All Saints’, Dorval
March 5, 2025
For some reason, growing up, my family, which was otherwise incredibly churchy, did not do Ash Wednesday. We made a big splash at the parish Mardi Gras party the previous night, and we certainly marked the day by beginning our hard-core fast from sweets and desserts, but we never went to Ash Wednesday services. From the time I was nine until I left for university, Wednesday night was my horseback riding lesson, and I would put on my breeches and boots and head off just like any other Wednesday.
As a result, Ash Wednesday is perhaps the only big church day for which I have no particular expectations. And I think that’s actually a good thing.
As you’ve probably noticed over six and a half years of listening to me preach, I tend to be a both/and person, rather than an either/or person. I seek out and embrace paradox and multiple meanings. And Ash Wednesday is the day of multiple meanings par excellence.
Paul is very much in a paradoxical, both/and mood in today’s Epistle reading: he describes how his ministry is carried out
in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.
Ash Wednesday – and the Lent that it ushers in – can be, and indeed must be, whatever you make of them. There is no one size that fits all.
Some of us are too full and need to fast; others are empty and need to be filled.
Some are exhausted and should rest; others are holding back and need to get involved.
Some are joyful and need to be reminded of the shortness and unpredictability of life; others are mourning and need to be met in the depths and reassured of God’s undying love.
Some should wear the dust on their foreheads and repent of their pride in sackcloth and ashes; some should mingle the ash with glitter, and remember that we are all stardust and God loves us beyond imagining.
Some have their own very personal demons to wrestle with and need to make that their focus; others are called to look around at the mess that is our world today and commit themselves to taking public action.
Some need Lent to be very distinct and different from the rest of life; some need Lent to be an acknowledgment of the reality of deprivation, grief, or frustration that they live with every day.
Ash Wednesday and Lent have room for everyone. Which is perhaps why our practices on this day seem to conflict with our preaching: we hear the reasons why we shouldn’t display our fasting by putting ashes on our head, and then we go right ahead and put ashes on our head because it feels deeply right to do so anyway.
The only thing I want to say categorically about Ash Wednesday and Lent, about our fasting and self-examination, is what Isaiah says:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. … Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
If our fasting is “only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist,” then yes, we are doing it wrong. As Jesus says elsewhere: by their fruits you shall know them. The measuring stick of our Lenten experience is whether it brings us closer to God and to our neighbours. All the afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger in the world are pointless if they do not lead to purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.
The Rev’d Jonathan Rowe of the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador is writing this year’s Lenten meditations for the church. As he puts it in today’s inaugural message: “Lent is not just a season of penitence or self-denial, though these themes are always present. It is also a time of renewal and transformation, an opportunity to re-examine our lives.”
What will Lent be for you this year? What do the ashes on your forehead mean to you? Will you wipe them off before leaving this building, or wear them with humility and intention for the rest of the day? Will you spend the day in focused contemplation, or head off to your horseback riding lesson same as always, just a little hungrier?
Ash Wednesday is what you make of it. What you should do this Lent is whatever helps you along the way in your pilgrimage toward God, and toward the empty tomb at Easter.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”
Amen.
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