Ash Wednesday
Bishop Ray R. Sutton

The interment service of the Book of Common Prayer includes a familiar line. As the priest pours dirt on the casket, with it he usually makes a cross. Then he adds the following words, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” On Ash Wednesday we meet the same symbol. With the imposition of ashes in the form of a cross, the priest says, “Remember O Man that dust thou art and to dust thou shall return.” The symbol of an ashen cross offers two gripping images.

The first symbol of course is ashes. It represents the dirt from which God created the first humans. But ashes also remind us of our unintended and unfortunate mortality. Humans were originally created to live forever in the presence of God. At that time, God warned Adam and Eve that should they disobey Him “they would surely die.” For rebellion of that magnitude, God’s justice demanded an eternal death penalty. Indeed, Adam and Eve did not heed God’s warning. They did what they should not. They committed the original, first sin. As a result all humanity inherited the punishment of death; after all, all have sinned. But the death was not only physical but spiritual. As their physical bodies began the slow journey toward material death, Adam and Eve were estranged, separated from God. Spiritual death is worse than the physical. It is life apart from God in a tormenting region called hell. Here is where dust meets everlasting fire to become an ashen existence forever. And so the ancient patriarch, Job, expressed this plight of humanity as he mourned, “I have become like dust and ashes” (30:19). Thus the symbol of ashes reminds us of our beginning and our tragic end were it not for the second symbol tied to the ashes.

The ashes of today point to another death. Like the cross-shaped dust on the coffin, the ashes on our head are made cruciform. The cross of course was an ancient, Roman punitive instrument. By it criminals were punished. By it sinless Jesus died for all of our sins. On it God placed His Son who knew no sin to procure our atonement. In the words of an Easter Sunday prayer just before the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” the priest prays, “Death destroyed death.” The ashes of our mortality are swallowed up by the living crucifix. And so ashes and cross converge on Ash Wednesday pointing to Easter Sunday.

Pioneers were once making their way across one of the central states to a distant place that had been opened up for homesteading. They traveled in covered wagons drawn by oxen, and progress was necessarily slow. One day they were horrified to note a long line of smoke in the west, stretching for miles across the prairie, and soon it was evident that the dried grass was burning fiercely and coming toward them rapidly. They had crossed a river the day before but it would be impossible to go back before the flames would be upon them. Only one man seemed to have understanding as to what could be done. He gave the command to set fire to the grass behind them. Then, when a space was burned over the whole company moved back upon it. As the flames roared on toward them from the west, a little girl cried out in terror, "Are you sure we shall not all be burned up?" The leader replied, "My child, the flames cannot reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has been!" Death destroyed death for them. A poet writes,

"On Him Almighty vengeance fell,
Which would have sunk a world to hell.
He bore it for a chosen race,
And thus becomes our Hiding Place."

Job also spoke of dust and ashes in another sense, “I repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). Realizing he had died spiritually, he sought refuge in God. With a similar sign we too declare our trust in Christ, His death for the atonement of our sins. Our end does not have to be “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Thanks be to God at the interment the priest adds other words. As he makes the sign of the cross with the dirt, he includes after “dust to dust,” the words, ”in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” With faith in the cross of Jesus we do not go to dust alone. Our ashen mortality is turned to immortality. The ashen symbol of today has this meaning. Receive it, wear it all day, and when it’s washed off keep it in your heart forever. Amen.