Today is a day to focus on love. It's a day to give thanks for love, to celebrate love, to share and receive expressions of love. That's right, it's Ash Wednesday.
I know, I know - you thought I was going to say Valentine’s Day! That’s the day that’s all about love. Ash Wednesday? Not so much. This day more readily brings to mind dark, dusty ashes, somber music, and reminders of our mortality and sin. Certainly a far cry from hearts, and chocolate, and flowers.
Or…is it? Each of our readings today mentioned hearts, and love. In Joel, the prophet highlights returning to God with our whole hearts, reminding us that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
In the Psalm, we hear the psalmist appeal to God’s compassion and steadfast love, asking for forgiveness and the gift of a heart clean from sin.
The Gospel text ends with the reminder that our hearts - our souls, our whole selves - follow what we treasure. Jesus calls his disciples, and us, to check our motivations and dedication - are we driven by an earthly or a heavenly focus? Thinking of our hearts and our treasure, we are invited to take stock of, in the words of the catechism, what we fear, love, and trust most in our lives.
So perhaps Ash Wednesday is a day about love. Not shallow or performative love, like Valentine’s Day can sometimes be, but love that is deep and abiding and rooted in truth - God’s love.
This love we celebrate on Ash Wednesday reminds us of our frailty and mortality, but also reminds us of the promise of resurrection and eternal life with God. On this day, we are marked with ashes, hearing the words “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The ash cross you will receive traces the cross marked on your forehead in baptism, recalling the words declared on that day: “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” God’s promises, declared to us in baptism, are trustworthy and true. We are assured that nothing - not decay, not sin, not heartbreak, not even death - can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This love we celebrate on Ash Wednesday tells the truth about our sin and our failings, and also proclaims the truth of the forgiveness we receive from our crucified and risen Lord. With the psalmist, we cry out for God to cleanse us of our sin, and create in us clean hearts. Together we confess the ways we have fallen short - our unkind thoughts and words and deeds, our bitterness and jealousy, our selfishness and greed. Together we hear the declaration of God’s forgiveness, and at the table we receive it: God’s great compassion, God’s endless mercy, and God’s steadfast love given and shed for us in the body and blood of Christ.
This love we celebrate on Ash Wednesday tells us that we are dust and that we will return to dust, and yet that dust is beloved dust, dust that has been filled with the breath of life by our Creator. Assured by God’s promises, we are sent out in love to share in the joy and pain of life with all creation, knowing that God holds each of us today and always, in life and in death. For the gift of God’s promises, and God’s steadfast love, we give thanks and praise.
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