Two days ago I spun out ten reasons to be happy about Lent, but, in reading over the list, I discovered that all ten reasons are really the same reason. You won’t be surprised to hear what that single reason is.
Repentance. Or, if you’re reading Nailed It, Repent Already.
Repentance is the ground, the foundation of the Christian life. It’s not something you ever move away from, or pass over in the desire to get to better things. Every day the Christian repents. Every week. Every Sunday. There is never a moment when you couldn’t, for all kinds of different reasons, pause and acknowledge your fundamental orientation away from God and toward yourself. In birth, in life, in death, in all things, the Christian repents, says sorry, turns again in humility to the One who, though perfect in justice, nevertheless has mercy on the repentant sinner by absorbing the due penalty of sin in himself.
I bring this up because you might have come across a new twist on the ancient Lenten tradition of marking out the penitent sinner with ash. On Ash Wednesday, the first day of the 40 days leading up to Easter, Christians around the world will go to church, repent of their sins, and then go humbly forward to receive the sign of the cross in ash on the forehead.
It is a sign in two parts. The ash is an acknowledgment of the sinner’s mortality. We are but dust, formed in the image of God, but we return to the dust because we reject the God who gives us life. And so we die. Everyone of us goes down to the grave, inexorably, without exception.
But the ash is marked out in the sign of the cross–that same cross on which Jesus, who came in the likeness of men, took our death, our rejection of himself, onto himself and died in our place. It is through the cross–that great foolishness to the world–that the Christian, though dust, goes on into glory.
This year, though, this great stark image of the cross formed in ash, marking out the sinner desiring to be saved, is being in some places, by some people, altered by the inclusion of glitter. To quote the website where you can find out how to go about such a corruption,
“Ashes are an in-your-face statement that death and suffering are real.
The glitter will be a sign of our hope, which does not despair.
The glitter will signal our promise to repent, to show up, to witness, to work.
Glitter never gives up — and neither do we.”
As you can see, the first problem is the twist on the ash. It is not an in your face statement that death and suffering are real. Rather, it is the humiliating acceptance by the one who wears it that death is deserved, brought about because of that sinner’s sin. It is an acknowledgment that the sinner will die because of sin, that death comes because of sin, that the wages of a rebellious life are eternal separation from the source of life. You go and mark yourself with ash because you want to say to God and to yourself that you know you are going to die, that you are going down in sorrow to Sheol, that there is nothing you can do about it, that you have no power in yourself to help yourself, and that you need help, you need saving, you need rescuing.
The addition of glitter to this sign is blasphemous. The sign of glitter, in so far as it is impossible to remove and is therefore a sign of never giving up, is diametrically opposite from the sign of ash. Glitter is a symbol of pride, of self acceptance, of self love. It is an in your face declaration of the self as primary over all things. The whole point of the ash is that you have given up. You can’t do anything but die. Combining that symbol with one that insists you haven’t given up is, to say it as mildly as possible, wrongheaded.
As you read on through the website you will see no mention of the cross, nor even of Jesus, about whom Ash Wednesday manifestly is. Rather, towards the very end, you will be prompted to buy a book on Queer Virtue. I haven’t read this book or heard of this movement so unfortunately I can’t say anything about it. But the website alone makes me grieve, deeply.
St. Paul in I Corinthians writes, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The great tragedy of the cross for the human person is that there all the goodness, all the virtue, all the justice, all the beauty that you have accumulated for yourself comes to nothing. The name that you have made for yourself is as worthwhile as ash, as anything that burns up so quickly in a fire. There you stand before the only perfect man who ever lived, clothed while he is naked, whole while he is bleeding, forgiven while he is condemned, unashamed while he is shamed, alive while he is dead. That Should Have Been You. When you look carefully you see that it should have been you.
This is a great foolishness to every source of pride that we accumulate and build. Even pride in sexual identity. Even pride in something as meager as just getting out of bed on time. All human pride is as ash before Jesus forsaken on the cross. Therefore, you cannot bring with you your pride when you come to him. You can’t bring the law if you’re a Judaizer, you can’t bring your injured self regard if you’re a millennial, and you can’t bring glitter if you’re self identified by a series of letters. All you can bring is repentance, being sorry enough for sin that you’re desperate enough for Jesus.
But when you do, when you repent, when you turn to the Lord in dust and ash, when you cling on to the cross as one drowning, then consider the glory that awaits you, the healing, the wholeness, the dignity, the love. All that flows out from God himself, to you, because he took your place so that you could be with him. The substance of your life is then no longer ash, it doesn’t all blow away in the wind. Real precious jewels, real virtues of humility, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self control take the vaporous place of what once was your pride. Glitter in this setting is chintzy, plasticky. It may be really hard to get rid of, but eventually, like pride, it won’t last either.
This Ash Wednesday stick with the ash in the sign of the cross. Repent of your sins and God, who is always faithful, always, whose mercies are fresh and new every morning, will cleanse you from all unrighteousness, will gather you to himself, will clothe you, and love you, and bring you into eternal life. The way is open for you, go forward and accept this sign.
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