Marked with ashes.......

We are marked with ashes

It is not clear whether these ashes

are the sign of a beginning or an ending.

We start with “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” These words accompany this ashen cross we wear and they are intended to remind us that we were formed out of dust. 

Once, two small cells that were joined,

received the breath of life,

grew and loved and hurt and lost,

and would one day return to dust again…

…return to the God who granted life in the beginning.

These ashes are personal.  They are about you and they are about me.  One day we will no longer be.

So these ashes are clearly a sign of an ending.

 My ending.  Your ending.

But there is more.  These ashes also mark the end of a world where might makes right, where the powerless are trampled without regard. 

The end of life as we know it, where gaining

‘one more win” is more valuable than righteousness. 

Where peace with our neighbor is easily relinquished

and the bystander counted unimportant

in order to further our own agenda. 

A world where we will grasp at adventure You Only Live Once

While giving up authenticity and honor in our lives.

 If the ashes mark the end of that life, Then Hurray!

But maybe they are a symbol of a beginning as well?  Of a new being formed?  Of a call to a new way of life?

These ashes are also intended to mark the turning point at which our journey starts along another road,

a different path, living out life in a new and powerful way.

It’s a path where we find ourselves truly loved,

 where we can stop running so hard,

working endlessly to prove ourselves worthy

and where our mistakes, big and small,

are neither labels or barriers to belonging.

A path where the talents and gifts we have – the stuff we want to contribute to others – can be put to work building good. 

These ashes join us to Jesus who put aside

the trappings of this world of power,

 exchanged revenge for mercy and forgiveness,

who built bridges for peace. 

The ashes mark us as new people,

beginning again in the journey along the Jesus path,

taking up the Jesus way, living life in Jesus. 

This ashen path is the path we truly want to take.

So we take on the ashes again, believing we are more than willing

 to leave behind

and cut off

and put to death our investment in the old way,

to give it all over to the dust of death. 

Not just the parts of the old way that caused us harm,

but also the parts that we liked.

Last year, on Palm Sunday, we waved palm branches to honor the coming of a king.  We shouted our Hosannas and rejoiced in Jesus’ presence among us.

The, for another year, we tried to remember

that the praises were only temporary

and the sacrifice was just beginning. 

But it is so easy to forget, because the glory is so addicting.

So we come again and turn those palms of praise into ashes

…we begin again the struggle to live with our heart

and soul and spirit and daily life joined to Jesus

while our feet shuffle along in this world. 

Yet again we confess to God and to one another

 that the path behind this Jesus is long and difficult,

and we have found a thousand ways to stumble and fall. 

We commit again that the ending will truly be an ending

so our new beginnings in Jesus can truly begin.

These ashes mark both an ending and a beginning.  Death and life. 

May you be blessed by these ashes……in the dying…….in the new birth…….and in the Jesus whose love is at the heart of it all….