Lent I: What is Ash Wednesday?
What is Ash Wednesday?
The Lent season — the forty days that precede the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning — starts today with Ash Wednesday. Not every Christian church observes this liturgical day, although we do at our church, Carter-Westminster United Presbyterian Church.
On Ash Wednesday, Christians choose to make a personal sacrifice for the Lenten season, like fasting from a food or activity until the end of Lent at Easter. This resembles Jesus’ resistance to temptation during a forty-day stint in the wilderness. Additionally, we receive a blessing in the form of, of course, ashes. Along with the sign of the cross marked in ash on our foreheads, Christians hear this reminder of their mortality: “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Why do we observe Ash Wednesday?
Firstly, the Early Church Father Tertullian mentions the practice of imparting ashes in his writing on confession. The confession of sin ought to“command (the penitent) to lie in sackcloth and ashes.” However, the practice of receiving ashes was formally established in the Middle Age. Ælfric of Eynsham (955-1010), an Anglo-Saxon abbot, wrote about the rite of ashes at the start of Lent in a homily called On the Greater Litany.
The phrase used in the rite comes from Genesis 3. In this chapter, God casts Adam and Eve out of the garden for their disobedience. God charges Eve with the pains of childbirth and Adam to endless toil in the grounds. As a Presbyterian church, we affirm the teaching of Reformed theology that the human condition is marked by these sanctions of sin. This truth exists alongside the truth that we “confess that we are forgiven by Christ and called again and yet again to strive for the purity, righteousness, and truth” (Book of Order, F-1.0302).
What does Ash Wednesday have to do with Lent?
Likewise, in the Book of Joel’s second chapter, the prophet relays instructions to the people of Judah:
“Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
13 rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,
and relenting from punishment.”
Joel’s instruction to not rend our clothing is counterintuitive to our practice of receiving ashes. Why do we do one and not the other during Lent? The Lectionary cycles during Lent often contain this verse. In our Lenten context, rending — or tearing — our hearts means acknowledging the dual truths of our sin and our salvation. During Lent, we accompany Jesus toward the end of his life — as well as to his Resurrection. We mourn the brevity of Jesus’ earthly life; we remember our own short lives too.
So, our journey to Easter morning begins with the truth of our human condition — and that Jesus was mortal and faced temptation too. Ash Wednesday reminds us that though our time is limited, we are called to live as Jesus did. We are called to resist temptation and sin, to love one another unrelentingly, and to preach the Good News that through faith in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, all people can find new and everlasting life.
Join us on our Lenten journey!
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