wandering even on Ash Wednesday

 

Growing up at St Andrew's Episcopal Church, Panama City, I never heard of Ash Wednesday except that one girl in our class at Cove School, her name was Margaret as I recall, was Roman Catholic and always came to school on this one day with a dirty smudge on her forehead. Turned out it was a mark of ashes smeared there by her priest, probably Father McGovern at St Dominic. Those years, St Dominic was an old fashioned wooden church on the northeast corner of Harrison Avenue and 6th Street, facing First Baptist Church directly across Harrison. 

St Dominic moved twice since then, first to the southeast corner of Harrison at 11th Street, then to where it is today out on 15th Street, Tyndall Parkway.

Robert may correct me, but there were two Catholics in our class, Margaret (whose last name I do not recall, pretty sure she didn't graduate with us in Cove School Class of 1949) and Warren Middlemas. I was the one Episcopalian, and the rest were Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian. In those days there were no Nones. 

To my knowledge, Ash Wednesday observance with "imposition of ashes" came into the Episcopal Church during the mid-twentieth century liturgical reform; but apparently not everywhere: at some point in our years at Trinity, Apalachicola, my predecessor there, Father Sid Ellis, attended our Ash Wednesday service and "accosted" me afterward asking where I'd got that service, that he'd never heard of such a thing. 

Sid was retired and aging, and I don't know whether that was true or he was forgetting. I do know that over my lifetime I've seen the Episcopal Church "aping" the Roman Catholic Church in various ways, and I'd always had the feeling that it was to make sure we got it right. Other examples? conversion of The Sunday next before Advent to Christ the King Sunday. Taking the RC lead in lectionary revision. Holy Communion every Sunday. 

Not naming her, but I also remember the Ash Wednesday in Apalachicola when a parishioner confronted me offended and angry that I'd not brought ashes to her house, as she had been too ill to come to church. Astonished, I remember telling her, "XXX, we don't do that, Imposition of Ashes is not a sacrament! If you had called and asked, of course I'd have come, but I had no way of knowing you expected that!" Her answer was that I should have known. No, really.

The summer of 1984, before we went to Apalachicola, Linda and I were visiting with Mary Ola Miller at her art gallery, and she told us, "people in Apalachicola are very, very nice, but you will find that they are also very odd." Not going there, but I remember being chastised by a group of church ladies for failing to visit a parishioner in hospital. I said, "Oh my, I'm sorry. I did not know s/he was in hospital, I had no idea." Their answer was that I should have known. I asked "How could I know if nobody told me?" The answer was that I should have "got it off the grapevine." So, yes, Mary Ola! But I'd loved Apalachicola all my growing up years from first visiting there with my father on his fish business in the 1940s, and later in my teens, and we loved our fourteen years there 1984 to 1998, and I love them still and lifelong. As Elvis sang, "for always and ever"

Wandering again, Uncle Bubba, wandering WAY off topic.

Okay, in the liturgy for Ash Wednesday the priest blesses ashes (customarily made from palm crosses leftover from last year's Palm Sunday service) and invites the people to come forward. With the ashes he smears the sign of the cross on each person's forehead, saying, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." 

It's humbling, and it comes from the story of "The Fall" in Genesis 3. The serpent tempts the man's wife to eat the forbidden fruit, she eats and tempts the man, and he eats. God is displeased at their disobedience and addresses each one in punishment. When God gets to Adam (ha-adam, the earthling, remember, God fashioned him out of dust of the earth),

 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. 

20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. 

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So, that's the story. Reading and discussing the story with my 6th graders at Holy Nativity Episcopal School one year, someone asked, "Why did God put the tree in the middle of the Garden? Of course they were tempted, if God didn't want them to eat it, why didn't He put the tree somewhere they couldn't see it?"

It's easily the most cogent theological question I've ever been asked. 

What's an answer? The story is etiological, to explain why we humans are the way we are, sinful and disobedient; and, theologically that God actually wanted us to eat the fruit so, unlike other creatures, we would have consciences, know the difference in good and evil, and be responsible for our own lives, thought, words and deeds.

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Still not quite done, eh? Here (scroll down) is our Ash Wednesday gospel reading. For one thing, it makes very clear that we are not to go about all day showing off our piety with our dirty foreheads: WASH YOUR FACE. 

Marked and warned, it's between you and God. Don't leave with your face dirty. Wash your face.   

 

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

"So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

RSF&PTL

T88&c

Picture: my theology: baruch ata, Adonai Eloheinu, melek ha-olam.

blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe. 

I believe that any other concept of God is too small.