To encourage children and parents to come together for worship, the children come to worship and stay until after the children's sermon when they are dismissed for Sunday School. They come back as a group during communion and those not communing receive a blessing. Most of them come up to me smiling and lift their faces to me to receive a cross with the words of blessing. But this week was different. They came in the middle of the week.
It was Ash Wednesday, a special day in itself and the beginning of the church season of Lent. The season of Lent, is a time for the kind of reflection, discipline, study, and prayer that helps our faith to grow stronger. The day of Ash Wednesday is set aside for worship that includes confession and holy communion. Those who wish to take part can come forward and receive a cross of ashes on their forehead.
The cross is a repetition of the cross made in baptism and so is a reminder of our baptism. On the day of baptism, the cross is made with scented oil and the words are spoken, "you are marked with the cross of Christ forever".
The ashes are from palm leaves from last year's Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter). I buy ashes from my local church supply store because they are finer and blacker that any I can create (they are burned at a higher temperature). This night, the words are, "Dust you are and to dust you shall return".
When the time came, I invited everyone to come forward to receive the ashes. It was a smaller and more somber crew than a regular Sunday but the children came with their parents. It was fine until one of the younger children hid behind her mom. She held tight to her mother's hand and refused to receive her ashes. It was obvious to me that she was scared.
After worship, I thought to myself, we should all be scared of receiving those ashes. They are a reminder of the new and eternal life we have in baptism but they are also a sign of our brokenness and mortality; of the death that is all we have without God's love.
I remember the words of a professor at seminary who said that he dreaded doing ashes on Ash Wednesday because he would see each member eye-to-eye and know that he would be doing a funeral for one or more of them in the next year. Now I know what he meant.
Why do Lutherans cling so to the cross and its shadow of death? There are plenty of pastors and churches that chose to elevate only the glory, the love, and the positive. Those who will talk about the bread and cup of love or life but not the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. I knew a pastor who changed the words of this night to "dust you are and from dust Jesus saves you". Why do we insist on scary stuff?
For me, it lies in this truth: I cannot save myself. It is only by the death and resurrection of the Savior, through Jesus taking my place and paying the price that I or any of us have hope. We no longer have to question if we are good enough, if we have made the right choice, or if we have done enough. God has done the doing. God has done the choosing. God begins the loving.
My little parishioner may have been frightened of the ashes, but she came gladly and confidently to receive her blessing and the cross on her forehead during the time of communion. The power of the cross of Christ may seem foolish and hard to understand but it is our hope and salvation. Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
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