Ash Wednesday

This morning, I read an article by a writer some of you may know: Diana Butler Bass. In the article, she said she really wasn’t in the mood for Ash Wednesday this year.

Here’s what she wrote: “I’m not well. My soul is sick. I see nothing but greed, destruction, lying, inhumanity, and evil all around. If anyone tells me that I came from ash and will return to it, I may well laugh in their face. Or cry and never stop. I just hope I don’t hit the priest. Because — read the room, people — we’re standing in ash up to our knees.”

You may be feeling much the same way. Or maybe not. Maybe you look around and don’t quite understand what others are so worried about.

Either way, when it comes time for the imposition of ashes, please don’t hit me when I say the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Because the truth is that we need the reminders that Ash Wednesday gives us. We need to remember that we are mortal—and fallible. We need the disciplines of the season of Lent—maybe especially in a time like this.

Lent is a time for self-examination, self-denial, and repentance. Lenten practices used to be much stricter than they are today. Last night, we gathered for a pancake supper. That tradition dates to a time when Christians fasted from all the ingredients of pancakes during Lent – milk, eggs, and sugar. And of course they also fasted from meat. For centuries, many Christians would eat only a single daily meal—a vegan meal—during the Lenten season. The Lenten fast used to mean giving up a lot more than chocolate.

In recent decades, the emphasis of Lent has shifted for many good reasons more to a practice of taking something on—charitable work, prayer, spiritual reading. And certainly, fasting from food can be overdone. Anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder shouldn’t try it. But it’s interesting that Jesus seems to assume that we will fast. He tells us not to make a show of fasting, but still he says, “whenever you fast.”

Fasting from food can be helpful particularly when it increases our empathy for those who don’t have enough. One year, I spent Lent living on a food stamp budget—and I learned a lot from that. But fasting doesn’t just have to involve food. It can be valuable to fast from anything that numbs or distracts us. We can fast from shopping, alcohol, or social media.

Fasting can be a powerful spiritual tool. But fasting alone isn’t enough.

I described Lent as a time for self-examination self-denial, and repentance. But Lent is also a time to listen to the words of the prophets, a time to work for justice.

And perhaps the central lesson of Ash Wednesday is that you can’t have one without the other.

Some people would have us work for justice, but skip self-examination. Others would prefer that we focus on self-examination, and pay no attention to the suffering of others.

But Jesus tells us we need to do both. We need to pray. We need to fast. We need to give.

The prophet Isaiah puts it even more starkly.

Bowing and scraping before God isn’t enough. Ashes on your forehead “will not make your voice heard on high.”

The fast that God demands requires much more of us, Isaiah says.

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

If you do those things, then, and only then, Isaiah says, “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”

These can be hard words to hear in a time when voices threatening the poor, the hungry, the foreigner, the outcast, and the oppressed are becoming louder every day.

Ash Wednesday is a day for truth. Lent is a season for truth.

We’re living in difficult times and it can be so very tempting to turn away. But I hope to lean into Lent this year. To pray. To fast. To give. And to work for justice.

On this day and in this season, whatever Lenten practices you choose to take on or set aside, I ask you this: Don’t close your eyes – to your own failings, or to the suffering of others. The state of your soul matters. The state of our world matters.

And the time is now.

For remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.