  Nothing against those latter two, but I prefer Ash Wednesday because it seems to me to be a lesser known and more humble one-off evening of worship.

And when else do you get to receive an ashen cross on your forehead?  The imposition of ashes is the crux––pun intended––of Ash Wednesday.  It’s not a sacrament à la the Lord’s Supper and baptism, but it nevertheless carries a particular weight.  Each year at Liberti Collingswood, a long line of adults and children will form, and one by one I’m honored to paste first a long vertical line and then a shorter horizontal one on the face of each.  As I do, I’ll pronounce the words that have been used by the church around the world and throughout the ages for this occasion: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.  Mourn your sins that cost Jesus his life; repent and believe the gospel.”

Ashes and dust, dust and ashes.  Such a rich set of symbolism and resonances.

Our first father, Adam, was created out of dust (Gen. 2:7), and that’s the state to which we all return in the end.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

What does ash conjure for you?  I imagine connotations of death, finality, decay, and decline––but also of hope.  The story of the Phoenix comes down to us from Greek mythology, and its tail sweeps through all the way to Harry Potter and beyond.  We’ll tell each other “from the ashes” when we want to believe that we can hope beyond what we see.  Or as a prophet once said, “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.  But maybe everything that dies, baby, one day comes back.”

As we trace dust and ashes through the Old Testament, however, it may be a surprise to find that in addition to symbolizing death, they also point to divine judgment.  What is our ancient enemy, Satan, consigned by God to gulp down by the mouthful, and what will greet a newly post-sin Adam at the end of his life, except dust (Gen. 3:14, 19)?  Later on as God’s story unfolds, when the Lord brings his just wrath upon a city, it will be left, tellingly, in ashes (e.g., Ezek. 28:18).  It’s specifically a world that’s fallen into sin that’s filled with dust and ashes.  

If anything, dust is designed to bring and keep us low, not to raise us up.  Frequently in the Old Testament, ashes complement sackcloth as an accoutrement of deep and dire repentance (Job 30:19, 42:26).  Ashes portray a prostrate, empty posture.

In the bible, then, dust and ashes aren’t particularly hopeful.  There’s no rebirth-from-the-ashes story here.

Except there kind of is.  Despite dubious claims of reliquaries to the contrary, the cross upon which Jesus of Nazareth was nailed was lost long ago to time.  More pointedly, the cross itself has returned to dust and ash.  And yet, even if Jesus’ cross has been blown away by the centuries, he himself has still lives.  Not rebirth, per se, but resurrection.  The same resurrection to which we who believe in Christ are united by faith.

As we begin Lent with Ash Wednesday, we repent and mourn.  But as Jesus’ death on the cross has yielded to indestructible life (Hebrews 7:16), we dream of life beyond the ashes.

Share