Last night I lead the Ash Wednesday service at the Presbyterian church where I am working. This was only the second time that I've been the one to impose ashes on a congregation (the first time was at San Jose Episcopal, where I did an internship a few years ago). The simple act of forming a cross in ashes on the forehead of people who you know and love is powerful and emotional. It is one of the best reminders we Christians have of our human mortality. It also makes our resurrection hopes seem incredibly personal and desperately immediate. "Remember that you are but dust, and that to dust you shall return," is a painful statement to make as you look into someone's eyes and really see them; really see their humanity, their steely strength and their profound frailty.
I've also been pondering the ashes we use, which come from the dried husks of last year's Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday, Jesus' triumphal march into Jerusalem as the king and Messiah, reads differently for me each year. Sometimes it is a real triumph, like the
Lord of the Rings; a king from a lost, ancient lineage returns to rescue his people from obscurity and oblivion. Sometimes it reads like a farce, the sad story of a weary hero, going through the motions to let his people know how things might have been... how it might have looked if he had come to earthly power, to reign in peace and tranquility over Zion - over a new Eden.
And so the cycle goes; each year we gather up our King's palms and let them dry in a dusty corner, waiting for that time when we'll look into each other's eyes and say that, like our Savior before us, we too will die dreaming of the peaceable kingdom.
