If you haven’t checked your calendar, Ash Wednesday is just three weeks away.

I was at church this morning preparing for Morning Prayer when I started to think about Ash Wednesday and Lent, and then my mind wandered onto the topic of the imposition of ashes.

Historically, the Church has imposed ashes on the foreheads of penitent sinners at the start of Lent. In Holy Scripture, specifically in Old Testament times, repentace was often marked by sackcloth and ashes. All we have to do is to remember the story of Jonah when he warns Ninevah of their sinfulness that the people turn from their evil ways, and to show their repentance, the people put on sackcloth. We can go further back into the Old Testament to the opening days of the world when the Lord tells Adam that because of his sin, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Following the ascension of Jesus, the Church began using the symbol of ashes to mark the beginning of the season of Lent, a time of prayer and repentance for sin. The reason for the imposition of ashes was not to prove to the world that the person went to church, but to symbolize in a very visual way the consequences of sin: "for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

The ashes symbolize who we are – sinners who will return to the dust from whence we came.

But within the Lutheran Church, we have fought a battle over whether what we do in church is "too Roman Catholic." This is not a new phenomenon – it is a battle we have been fighting in the church since Martin Luther and the start of the Reformation. Some during Luther’s day wanted the church of the Reformation to completely split from the Roman Catholic church in practice. They wanted the church to start fresh and leave the "old" behind. In our day, there are many Lutherans who still accept this notion of the church.

But that understanding of "Church" betrays what Luther’s Reformation was all about. It wasn’t about throwing out the baby with the bathwater and starting new as radical reformers supported – the Reformation was about reforming the church, eliminating those practices which were not in accordance with the Gospel. Luther actually kept many of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church; he cleansed the church of those practices that pulled the Gospel away from the people.

Luther’s understanding of the church that bore his name was not to create something new, but it was to keep a rightful practice and understanding of the Gospel in the church. He never wanted to leave the Roman Catholic Church and prayed that one day Rome would be acceptable to the reforms that he and many of his supporters believed in.

Ashes aren’t too Roman Catholic. Ashes are a symbol of who we truly are – sinners in need of a savior.

Powered by Qumana