Ash Wednesday

 

The Conversion of St. Augustine by Fra Angelico 

Daily Lectionary for Ash Wednesday

The Lord remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103

 

“I didn’t know you were supposed to be mean for Lent.” So said one of my children around the age of ten after an Ash Wednesday service. They found my going around telling people that they were going to die, and quite literally rubbing it in, a little cruel.

And to an age with childlike delusions of its own morality and immortality, the unvarnished, universal and personal conviction of sin and sentence of death in the marking of this day must seem mean. We would rather pretend otherwise.
  

“You are dust.” It reminds me of the contemporary idiom, “You’re toast.” But this dreadfully honest diagnosis is the first step in our healing. And I would commend healing to you as a new and ancient way of thinking about Lent. A 6th Century Office Hymn for Lent is titled Now is the Healing Time Decreed.  
Ash Wednesday, Penitence, Lent, Repentance, and Reconciliation are all about healing, healing within ourselves, between ourselves and with our God.  Healing for Christians is, first and last, Forgiveness.

So the mean and cruel ashes of this day call us to seek the healing of our immorality and our mortality in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We should welcome the ashes of this day as an honest diagnosis that has a cure and we should welcome the way, however uncomfortable, they affirm our commonality.  

You are dust! Far from being a sign of devotion, ashes on your head are a sign of our mortality, frailty and culpability. And in this there is no distinction. Thank God, there is more to human solidarity than just our sin and suffering, our brokenness and death. But it does not hurt us to be reminded that we all bleed and cry, and die alike. 

 

I also imagine the ashes of this day as God’s sign on all of us, Fragile, Handle with Care. The Lord remembers that we are but dust, but we forget this about ourselves and about one another.  We are all “frail children of dust and feeble as frail.” Part of our Healing Journey together is to relearn and remember that we are all Frail, Feeble, and Fragile. Handle with Care!

The great sweep of Sacred Scripture affirms and teaches that “there is no distinction, all have sinned” but this is hardly a wisdom that we could not come to on our own.  What Scripture also teaches and the Church affirms is a unity and solidarity of humanity in creation and redemption that is prior to all subsequent distinctions, hostilities, and dividing walls and that finally transcends them all. We are first and last human beings. 

Genesis explicitly teaches us that our common humanity, created by God in God’s own image and likeness, is prior to the distinction of male and female, man and woman. So St. Paul addresses us as children of God by faith in Christ Jesus in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26,28).  

Some of us face the new identities and genders that we hear of and meet in our day with fear, suspicion and confusion. There is a lot of work to be done, both theological and pastoral, to address a rapidly changing context but our one common message in the face of multiplying sexual and gender identities must be that we find our fundamental and common identity and dignity together in our Creator and Redeemer. We are first and last human. 
 

We are all sinners but we are all also made in the image and likeness of God and we are all those for whom Christ died. Son of Man is sometimes translated Human One and we learn from Jesus how to be human. In him humankind is restored and in rediscovering that humankind in Christ, humankindness is re-established. Without a theology of humankind, our kindness will always fall short and show its narrowness, its small mindedness, its hard heartedness. 

 

It is in his life and supremely in his passion and death that Jesus shows us what it is to be human. It is to cry and bleed and die, but it is also the reign of service and the glory of sacrifice. To be fully human is to serve and to give. Jesus Christ shows us our dignity.  In him we find our true identity and our solidarity. 

 

You are dust, but also so much more! 

 

The Rt. Rev. Michael Hawkins

Assistant Bishop, Diocese of Calgary

--

The Hymn and tune I have chosen (also the tune for another Lenten Hymn Lord in this thy mercy’s day) have a rare 777 meter. It is a period piece, long out of musical and spiritual style but I am grateful for our Nigerian sisters and brothers in the Diocese of Lagos Mainland for preserving this text and tune with their odd meter and haunting pleading that are gripping and dripping with honesty. I have chosen it because of its perspective on Lent, on Repentance and Reconciliation as Healing. Let this be for us a season of deep inner and interpersonal healing. 

Here is the text of the Hymn in case you want to sing and pray along. 

 

Heal me, O my Saviour, heal;

Heal me as I suppliant kneel;

Heal me, and my pardon seal.

Fresh the wounds that sin hath made;

Hear the prayers I oft have prayed,

And in mercy send me aid.

Helpless, none can help me now;

Cheerless, none can cheer but Thou;

Suppliant, Lord, to Thee I bow.

Thou the true Physician art;

Thou, O Christ, canst health impart,

Binding up the bleeding heart.

Other comforters are gone;

Thou canst heal, and Thou alone,

Thou for all my sin atone.

Heal me, then, my Saviour, heal;

Heal me, as I suppliant kneel;

To Thy mercy I appeal. Amen

    

 

Heal Me, O My Saviour Heal 
Bishop Adelakun Howells Memorial Church, Surulere, Lagos 

  

Tune: St. Philip

Director of Music/Conductor: Mr. Johnson Adejare

Organist: Mr. Femi Adeniran

Appreciation: Ven. Feyi Ojelabi

Innovator: Rt. Rev. B.C. Akinpelu Johnson