Ashes

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday - the first of the 40 days of Lent. And, like many of my fellow Christians, I attended a special service of worship which included the imposition of ashes. I have participated in Ash Wednesday services since I was very little. Then, I was the one walking up to the pastor... Now I am the pastor. (It is still a bit of a mind-trip, really.)

The church I am now serving held its Ash Wednesday service last night. I called the service "A Service of Confession and Forgiveness". Throughout the service, we read scripture and prayed together, confessing the sins of idolatry, violence, and selfishness. And together, we heard God's clear promise of forgiveness. We heard that Good News. We let the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit burn away those valueless sins, purifying our hearts so that we might have a new space present within us for the new life offered us in Christ. Then the mark of the ashes was offered as a sign of our forgiveness and new life.

Now, I must admit... I typically have every element of these services planned out to the letter. But, I struggled with one element this year: what to say while I was marking my fellow travelers with the ashes. Traditionally, the pastor will refer to God's words to Adam in Genesis 3:19: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I've used those words before - and they are certainly appropriate - but, they just didn't seem to fit the full context of the service that I had put together. For whatever reason, I just couldn't decide what I needed to say... So, I stepped out in faith and decided to let the Spirit give me the words in the moment. Seriously. I walked down, opened the earthenware container that held the ashes, and waited for the people to come forward...all the while, having no idea what I would say as I made the sign of the cross on their foreheads with palm ashes.

Well, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Spirit showed up just in time. As I marked the first person with ashes, I found myself saying, "The gift of God's grace, given to you." It certainly fit. Each and every one of us...marked with grace.

Anyone who has ever received the mark of ashes -- as well as, and perhaps more especially those who have ever done the marking -- will tell you that the ash just seems to get everywhere. Sure, you may have started with it only on your forehead, but somehow you will find that you get smudges of it on your hand, your bulletin has ashy fingerprints on it, or your glasses get a few flecks of ash on them. And if you are the one who is offering the mark of ashes...well... it is practically impossible not to get smudges of ash all over everything -- your robe, your cheeks, your Bible, the hymnal... I can't explain it. No matter how careful I am each year, I always end up with ashy smudges on things. Sometimes I discover them weeks later, only to wonder how on earth it got smudged with palm ashes.

So, with my index finger coated in ashes, as I tried to avoid getting ash marks all over the hymnal, I thought back to the words that the Spirit had given me as I made the sign of the cross on the foreheads of my fellow Lenten-travelers. "The gift of God's grace, given to you." And I had an epiphany, of sorts... God's grace is a lot like the ashes of Ash Wednesday. God's grace is a free gift. God's grace is pure. And God's grace gets all over everything...and there isn't anything any of us can do about it. Oh, sure... we try to stop God's grace from touching things (or people, or groups) that we don't think it is supposed to touch. But there really isn't anything we can do to stop it -- or, more specifically, there's nothing we can do to stop God from marking whatever or whomever God wants with smudges of grace.

Like the ashes of Ash Wednesday, the grace of God ends up all over the place...even the unexpected places... And -- when it comes to God's grace -- that is how it should be. Thanks be to God.