Ash Wednesday – Mark S. Winward
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those are the words I will say as I apply a small, cross-shaped smudge of ashes on your forehead as a reminder of your mortality. Many of us don’t need to be reminded of this, as we bear the grief of a cherished loved one or close friend. But if we are realistic, we are aware that any day might very well be “our day,” when we will not see another earthly sunrise.
Besides reminding us of our mortality, since biblical times ashes have represented our desire to turn from our sins. Now sin is not a very popular topic nowadays. After all, preachers go on and on about God’s grace—but we hear less and less about sin. The problem is this: unless we admit our own sin, we can have no grace. Grace implies there is something wrong for which we receive God’s unearned mercy.
Ash Wednesday, pure and simple, is about sin—sin with a big “S” and sin with a small “s.” As I remind you to “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” I am directly quoting Genesis, chapter 3, when God imposed the penalty for the sin of disobedience. Whether you accept the Genesis account literally or not, the message is that at the dawn of humanity, something went terribly wrong. The human race turned against its Creator with devastating consequences. Sin became not just an aspect of humanity but a normative one. After all, we are only human, right? But although we were created in the image of God, we suddenly began not to reflect it. Idolatry, envy, lust, hatred, jealousy, and murder entered into the world, and a huge, seemingly insurmountable wall went up between God, our neighbor, and ourselves. Humanity was truly lost. That was Sin with a big “S.” The result was a kind of spiritual self-destruction and spiritual death.
So now we live in a world where doing our will comes more naturally than doing God’s—where sin is more natural than righteousness. Of course, we’ve developed a number of defense mechanisms to live in our own skins. With Sin came an immense capacity not just for deception but for self-deception. Like a badly fitting shoe, habitually walking in sin shapes us in its image. When that happens, we convince ourselves it really isn’t so bad… After all, the definition of sin is what we think it is (not the Creator). Unfortunately, without reliance on the Creator, we depart from the Source of Life. And like Sin with the big “S,” the result of our own personal sin is a kind of spiritual self-destruction and spiritual death.
The Good News is that God didn’t allow us to be our own worst enemies. The Psalmist depicts God as a patient and loving father—full of compassion and mercy. But while God desired to pardon us, all of us were under the condemnation of a spiritual law that couldn’t be undone without God Himself breaking His own law. Without a heavy price being paid, God would be like a corrupt judge who flaunted the law he was charged to enforce. So God sent His Son to live as one of us, to call us back to Himself, and to pay the heavy price for what we have done wrong. The cross was the collision of God’s unfathomable love and God’s responsibility of justice. So God paid the price for us and, in the words of St. Paul, “made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Quite simply, unless I grasp my personal need for forgiveness, I can never really personally know the meaning of redemption. So any good news of God’s mercy and grace must begin with me reflecting on how I fall short.
Without sin, I have no need of the cross—and without laying my sins at the foot of the cross, I cannot know the abundant life Jesus Christ brought with His victorious resurrection.
Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, a period of personal spiritual preparation as we lead up to our remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and victory over death—Good Friday and Easter. Christians throughout the world observe this time of year with reflection and personal discipline. Many choose to fast in one way or another, while others choose special acts of devotion. But whatever you do, it is not to pay a price that has already been paid. Rather, it is to glorify God personally in the practice of self-discipline and begin to grasp God’s unfathomable love. Because only when we grasp the full weight of our sin can we truly appreciate the freedom and joy a devoted life in Christ brings.