passionate elementals :Holy Wednesday: Ash

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .

This day — a gift from you.

This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.

This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.

This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home

     halfway back to committees and memos,

     halfway back to calls and appointments,

     halfway on to next Sunday,

     halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,

     half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,

   but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —

     we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:

       of failed hope and broken promises,

       of forgotten children and frightened women,

     we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;

     we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with

   some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes

   anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —

   you Easter parade of newness.

   Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,

     Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;

     Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.

   Come here and Easter our Wednesday with

     mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon. 

‘Marked by Ashes’

Walter Brueggemann

The stink of smoke as fires render sacrificial fat for Priests to eat, disintegrate bones into dust, spill juices into the ash pile below; a heap that grows with every offering from the queue of Passover believers.

The welcoming curl of woodsmoke greets the stranger hesitantly entering a crowded courtyard late at night, braziers left burning high in the excitement as each group tries to find out the latest news; and ash sparks high into the night above, as if commentating on the giddy crowd, on our fleeting loyalties, on our impermanence.

In my mind I am standing in the quarry of Golgotha as fire crumbles my hallelujah palm before me, when a passer by grabs a handful and derisively smears it on my forehead and on my clothes, marking me out: as what? am I traitor? am I bystander? am I penitent?  I am weak. I am inconstant. I am confused. I am overcome.  I remember that I am dust, and to dust I shall return.

But what does it mean for a Christian society to embrace its outsiders, as Jesus Christ embraced the outsiders and as we are invited to embrace Christ the Outsider? … We may congratulate ourselves that we welcome the stranger, feed the poor, clothe the cold, feed the hungry, defend the defenceless. And, indeed, when we serve the least of these we serve the Christ.

But let’s push that challenge outside our comfort zone, outside our city walls. Let’s push it to where God is prepared to go, where we often are not, out into the darker areas, out to the Golgotha of humanity, where we dare not look. Can we recognize the Christ there, bruised, battered and bleeding where humanity is most reviled and despised? Can we extend our love and forgiveness and redemption where God is prepared to go, but we may not? For that is the challenge that is laid down this week.

So where and who do I mean? Well, try this: Does our Christian society reach out to the paedophile? Does it reach out to Jon Venables, one of the child murderers of another defenceless child? Does it reach out to the drug dealer, or the one who deliberately passes on the Aids virus through promiscuous sex, or the al-Qaeda terrorist with the bomb in a back-pack, the genocidal mass murderer? This is our Golgotha, the place of the skull, the worst of our humanity … are we prepared to go there, looking God’s redemption?

If the answer to any of that is No, then this week tells us we’re not going out with the Christ to Golgotha. We’re abandoning him to that hell, as his friends did – all except some of the women, whose nurturing instinct led them to witness to the end. And if we simply can’t go there as a Christian society, then we are like that Jerusalem society of long ago – welcoming Jesus the Outsider in when it suits us, throwing him out with the other outsiders when he becomes a nuisance. This week we ask the question of ourselves: Are we prepared to take the risk of going outside our city walls with him?

Revd George Pitcher, Religious Affairs Editor, The Daily Telegraph, and Associate Priest at St Bride's Mar 29, 2010

ponder our ashness. (iPhone image)