Across the globe an ashen cross is applied to the foreheads of Jesus's followers as they enter the liturgical period of Lent. But what is the meaning of the ashen cross? Does it speak of death and mortality, or of life and joy?
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The Last Judgement. E. Gill (c.1917) accessed from
http://www.tate.org.uk |
1. The Holiness of God | The ashen mark is a visible sign that we are wholly known by a Holy God. The first day of lent is set apart for reflection on this reality. In the age of Facebook we are apt to think we can manage and control other's perceptions of us by virtual personas and self-curated stories. Indeed, we are invited to doubt any real claim of truth and goodness. Why think of money, sex and power as false gods and anaesthetics if they promise to realise new stories of 'freedom'? Why face the reality of our frailty of we can erase or edit it out? It is only in truthful perception of ourselves that we recognise the seriousness and gravity of our injustices and deceptions. Today on Ash Wednesday we confess our many departures from what is good and true for what they are, namely, betrayals of the one by whom we were lovingly created and in whom no trace of evil is to be found. No cloak or vault, cave or crater can conceal the insurgence of our thoughts, feelings, acts and imaginings from his just and loving gaze. Rather, our whole lives are in total transparency before Him. How can we respond to this? Like the awe filled prophet Isaiah in the ashen haze of the temple who encountered our Holy God before a great assembly of angels crying 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the earth is full of his glory' :
"Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty'. (Excerpts from Isaiah 6)
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Der Monk am Meer/ Monk by the Sea. Casper D. Friedrich (c.1808).
acc from wiki commons. |
2. The Atonement of Christ | The shape of the ashen cross reminds us that God in Christ assumed the cost and judgment of our sin to reconcile us to himself and all else from which our sin has torn us (ourselves, others and the rest of creation).
'He will tread our sins under foot and hurl our iniquities into the depths of the sea'. (Micah 7,19)
'Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow' (Psalm 51,7)
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Jewish Museum, Berlin.
'In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.' John 1. 4-5' |
3. The Hope of New Life | The ashen mark signals that a unique metamorphosis is possible because of Jesus: metanoia or repentance. We may turn from darkness to light, guilt and shame to forgiveness, captivity to freedom and death to new life, because of the at-one-ment of Christ.
"[He will] bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes" (Isaiah 61, 3)
