It's true that Ash Wednesday is somber. I joked with my congregation that you can't really go around saying, "Happy Ash Wednesday!" But in the midst of the solemnity is real joy. It is the joy that always comes from true penitence. Rending your heart because you know you've fallen short. Crying out to a merciful God that you know always shows mercy. Confessing sins before the entire congregation. Following in the tradition of the Ninevites who marked their heads with ashes as a sign of sorrow. But in the mist of the ashes is the deep joy of knowing that we serve a God who delights in the confessions of his people. He is a God that rejoices more over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine who think they don't need to. In the penitence, is a profound hope for the future: hope that my life and your life can be different -- that our lives can be marked by victory and liberation and life to the full rather than defeat and bondage and darkness.
Last night I got to put ashes on the foreheads of about fifty people. They came to me one by one. Some of them smirking in embarrassment because it was unfamiliar. And some with tears streaming down their cheeks because they had been needing to do this for a long time. I made the sign of the cross on their heads and reminded each of them, "You were made from ashes and to ashes you shall return someday."
Something within us needs to openly acknowledge that we're all screwed up. Ash Wednesday is just such an acknowledgment. But it is more than that. It is an expression of hope that we won't always be that way. Within the ashes is a deep, rich, resonant hope that looks beyond the cross to that wonderful Sunday in our future.
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