Today the church enters into a holy season, the season of Lent. Lent is the forty days before Easter, not including Sundays, which are reserved as days to celebrate the Resurrection. We remember our mortality during this time. We impose ashes today, Ash Wednesday, as a reminder of our need to repent.
In the "old days" when something happened and people wanted to get God's attention, they would impose ashes and put on sackcloth. In the book of Job, Job does this to symbolize his mourning before God. This is a common practice in the Old Testament. Ash Wednesday is a recognition that, as sinners, we all need to repent before God. The time period before the holiest day of the year, Resurrection Sunday, is an appropriate time to take stock of who we are, what we have done and what we have been, and determine to be better.
Years ago I had an experience that gave a new significance to repentance for me. In an interfaith worship experience, I was led by a Jewish colleague in what is known as a t'shuvah service. The word t'shuvah is a Hebrew word for turning. The point of repentance isn't simply to stop whatever behavior is an issue, it is the process of turning from that behavior.
Since that time, I have associated repentance with "turning." This is something the worshipers in my congregation will hear about tonight in our worship service. But I want to turn some attention to the idea of ashes being a reminder of our mortality and what that can mean for us as people, whether we are Christians or not.
Most people do not want to die. Studies in psychology or in literature often focus on our fear of death. We cannot imagine that someday we will not exist. It is so stressful to think of this that we resist even the thoughts. We put off conversations about how we wish to be remembered or how we wish to be cared for at the end of life.
There are some who think this stress about the end of life is at the root of religion, especially at the root of religions that teach there is an afterlife.
But thinking about death is not so bad. I recognize that I will not live forever. That is one of the things that motivates me to do my best right now. It reminds me that I need to work toward something. It reminds me that if I want to leave my mark on the world, hopefully a mark for good, I don't have time to spare. In my tradition, it reminds me that if I want to be as good a person as I can be, I don't have time to dilly dally. I need to work on it all the time, every day.
And then, if I know me, even when I come closer to my end, I will worry that I haven't done enough. For those who know me well, that will not be a surprise. My hope is that if we can think on these things now, most of you won't have that worry. My hope is that if we can imagine a future world where we are no longer alive, it will give us the ability to live for that future so that the world will be better because we were here.
Ashes to ashes...When I am one day ashes, I hope that the world will be better because I lived. To me, that is the point of repentance, the point of Lent, the point of Ash Wednesday, and the point of recognizing our place in the universe, for the believer as a tiny part of the creation of the infinite God, but much the same for others to recognize their small part in such a vast universe.
Perhaps all we can do is a small part to make a better world, but we can do that. As we realize we will one day be ashes or dust, we remember that we need to turn now.
At least that's the view from where I stand.
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