Ash Wednesday & Lent

A Primer for Worshipers

I’m new here…

If you’ve never been to an Ash Wednesday service, there are some parts of it that probably are most helpfully introduced before you participate. The following resource has been developed in hopes of educating and inviting worshipers to be a part of Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Lent

Lent is a season of preparation for the celebration of Resurrection Sunday (Easter). Much like Advent prepares us for the celebration of Jesus’ Birth, Lent prepares us to commemorate His death and resurrection. Lent is the 40 days (not counting the Sundays) leading up to Easter. The hope is that growth will take place in our relationship with Jesus during this preparation time. The 40 day time period echoes Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness before His temptation. Sundays are excluded because Sundays are “mini-Easters”. Each Sunday is a celebration of the new life we have in Jesus with the new family He’s brought us into by His death and resurrection. While many traditional observances around Lent, like Fat Tuesday and the ever-popular Friday Fish Frys distract from the main purpose, there is still much good to be had in observing Lent.

Ash Wednesday

Lent begins on a Wednesday and is often marked by a worship service in which ashes have a prominent part. While the history of Ash Wednesday is not as ancient as the observance of Lent itself, it stretches back over 1,000 years and has roots in Scripture itself. Ash (or dust) is a symbol of two main things in the Bible: human mortality and repentance.

As part of the curse on humankind for their sin, God spoke these words in Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (NIV) “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust” have been the words used at Christian burial rites for hundreds of years. Those words find their foundation in this Genesis passage. They acknowledge this reality: Human beings are mortal. Our days are numbered. In a Psalm attributed to Moses we find these words, “You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” (Psalm 90:3, NIV) As we attempt to draw near to God, the humility of Abraham’s interaction with God should be ours. “Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes…” (Genesis 18:27, NIV) As humans, we often strive to make ourselves, our lives, our stuff and even our struggles out to be bigger than they are. We are finite. We are not God. In a world that screams at us that we ‘matter’ and that our preferences should dictate our lives, it is powerfully helpful to be reminded of our beginning and end. And so, the ashes of an Ash Wednesday service can be a powerful, tangible reminder, mortality is a part of our story. There are matters of life and death and nothing speaks more deeply to those matters than Jesus’ death and resurrection life.

Repentance and ash also have a long history of being woven together Biblically speaking. Job is only one of the many men and women of the Bible who showed their repentance for sin outwardly by putting ashes on themselves. Job 42:5-6 record Job’s reaction to having encountered God in his sinfulness. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (NIV) David, Tamar, Mordecai, and Daniel are among the ‘who’s who’ of people in the Biblical record who used ashes as an outward sign of deep sorrow and pain. They were seeking God inwardly but ashes became the outward sign of their soul deep cries. And so, along with our mortality, we take Ash Wednesday as a helpful reminder of the source of that mortality, our sin. And, as we are reminded of our sin, we are called to repent. In his first letter to the church, the Apostle John shows us this very pattern in these verses: This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10, NIV)

In this way, Ash Wednesday calls us to acknowledge our sinfulness while giving full attention to God’s way of dealing with our sinfulness, Jesus’ death. Repentance is a process. Confession is us agreeing with God that we do not fit into His perfect holiness. Admitting to the crime is only one aspect of repentance though. We must also accept the forgiveness and purity that God offers through Jesus. Then finally, we must turn our back on our sinfulness, seeking to live a holy life by God’s Spirit.

In an Ash Wednesday service, the participants are called to repentance in light of Jesus’ death. Many familiar acts of worship will occupy the service; singing, reading Scripture, prayer, hearing a message together, acknowledging our sinfulness, confessing our sin, and receiving God’s forgiveness. What may be unfamiliar is the tone of the service and the imposition of ashes. Ash Wednesday worship services are typically somber rather than celebratory. Often, alongside Good Friday, it is one of the ‘saddest’ services of corporate worship in the year. The imposition of ashes is the fancy way to say, the part of the service when a worshiper receives a smear of ash on their forehead. The most traditional way of doing this is in the shape of a cross, as the person smearing the ash says, “You are dust and to dust you will return.” The ashes themselves are typically from dried and burned palm leaves (from the previous year’s Palm Sunday service), which are mixed with oil or water to make a paste.

As a church, we observe Ash Wednesday in hopes of helping each worshiper remember their mortality, acknowledge their sin and marvel at their Savior who overcame death by death.

Fasting

Traditionally, Lenten observation includes fasting. That is to say that the worshiper chooses something (traditionally food or a category of food) to do without for the purpose of devoting themselves more to worship. Worship has to be the purpose and focus of fasting, anything less and we’ve turned fasting into a strange diet plan. When we fast, we purposely deny ourselves something our bodies crave so that we can remind ourselves, “Jesus is best.” Done right, fasting turns us from a ‘bread alone’ approach to human survival. We are reminded that Jesus was right when He quoted Deuteronomy to the devil in Matthew 4:4, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” We fast that we might feast on the Word of God and the presence of the Word made flesh, Jesus.

Is Lent for me?

That is a genuinely vital question. There are benefits to observing Lent. There are also dangers- legalism, empty ritualism, an unhelpful seasonal aspect to your following Jesus (like New Year’s resolutions for Christians); just to name a few. If it is of help to you, we encourage you to participate. If you simply want to observe and explore further, we encourage your attendance and look forward to genuine dialog. If you find it unhelpful, please know that your choice not to participate brings no judgment.