Ash Wednesday 2002
Week of Monday, February 11, 2002
This week the Christian church celebrates Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent, the forty days of self denial to prepare for Easter Sunday. Just as Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness fasting and praying to prepare for his public ministry (Luke 4:1–12), since the days of the early church his followers have set aside the forty days before Easter as a time of penitential preparation, reflection and self-examination. The rite gets its name from the practice of dabbing ashes on the forehead of worshipers as a sign of penitence. More broadly, in the Old Testament ashes are a symbol of mourning (cf. Tamar in 2 Samuel 13:19 or Jeremiah 6:26), a stark metaphor that even Jesus invokes (Matthew 11:21).
Central to Ash Wednesday are the words from Genesis 3:19, “Remember, O man, that you are but dust, and to dust you shall return.” Whenever I think of this text and its implications, my mind recalls the similar words of the Psalmist, “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away...So teach us to number our days that we might present to Thee a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:10–12). Indeed, the ashes on the forehead, says one Catholic writer, “humble our hearts and remind us that life passes away on earth.”
During the season of Lent the ritual of self denial normally takes the form of fasting in some way. Perhaps a person gives up a favorite food or drink, or fasts one meal a day for the forty days. In its more attenuated version, some Christian traditions fast only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But creativity and imagination can easily extend the discipline. One of the more creative Lenten expressions I have heard was from a scholar whose spiritual adviser urged him to give up reading, of all things. As this scholar told the story, this was the perfect prescription for him and his addiction to books, reading and ideas. Or again, it is easy to imagine an asceticism of how we use our time, choosing to put aside our own little to-do lists that we might better serve those closest to us. What would it look like for me if for a few weeks I gave up my quasi-addictions to music and running?
Self denial? Penitence? Meditation on the brevity of life and one's impending death? Isn't such morose introspection unhealthy? These penitential practices are as diametrically opposed to our culture and its Zeitgeist as one could possibly imagine. Our consumer-driven West creates desires in us we never knew we had or needed, encourages us to indulge every last craving, and in turn to deny even the faintest inclination to any form of self denial.
But self denial is one non-negotiable aspect of following Jesus, and not only as a liturgical rite for a few weeks but as a style of life down through the years. In so doing, Jesus promises us what from our cultural vantage point can only seem like a paradox, the promise that self-denial leads to self-fulfillment, that self-emptying leads to fruitfulness and fecundity not emptiness and loss: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23–24).
If contemporary culture urges us to deny denial, oddly enough, so do some Christians. The Reformers took the seven sacraments of Catholicism and reduced them to two (baptism and the Lord's Supper), so it comes as no surprise that they also did away with the Ash Wednesday ceremony. Lutherans and Anglicans observe Ash Wednesday, and so do other Protestants in some measure, but for the most part Protestants view such liturgical acts with suspicion. Aren't fasting and dabbing ashes on the forehead mere external rites, superficial and even legalistic efforts to merit God's grace? Aren't they just a religious form of works righteousness?
In my own limited experience with fasting, what I have discovered is not a ritual of works righteousness, although like anything else it can become that, but rather an opportunity for spiritual discipline. Denying myself food, even for a short time, has revealed to me how broad and deep is my sense of entitlement, even if only for something as inconsequential as a regular cup of coffee in the morning. Fasting can also reveal just how “embodied” our spiritual lives are, how voracious and deeply powerful our physical appetites can be, and the amount of effort it takes to try to gain even a semblance of control over them. If you want to know just how deeply attached you are to something (food, money, time, whatever), just observe your reactions when that something is taken away.
Perhaps even more difficult than the bodily disciplines of food and fasting are the mental disciplines of self-examination, meditation and reflection. Our information age is an age of mental clutter and overload. Finding the spiritual space and time to be quiet before the Lord can be a huge challenge for most of us. But that is part of Lent too, not to mention the lifelong journey with Jesus.
TS Eliot (1888–1965) was perhaps the greatest poet of modern times. In 1948 he won the Nobel Prize for poetry. Whereas his early work is filled with despair about modern life, his later works are full of hope. Here is the first stanza of his poem “Ash Wednesday” (1930) which I find to be an eloquent and profound expression of the Lenten themes that Christians around the world are now exploring.
In the sixth and final stanza, the last line of Eliot's poem resonates with a Lenten theme that we can all embrace: “And let my cry come unto Thee.”Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing againBecause I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoiceAnd pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.1
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
