Ash Wednesday 2020

Burning The Palms

Every year I burn last year's palms for ashes, I am impressed with the vehemence of the flame. They burn nearly white hot; my mind turns to the eighth chapter of the Song of Songs which is understood as a love poem describing God/YHWH’s Love for God’s people:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

   as a seal upon your arm;

for love is strong as death,

   passion fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

   a raging flame.

Many waters cannot quench love,

   neither can floods drown it.

If one offered for love

   all the wealth of one’s house,

   it would be utterly scorned.

The palms and excitement of Palm Sunday quickly recedes as soon our savior hangs on the cross, demonstrating God’s love for humankind, a love that many waters cannot quench. A love and a God characterized throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” This is, in part, what Ash Wednesday is meant to remind us.

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

The tenderness of God’s unquenchable love is demonstrated in this scene from the prophet Joel. The people are in dire circumstances. They appeal to God, and yet have nothing to sacrifice to God’s name. The prophet imagines that God himself enters the sanctuary and leaves the grain and wine offering on behalf of his people.

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,

and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain offering and a drink offering

for the Lord, your God?

Again, we know that in the end God did make the ultimate self-sacrifice on our behalf, when breathing his last he handed over his Spirit to us, one and all.

Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return….

As this ash of last Palm Sunday’s palms is emblazoned on our foreheads, we are to recall that moment in creation, Genesis chapter 2, when our God, the creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, scoops up a handful of dust and breathes life into it creating  Adam, A-tha-ma, literally “of the earth”.  This is among the most ancient of legends in our scriptures, pre-dating the seven-day unfolding of creation in Genesis chapter 1. Today science has confirmed that we are indeed made, every cell in our mortal bodies, of cosmic stardust, the most elemental dust of all creation. This dust connects us to one another, to all of creation all the way back to the creator, the source, the beginning of all there is.

This ash is to remind us that Yes, we are dust, but we are holy dust, animated by God’s own breath; it is God’s own Spirit that enlivens us and sustains us day in and day out. Out of this dust we are created in the image of God, male and female, equally created in God’s image, as God’s beloved who are to belove creation and everything therein.  We are dust, and to dust we shall return, for we come from Love, we return to Love, and Love is all around, all the time, for ever and ever. Love’s flashes are flashes of fire, a vehement flame! Many waters cannot quench the love represented in these ashes. Amen.