Lent 12: On Being a Pastor in Lent, and Especially on Ash Wednesday

For Lent, I'm writing here about significant moments from my life in faith.

I love being a pastor.

I especially love being a pastor during Lent.

The seasons of preparation-- Advent and Lent-- are my two favorite seasons of the church year personally, which is to say, I listen to my own encouragement to focus more closely on what God is doing. As a result I am probably more aware of God's presence during those weeks. (We preachers are always preaching to ourselves, at least a little bit.)

But there is something particularly beautiful about Ash Wednesday. The focus is mortality. We have a finite number of days on this earth, and on Ash Wednesday we pay a little more attention to that fact.

There's a well-worn Tony Campolo story about a church that one day every year celebrated student recognition day. One year, after several students had spoken quite eloquently, the pastor started his sermon in a striking way: "Young people, you may not think you're going to die, but you are. One of these days, they'll take you to the cemetery, drop you in a hole, throw some dirt on your face and go back to the church and eat potato salad." We may not like to acknowledge it, but someday, every one of us will have to face the 'potato salad promise', that we will all die.

So there's that.

It's not my favorite thing to pay attention to. As I climb to the upper end of middle age (honestly, I'm not sure how much longer I get to claim middle age, is there a chart somewhere?) I'm more aware of it anyway. The ways our bodies change-- the realization that we tire more easily, that illnesses like the flu knock the stuffing out of us (as a dear member of my congregation noted recently). Most of the time, I go around feeling not a lot different than I did in my thirties. But I'm not thirty any more. And Ash Wednesday gives me an opportunity to ponder that, and to ask myself Mary Oliver's wonderful question: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

But the reason I love being a pastor on Ash Wednesday is the actual physical experience of placing ashes on my people. They come in a line, single-file, after I've read the Invitation to a Holy Lent, which goes like this:

We begin our journey... with the sign of ashes.
This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life, 
and marks the penitence of this community.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of Christ, to observe a holy Lent
by self-examination and penitence,
by prayer and fasting,
by works of love,
and by reading and meditating on the Word of God.

And forward they come, presenting themselves to receive ashes. The act of placing ashes on these people I love never fails to move me deeply. Part if it is the sheer physicality of the action. Some people are very tall, and I stretch my arm upwards to reach their foreheads. And some are small, and I lean in to reach them. Some brush back bangs. Some present the backs of their hands.

And the looks on their faces, as I say, "Remember, (Mary), that you are dust, and to dust you shall return..."

Some smile a bit. Most are wide-eyed. Some give me a look that says, "I'm still here," and we know, together, for that moment, how thankful we are, and that nothing is a given.

My feeling after this service is something like what I feel after a hospital visit. Placing ashes on these people, marking them with the sign-- both of our mortality and of the unfathomable love of God-- places us all in a space that is beautiful and vulnerable.

I will never do it without knowing what a privilege it is.