Ash Wednesday
On Sunday during the liturgy[1], we burnt the palm crosses given out last year on Palm Sunday. The ashes from these crosses will form the ash with which church goers will be marked today. The wording for this ritual was so moving that I thought it worth sharing.
The Burning of the Palm Crosses
Let us give thanks and worship God with reverence and awe
for our God is a consuming fire.
On Palm Sunday last year we carried these crosses of palm as a sign of the victory of
Jesus. They were new and green and fresh. They were a sign to us of all the good and
holy within us that responds to God’s call in our lives.
But they are made in the form of the cross.
They reminded us that like the first disciples we, too, fail to live into the truth of Jesus
and must humbly wait for God’s grace to bring us home. We have kept them
throughout this year. Now we give them up to the fire.
The palm crosses are lit.
The ashes call to mind endings. The end of unclear thinking, insecure faith, wavering
commitment and the end of the struggle between death and life.
Loving God,
bless us as we prepare to look deeply within ourselves
through the coming season of Lent.
Let these ashes be for us a way to journey more deeply into Christ. Amen.
Two things stood out for me – the newness and freshness of the crosses when we received them last year contrasted with the endings that the ashes call to mind.
The words with which we are marked with ash: “Dust you are and to dust you will return” are both powerful and humbling words. Not only do they recall our creation from the earth, but they serve as a reminder of our insignificance in the broader scheme of things. “Dust you are.” In the context of the broader community, the nations, the world, the galaxy, the universe, we are as a speck of dust – small and irrelevant except in the very small circle in which we exist. What is more, no matter what we achieve in this lifetime – fame, fortune, influence, it will come to an end.
Knowing this put all worries, hurts, ambitions, and dreams into perspective – in the wider scheme of things they are trivial. For most of us, all our striving and all our holding on will, at the end, come to nothing.
Lent is a wonderful time to put things into perspective, to reflect on beginnings and endings and to recalibrate our relationship with God, with each other and with creation.
May you have a holy and fruitful Lenten season.
[1] St Andrew’s Indooroopilly.
Swallowsrest 