Today marks the beginning of the Lenten season. 40 days until Easter Sunday. Some say from the 8th or the 11th centuries Christians have been standing in line for some priest or minister to mark their foreheads with a smudge of a cross.
Why would Christians of all ages who carry some burdens and griefs and questions. Why stand in some line remembering those gloomy words: "Dust thou art and to dust thou shall return." Lord, how depressing.
Some say Ash Wednesday is nestled in the old book of Joel. Joel 2. 12-18 . He challenged the people to return with all their hearts...with fasting...with weeping...with mourning....rending their hearts. So Lent really is an inner word for us. A time to be silent. A time to spread out our lives before us. A time to remember our back there when we would do anything to erase the hurt, the anguish we caused--shedding all the shames we still carry.
Some time ago I looked back at the early green days of my own faith journey. How young I was. How hopeful I was. How naive I was. How confused I was. And I remembered the old Broadman Hymnal that I cut my eye-teeth on. All those gospel songs and hymns that lifted me up and carried me along. "Blessed Assurance...Just as I Am...What a Friend We Have in Jesus...Happy Day, Happy Day when Jesus Washed my sins away. Turn your Eyes upon Jesus." That was then,,,and year after year since then so much has happened to me as it happens to us all. Disappointment…victories…joy and delight and all the questions. Not to speak of all those sin and shames--whether real or imagined. Wishing that I could go back and make it all right. This might be why I still remember that poem by A.E Housman:
"When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand at look
At things I could not buy.
Now times have changed
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here so here's the fair
But where's the lost young man?"
Maybe all we poor sheep who have lost our way stand in this long line waiting our turn . Bringing with us some gloom and heartaches but strangely more--a glimmer of light. A word that is good. The old promise that keeps coming back. The Ashes are a reminder that we are all in the same boat--sinners one and all. But more. Children of God.
And so we come just as we are. Bringing it all to that holy line when our turn comes to be marked by the Ashes. To leave the altar with all those others knowing whoever we have done or not done this is not the end. We leave the church and was out into the sunshine.
So we bring with us as we walk down the steps our too-muchness. But outside life stirs. Daffodils. Quince. Forsythia...Crocus. And the birds singing their hearts out. And still we carry some of the terrible things we do not understand. But there is so much more to our stories. We keep going despite it all.
Why? Maybe remembering again that we have stood in this line with all our brothers and sisters knowing we all can go on. The old man who cares for his wife with dementia. The woman whose depression seems to have no end. The young boy with a mask struggling with leukemia. And the woman whose husband is in prison. It defies all reason why they come. But here they are standing in the line with us marked by the smudge of the cross. And we all go on.
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