Ash Wednesday

Someone once said that if every Bible in the world disappeared – vanished into thin air – God and humanity would find a way to write and create a new Bible. The people would be different, the culture and time certainly, but the basic story of the relationship between God and creation – this eternal love story -- would somehow be re-told and written anew. I believe this to be true.

I think the same is true of Ash Wednesday. If this day were forgotten and the practice of smearing ashes on foreheads as sign our continual need to turn our lives around and to be reminded of our own mortality, if all of this went out of practice, somehow, I think we’d find a similar way to remind us of truth that we can’t ignore and deny. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” In Spanish, it is: “Recuerda que eres polvo, y al polvo volverás.”

The historical reasons for keeping Lent are no longer part of our community norm. The smudging of ashes on our foreheads is a modern day anomaly. We, for the most part, do not have a large group of adults moving through a catacumanate process, or course, on their way to being baptized at the Easter Vigil. We no longer separate out the most sinful of our lot for them to do penitence and then rejoin the fold at Easter. Our busy consumer-driven lives make it difficult to forget about the needs of our bodies for the energy that food provides. It is hard to fast when we’re on the run and surrounded by excess.

Yet, we keep Lent, we begin with Ash Wednesday and for those willing to listen, this is one thing God may be saying to us: you did not invent yourselves, you were given the breath of life and your basic DNA and your soul out of the building blocks of what has been given to everyone else on earth. We are all sisters and brothers. Sunnis and the Shiite fighting in the streets of Baghdad, Jews and the Palestinians in Israel, Hindus and Muslims in India and Pakistan, Tamil and Singhalese in Sri Lanka, Catholic and Protestant in Ireland’s south and north, 5th generation New Englander and immigrant – illegal and legal, the well-healed S.U.V. driving soccer mom living in the suburbs that surround this capital city, and the single mother living on the edge in our city’s north end and south side. This action of smearing ashes on foreheads that begins the Lenten season is at once very personal and private, but at the same time, in God’s eyes, one of the most communal things we can do.

In the gospel for today Jesus says: “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:20-21. This is a wonderful verse to remind us about how we live our lives, spend our money, and think about the future.

I believe we store up more than treasures on this earth. We store mountains of pain and hurt. Sometime we tuck that pain away so deep that no one will ever know, other times we wear it on our sleeve and leak it out in our harsh words and push others away.

What is it that we have stored up in our lives here on earth that we need to start desperately unloading – for the sake of our souls and for the sake of those we love. Past hurts, resentments that we did not get what we thought we deserved, the cards that we were dealt in an unjust society in an unfair word?

The gift of this seemingly out-of-date season of Lent is that it can give us a set time and goal for what we know we should be doing and praying. Today we pray: God, create and make in us new hearts, we pray on this holy day. Fill our hearts with a lasting sense of your peace.