"ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST"

 “ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST”

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  Caroline and I used those words from the Ash Wednesday liturgy last week as we led the worship service at a seniors residence on the edge of Decatur.  Ash Wednesday is not a happy day in the liturgical calendar – it begins the season of Lent.  Lent is a time when we are asked  to begin a season of reflection on human mortality, on our brokenness and woundedness.

In this season of Lent in 2022, it is not difficult to imagine human brokenness.  We are not being sad sack, depressing Christians when we ask people to remember our woundedness.  The Russian bombs are falling on Ukraine.  The White South is once again rising in American culture, as it has so many times.  Many of us have lost friends and loved ones to the power of death recently.  The Covid pandemic has made us all feel isolated and overwhelmed and lost.  Our national love of weapons and violence is proving its power, as we see huge rates in homicides and gun violence.  In these days, the season of Lent doesn’t seem so much to be a brief prelude on the way to Easter – it seems more like our permanent state of being in the world in these days.

The tradition of Lent is that we are asked to journey with Jesus to the Cross, and in that journey, we are asked to reflect upon our captivity to various powers which cause us to hurt ourselves, hurt others, and to hurt God.  That captivity usually grows out of our own individual woundedness and of the collective woundedness of us as a culture.   It is that woundedness and that captivity which make us believe that the powers like race and gender and money and redemptive violence can bring us relief, and even bring us meaning.  

In this journey of Lent, we are asked to remember how quickly many of the followers of Jesus fled the scene when he got arrested and especially when he was given the death penalty by Rome.  Only a few of the women disciples stayed with him, and as we enter Women’s Herstory Month, we are asked to remembe that it is the women who have given us the model to follow, not the men.   Jesus came to teach us that it is in love that we find healing for our woundedness and brokenness, not in any of the other categories or fixes of the world.  

    Our first response to this message of love is always a resounding “NO!”  We respond in this way because we are all so threatened by acknowledging our woundedness and the recognition that we all need to love and be loved.  The season of Lent asks us to reflect and act upon this process in the individual and collective human heart, to discern how our pain and our wounds cause us to join the former followers of Jesus who shout out “Crucify him!”

I grew up in  a working class Protestant church, so I was unfamiliar with the traditions of Lent.  Some traditions ask us to give up something for Lent.  Some people give up chocolate; some people give up FaceBook;  some people give up meat.  For this season in 2022, let us give up our captivity to white supremacy.  Let us give up our captivity to sexism.  Let us give up our belief that those who love people of the same gender are inhuman.  Let us give up our belief in that money gives meaning to life.  Let us give up the belief that redemptive violence is possible.  Let us pick one of these captivities and concentrate on its power in our lives in this season of Lent.  That captivity definitely takes us to the Cross.  Perhaps a time of self-reflection on such a captivity can help start us on the road to liberation.

Some traditions emphasize fasting during Lent, and in some Lenten seasons, I have fasted from food one day a week, allowing me to feel a few hunger pangs.  As I think about Lent in this year, I am reminded of one of the lectionary readings for Ash Wednesday.  It is from Chapter 58 of the prophet Isaiah, and the prophet quotes God as sharing this message with us from verses 6-7:

“Is this not the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, 

To undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

And bring the homeless poor into your house,

When you see those without clothing, to share with them?”

In our fasting in this Lenten season, let us be guided by these suggestions.  Lent reminds us that we are headed to the Cross – there is no way around that.  It also suggests ways that we may begin to find some liberation as we journey there.  May it be so with us in this time of woundedness and brokenness.  May we find healing and passion.