Ashes in Asheville

Ashes in Asheville 

Today is Ash Wednesday, and because I am not serving a church right now and because this was a good time for my husband to take a few days off, we found ourselves receiving the imposition of ashes at the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, NC. The service was well-attended for noontime, the liturgy was beautiful, the choir heavenly, the sermon thoughtful and thought-provoking, and the ashes were as dirty and messy as the mortality and sinfulness they represent. The priest who preached talked about the things we need to give up, calling them the things that have a hold on us. They vary from person to person, but some common ones include impatience and arrogance, greed and contempt, busy-ness and not listening.  And isn’t it interesting that the very thing that annoys us in others is often the very thing in us that needs to be eradicated?  

Ashes in all their smutty messiness are the perfect reminder that our lives are messy and that they are not our own. We didn’t create life; it’s a gift of God. We don’t always get it right, and we often don’t even realize it until someone or something points that out.  That’s one reason for observing a holy Lent with its emphasis on self-examination and self-denial and fasting and prayer and meditation on scripture. We need to be stopped in our tracks to recognize the grace of being God’s beloved children and to accept the abundant life of Christ and to breathe in the empowering Spirit  — even as we are marked with the reminder of our brokenness. We acknowledge that we are sinners who will die in order to proclaim that we are holy people who will truly live.

In his adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer, John Wesley eliminated Ash Wednesday and Lent and many of the saints’ days as “presently answering no valuable end,” not because he was opposed to ritual reminders of who we are and what God has done but because the Methodist classes and bands with their mutual accountability and emphasis on regular participation in the means of grace were already doing that —and more. For Wesley, acknowledging our sinfulness and dependence on God was only part of the story of salvation. Active participation in the Spirit’s work of transformation that results in holiness of heart and life is the other key part of the Christian journey. For us who no longer meet regularly to watch over each other in love as the early Methodists did, this day and season can and should help us to grow closer to our God and closer to one another. 

And so, ashes in Asheville seems a good way to start.  Thanks be to God. Amen.