Tuesday, February 24, 2009
What Do You Do With Ash Wednesday?
I think Ash Wednesday poses an interesting conundrum for the church, or at the very least my preaching. On the one hand we have the Jesus preaching in Matthew about not being "showy" about our faith, but to live out our faith as if only God were watching (my paraphrase). Then on the other hand we put these big smudges of ash on our foreheads showing the whole world how very religious we all are. It feels to me like on the one hand we are telling people not to act "this" way and then turn around say we will now live our our faith "this" way. What do you think? How do we avoid making Ash Wednesday Worship a service of contradiction?
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4 comments:
Our church service is in the evening, which initially bothered me. Then I realized it does encourage people to go home, pondering the message in their hearts. In seminary, we washed our faces in the baptismal font before we left chapel- thus removing the ashes from our foreheads (but not our hearts).
Ooh, I like that baptismal font idea.
A smudge?? Funny, I thought we were being marked by the cross of Christ, similarly to how we were marked by water and oil in baptism. "You are dust and to dust you will return" was said to me. To me it is a service of pondering our mortality, Christ's sacrifice, our sin, and in forgiveness and communion what our lives can be. Showy about our faith/showing how religious we are? I don't think so. Besides a cross of ash on our forehead, or wearing a cross necklace, or another Christian symbol is hardly the same as what they were talking about in the Matthew text. Coincidentally tonight's word verification is "cross", not kidding.
Anonymous,
It does appear you understand the practice and meaning of our Ash Wednesday worship. Yet, how many gathered in the pews understand that? How does the world see it? When someone, say a newscaster, appears on TV with an ash cross on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, is it seen by others as sincere practice of faith, embracing their mortality and sinful self? Or is it seen as a pompous show of religion?... And yes, this practice of ours is different than what Jesus was talking about, but it's not a far stretch different (at least in my opinion). An empty ritual for show is an empty ritual for show.
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