All day yesterday, the Facebook page of the Episcopal Church showed pastors out giving “ashes-to-go” to people outside of churches and hospitals and at train stations. Various articles have been written on the Ashes To Go practice including one written by Lauren Winner, evangelical “It Girl” and professor at Duke Divinity School. (She was also recently ordained an Episcopal priest and serves St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Durham.)
In her article, Winner talks about how this is wholly appropriate because Christ was crucified in a public place. Quoting her:
I would add that there is something about Ash Wednesday — the day the church sets aside for people to acknowledge, before God and one another, our mortality, our finitude and our moral failings — that suggests taking this particular liturgical action into the streets (besides following, as it does, the public revelry of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday). We are going into public with our ashes because Jesus died in public. He didn??t die in the Upper Room surrounded only by his disciples.
What ministers with their ashes are offering is a bodily marker of God??s entry into our death. The ashes Cathie will inscribe on my forehead, and I on hers, let me name truths that most days I cannot or will not name — that I have sinned; also, that I have a body, and I am going to die. To walk around all day with a cross on your head is to walk around in a body inscribed with death. It is also, oddly, to walk around inscribed with hope — the hope that comes through Jesus?? having joined us in our mortality.
I have to agree… I run with a number of Catholics online and there was a popular Twitter hashtag called #ashtag in which people (myself included) posted pictures of themselves (and in one case with their significant other) with their ashes. For many people, Ash Wednesday is a day when people can publicly claim to be Christian and wear an outward sign of their faith in the form of the ashes on their foreheads. I recall Winner mentioning the statistic about more people attending church on Ash Wednesday than on Christmas or Easter in her book — something about the need to show their families and loved ones that they were indeed Christian and that their salvation was somehow assured for another year.
Ashes To Go works on a level that I think most strictly observant Catholics and other liturgical Christians forget: there will be those who for whatever reason cannot make it to church on Wednesday because they’re so busy. It’s not that they don’t want to be observant — it’s that they have work, kids, a commute, and everything else. Daniel and I made it to the first 15 minutes of worship (long enough to receive our ashes and hear the collect) and the only reason we did was that we live around the block from the church. Had I faced the tasks of making dinner, feeding Daniel and myself, getting both of us ready, driving to church (especially if it would have been 20 minute drive on gravel roads like it was in previous parishes), and then trying to keep my grumpy two year old occupied, I probably would have skipped it or at least told Jon to bring ashes home to me. (To those who read my blog and are that observant with more than one kid, you guys are rock stars and you have my props.) There are a number of people in that position. They may not have children or their children may be old enough to make dinner but there’s also homework, squeezing in housework, baths, putting the children to bed, and then bills to pay.
I feel that as we go through Lent, we should be mindful of those who may want to believe or who may believe and feel uncomfortable passing through the doors of a church for whatever reason. If one feels led, they should pray for them; but mostly, I feel like we should find ways of helping them engage their faith as a step toward moving them into reconciliation and community with others.
