WEEK 1—THE CALL TO DISCIPLESHIP
Ash Wednesday, March 5—Day 1

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Matthew 16:24-26

Ash Wednesday
Chris Davidson

So begins the action implied by what
is called faith: do something. Don’t just
hold an idea in the mind like a framed
epigraph. What steps there are have been
suggested by others who have gone before:
give something out, give something away,
which is to say, extend and release. Receive.
Why keep, merely, a promise in the mind
like an epitaph, unread but by those, who,
diminishing yearly, visit graves?
They read what’s chiseled there only to think,
No. No. Cremation is the way to go.

Out of the Ashes
Ashes are a material of decay and death, but they also allude to new life. After a forest fire, for instance, the ashes of burned down forests provide nutrients for the rebirth of a new generation of trees. New life from death. Beauty out of brokenness.

How appropriate that the word “Lent” — derived from the Middle English “lente” — means “spring” or “springtime.”

Ash Wednesday is sorrow and tears, a reminder of mortality and the breakability of all earthly things; but it’s also a glimpse of the eternal newness and redemption just beyond the horizon. The sun will rise.

For me Ash Wednesday symbolizes, rather neatly, what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about being beautiful or powerful or triumphant; it’s about being scarred and humble and sacrificial. This is not to say it’s about defeat, despair or self-flagellation. On the contrary, to “give up” or “sacrifice” in the name of Christ is (or should be) the height of our joy. Suffering is not something to shrink from. Giving ourselves away to others is our calling. Dying to ourselves is our glorious inheritance.

“Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it,” said Jesus (Matt. 16:25). “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” wrote Paul (Phil. 1:21).

We should strive to be like Christ, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame…” (Hebrews 12:2).

For the joy set before him… That should be why we endure suffering and embrace self-denial. It’s paradoxical and mysterious and counterintuitive — certainly. But when I feel the cold ashes spread across my forehead on Ash Wednesday, it makes some sort of wonderful sense.

“From dust we’ve come and dust we are and shall return,” sing The Brilliance. But then “Glory to God. Glory to God in the highest.”

Our “naked as we came” finitude and “ashes to ashes” breakability should lead us not to decry our lot but to worship God: to loosen our grip on life and let it go for his sake, pouring ourselves out for others, as he did.

In his beautiful 2013 book Death By Living, N.D. Wilson writes about how each human story — messy and mortal and fallen as it is — can be a unique testimony to Christ’s resurrection work.

From the compost of our efforts, God brings glory. ... By His grace, we are the water made wine. We are the dust made flesh made dust made flesh again. We are the whores made brides and the thieves made saints and the killers made apostles. We are the dead made living. We are His cross.

No life is beyond the redemptive power of the Holy Spirit. Even the ugliest, darkest, most hopeless and broken among us are not far from the wholeness and light of life in Christ.

Alec Soth’s “Ash Wednesday” envisions this truth. Amid the hedonistic debris of the morning after Mardi Gras — beads, bottles, and hungover bodies littering the streets — the ashen sign of the cross on the forehead hints at repentance and restoration. Out of the wreckage, a new creation.

All things made new.

Prayer
Lord, bring us to our knees. Quiet our hearts.

Away from the onslaught of screens and tweets and texts, focus our eyes on you.

Remove us from ourselves. Help us to dismiss our notions of grandeur and relinquish our litany of self-appointed rights: that we deserve jobs, freedom and low gas prices; that our social updates deserve to be paid attention to; that the world revolves around us.

Remove us from ourselves Lord, and draw us closer to You. Bring us to a distance — a desert, a depth, a hunger, Sehnsucht — so that what we see of ourselves isn’t glamour and greatness, but only your grace. Only your righteousness. Only you, in fact, for it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Ashes to ashes, let us deny ourselves. Let us give ourselves away rather than grab what’s ours. Let us be crucified with Christ. Let us seek the cinders, Oh God, to be crushed as you were, refined to a new fragrance.

In the darkness, in the desert, in the endless debates, help us look to resurrection. The morning is coming.

Into debt we further go. Under avalanches of paperwork, tasks, and to-dos we further sink. Against our arthritic, cancerous, flaking-away bodies we further fight. The nations wage war and the blizzards take their toll.

But Easter looms. Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Brett McCracken, Managing Editor of Biola Magazine