Ash Wednesday

From Wallace W. Robbins' "For Everything There Is A Season: Meditations for the Christian Year" 1978.

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, comes upon this week, and the entire Western Church enters into a time of abstinence and meditation as contemporary Christians retrace the road of Jesus from the Mount of Transfiguration to the hill of execution."In an earlier time this vigil was for forty hours but it was finally extended to forty days. As the Sundays were excluded, they being always days of joyful worship, the beginning of Lent was set back to Wednesday to allow for the full forty days.

It is noticeable that although changes have taken place in the rules governing the intensity of fasting and meditation and in the length of time from hours to days, the one consistency is in the number forty. Forty hours or forty days; it appears of lasting significance that it be forty. Probably this number was agreed upon to correspond with the number of days Jesus spent in the wilderness before he took up his destiny as the serving King. But these forty days had their prefiguration also: the days of the flood, the years of wandering in the wilderness, the days of Elijah's fast.

Forty is a biblical symbol for temptation, a word considerably devalued in present currency to mean the allure of evil. We have come to think of that part of the Lord's Prayer as simply a plea that we be kept out of those situations which are occasions of sin. Typically, modern usage makes the situation of temptation an outward matter. Help man to be clear of outward conditions and you will have cleared his soul of inner turmoil.

Prohibition dealt with alcoholic abuse in this outward fashion, but, because of the inner compulsions of the addicted and of those rebellious against all authority, the situation became worse."The biblical "forty" stands for a different understanding of temptation. It is the tension which one feels in his heart when he sees that victory lies ahead and that safety means turning back. He may wish that the conditions which have brought him to this trial of soul had never come to pass, but since they have, the testing is not in his ability to resolve the conflict but to endure it and, ever in fear, to press forward. The real victory is not to be measured by the success of the action, but by the inner success even in the face of outer defeat.

Nomadic Israel in the wilderness for forty years was not victorius in any achievement except that of survival as a loyal people. Neither by outer attack or by inner dissension could the ultimate integrity of Israel be broken and that inner strength was all and sufficient.

Jesus emerged from his personal journey in the wilderness confirmed in his Jewish vision of what constitutes passing the test, the cleared vision of man as built from the inside out and not made by the laws of state, the rituals of religion, the allurements of pomp and circumstance.

To reflect upon this inner meaning of nations and of men is the business of Lent.

---Another Ash Wednesday reflection from the meditation manual by the Rev. Clarke Dewey Wells, "The Strangeness of This Business."

In a culture where the plastic smile is mandatory and cheap grace abounds, the sober subject of ashes comes almost as refreshment. At least we know we start without illusions. All our minor triumphal entries end, like Lear, a ruined piece of nature upon the rack of this tough world.The ashes of Ash Wednesday are mixed in a common bowl of grief. They are made from palm fronds used in celebration the year before at the brief hour of triumph, Palm Sunday. In the Catholic tradition the ashes are made into a paste and daubed on foreheads of the faithful, a grey sign of execution that must preface any Easter.

John Bunyan said that the woman of Canaan, who would not be daunted, though called dog by Christ (Mat 15.22) and the man who went to borrow bread at midnight (Lk 11.5-8) were, ultimately, great encourageements to him. They hung in there during dark days.

For religious liberals ashes can symbolize, too, the dying of the seed that it may be born, the place of the pheonix, and yes, the dissolution of integrity so that deeper integrities may emerge. The divine creativity leaves ashes in its wake so that new worlds may rise up and adore. In the strangeness of this business Ash Wednesday is the opening to Easter.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which slings so closely, and let us run with perserverance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12.1