Blog

Ash Wednesday
Daily Scripture Passage: Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

When I was rector of a parish, I cared for people who had come to the end. Almost always they knew they were dying. Almost always it saddened them. Almost always they accepted it, but the people they loved often couldn’t.

I would visit, and we would gather in a living room, or a bedroom, or a hospital room. Eventually, I would ask if the sick person and I could be alone. After everyone had left, the dying person would tell me how relieved they were to be alone with me. They needed to talk about what dying was like, and no one else would listen to them.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

That is what the minister says to each person. You might think a person would recoil, but they don’t. It’s a relief to get real with another person. We are all terminal.

I want to be surrounded by people being real with me as I die. Don’t you?

But I also want them to assure me that Easter is real. I know it for certain now, but I may forget in the hour of my death. Death is real, and resurrection is real, and I need people to hold me as I move through both.

So, this Ash Wednesday we allow symbolic cremains to be smeared on our faces, and we hear the sad news of our impending deaths, but in the background we also hear an echo of the sure and certain hope that echoes throughout our lives. That the dying Jesus is the glorified Christ and, as the author of 1 John says, what he already is, we also shall be.