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Ash Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 58: 1-12; Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21

09/02/05

Tonight we gathered together to celebrate Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. This is a
period of prayer and fasting in preparation for Easter. There is much important symbolism
contained within the liturgy of this service.

First, the use of ashes. Wearing sackcloth and ashes has long been associated with acts of
penitence, throughout the Old and New Testaments there are references to it.

Ashes also symbolize our mortality. We are reminded that God created the first man from the
dust of the earth and to dust we return at the end of this earthly life. This is God’s
sentence on Adam for his fall from grace in the creation story.

So the imposition of ashes is an outward sign of our repentance and a symbol of our
mortality; it is a reminder that we rely on God’s grace for eternal life.

We introduce another symbolism by making the ashes from the burnt palm crosses from last
year's Palm Sunday celebration. Palm Sunday is the day we celebrate Jesus’s triumphal entry
into Jerusalem when the people waved palm fronds little knowing that he would end his visit
by dying on the cross for our sins. We are thus reminded that while we rejoice at Jesus’s
coming we should also regret that our sins made it necessary for him to die to save us.

And further symbolism is added later in the service when we will mark our foreheads with the
sign of the cross in ashes. Marking the forehead is a symbol of ownership in the Bible,
especially in the book of Revelation where the servants of God and the servants of the Beast
each have the seal of their respective masters placed on their foreheads. The cross on our
foreheads marks us as our master’s servants.

Tonight’s readings from the books of Isaiah and Matthew warn us that we should not use the
outward sign to glorify ourselves. We can’t use it to prove our own holiness, nor to create
a stumbling block to others. The fast that God chooses is “to loose the bonds of injustice…
to share bread with the hungry and bring the homeless into your house, when you see the
naked to cover them”. And when we do these things Isaiah tells that God will guide us, will
satisfy our needs and will make us strong. He says “you shall be called the repairer of the
breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” Our inward desire to repent of our sins,
receive God’s divine forgiveness and enter eternal life must be accompanied by a willingness
to do his will, to be our master’s hands and heart and voice in our own community or circle
of influence.

Let us bear that mind as we now enter into the Liturgy of Penitence.

Amen.