Introduction
Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, which is a season of preparation for Easter. Lent runs for 40 days and six Sundays up to Easter Sunday. Ash Wednesday gets its name from the practice of the ‘Imposition of Ashes’, the receiving of a cross of ash on the forehead. The Ash Wednesday service is usually structured around acts of penitence. Ash Wednesday is preceded by Shrove Tuesday (see below). Some of the themes that are tied into Lent are repentance, self-discipline, change, and self-denial, which are related to Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, as well as journeying towards the cross and reflecting on the sufferings of Christ. Lent is traditionally associated also with fasting, as an emblem of self-denial. In the early church, Lent was used to prepare candidates for baptism at Easter. Also, from the 6th century, it was used for church discipline – a period of exclusion from the church and requirements of acts of penance. By the 9th century, this form of public penitence began to wane and it became customary for all Christians to be reminded of the need for repentance by having ashes put on their foreheads on the first day of Lent.
Care needs to be taken not to infuse Lent with unnecessarily negative and judgmental images and attitudes, and to ensure that the words we use communicate in a relevant and helpful way, rather than conjuring up the sense that following Christ requires an obsession with sin, repentance, and suffering.
‘If Advent is a time of longing, Christmas a time of celebration, and Epiphany a time of pointing out ways God appears to us, Lent is surely a time of WRESTLING – with goals and lifestyles, with ultimates, with our enslavement and our freedom.’ William B. Oden, Liturgy as Life Journey, (Acton House:1976) p.41.
Ash Wednesday
Symbols, Colours, Music, Images, Ritual Actions, Miscellaneous Ideas
Colour: Purple. As an alternative, unbleached cloth or sacking could be used to recall the ‘sackcloth and ashes’ imagery associated with repentance in the First Testament.
The ash cross on the forehead: it is a reminder both of our mortality (we are dust and to dust we will return), and also that the cross is the source of our salvation. Some churches burn palm crosses from the previous year’s Palm Sunday to get the ash.
Instead of ash, compost can be used. Or, a mix of earth, charcoal and oil: Earth and fire, symbols of creation, and oil, a symbol of prayer and of the Holy Spirit. Or, create ash in the service from burning something… perhaps paper that prayers of confession have been written on.
Words of ‘imposition’ can be the traditional ‘From dust you came and to dust you will return’, or a more contemporary ‘Out of the ashes of despair, hope always arises’. We use: ‘(name), you are dust, recreated in the image of God. Go in peace’
Ash Wednesday is often preceded by the customs around ‘Shrove Tuesday’. ‘Shrove’ is derived from ‘shrive’, referring to the confession of sins as preparation for Lent. More popularly, this day is marked by the eating of pancakes – eating and making merry before fasting, as well as using up the Lenten ‘forbidden foods’ of eggs and fat.
At Cityside, ‘Ash Wednesday’ is commemorated on the Sunday closest to it – a special Wednesday service is not needed – to us it’s the content that counts more than a precise marking out of the days.
Texts, Prayers, Readings
For Lectionary texts consult your lectionary or www.textweek.com
Ash-Wednesday, poem by T.S. Eliot. This long poem has some wonderful lines in it.
An Ash Wednesday Liturgy
Introduction:
Since early days, it has been the custom of the church to prepare for Easter with a season called Lent. At first Lent was observed by those who were preparing for Baptism at Easter. Over time, the church came to recognize that all Christians need to take to heart the theme of Lent.
Lent is an invitation, in the name of the church, for each of us to undergo a spiritual stock take, an inventory,
to review our lives in relation to God, others and the world.
Lent gives us time to face the call to repentance, to know the assurance of forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel, and so grow in our devotion to Jesus.
Lent commences with Ash Wednesday.
On this day the church takes some ash — we’ve got compost — symbol of the phrase “dust to dust, ashes to ashes”: that we all come from dust, that we are human, mortal, and vulnerable, that it is the breath of God that gives us life.
But as Christians, that’s not the end of the story. In Christ, dust is not our final destination.
Take ash, make cross on either own hand or forehead.
Declaration: Believers in Christ, we will receive full bodily resurrection to life with God. In Christ we are renewed into life that counts for ever.
We are going to say a prayer.
Then, we invite you to pass around compost.
Use the compost to make sign of cross on each others hand or forehead and as you do so, repeat the words of liturgy “dust to dust is remade by Christ”.
Slides of the cross and music in background.
Prayer
Raise compost:
As a way of recognising the themes of Lent and the spiritual significance of Ash Wednesday, you are invited to receive in compost the sign of the cross.
Ever living God
you shape our being from the dust of the earth
you fashion us by the loving energy of God
you breathe on us with the breath of your Spirit
Dust to dust is re-made by Christ
Ever living God
We are mortal. We are human.
We are dependant on you for life,
significant life, that counts for ever
Dust to dust is re-made by Christ
Ever living God
Grant that this compost
May be for us a sign of our mortality
Give us awareness of our need
for the breath of God’s eternal-Life-Spirit
Dust to dust is re-made by Christ
Ever living God
Grant that this compost made in the sign of the cross
May be for us a sign of our need for God’s renewing touch
For without God we return to dust and compost
Yet with God we receive full bodily resurrection to life in God
Dust to dust is re-made by Christ
Ever living God
Grant that this cross made on our skins
may be for us a sign of grace
For in Christ our lives have lasting significance.
For in Christ we are renewed into life that counts for ever.
Dust to dust is re-made by Christ
(Steve Taylor and Mark Pierson, modified from an unknown source, 2000)
An Introduction to Lent
These are the words I used to introduce Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and Lent in 2003. We did all this on the Sunday before these days, i.e. the Sunday before Lent. The Sunday we choose depends on what else is going on in our calendar. Where possible, I like to do it on a communion Sunday, for us the first Sunday of the month. Communion is a good response to the theme of Lent. The words have been developed and expanded over four or five years and come from a variety of now unknown sources as well as my own material. This monologue was preceded by a run through with the ‘black boxes’ of the Church Year.
‘Next Wednesday is the start of the season in the Church year known as Lent.
The word Lent probably comes from an Old English word meaning to lengthen…as in the Northern hemisphere Lent is in Spring, when days are getting longer.
It is the 40 days and 6 Sundays before Easter Sunday.
For the first 200 years or so of the Church, Easter Sunday was when baptisms were held, and the 40 days before developed as a period of instruction for those being baptised. Each intensive session of Christian instruction was followed by prayer and exorcism.
At the end of these preparations all the Church joined the candidates in a strict fast on the Friday and Saturday before their baptism on Easter Sunday.
Candidates were baptised naked and dressed in white robes after as symbols of leaving their old life behind and becoming new people (sobering for those who call for a return to the early church!).
Forty days of preparation developed because of the connections with the 40 days in the wilderness of Moses, Elijah, and particularly Jesus.
Lent was also the time when ‘grievous sinners’, the backsliders so-called, who were excluded from taking communion, prepared for their restoration to the Church and to communion on Maundy Thursday. As a sign that they were sorry for not having followed Christ as they would have wished to, they wore sackcloth and were sprinkled with ashes and spent Lent reflecting on their lives and their relationship with Christ. They were not allowed to attend church until Maundy Thursday.
(Read Jeremiah 6:25, 26; Jonah 3:5,6; Matthew 11:20, 21 re: sackcloth and ashes.)
By the 9th century, this form of public penitence began to wane, and it became customary for all Christians to mark the start of the reflective, penitent season by having ashes put on their foreheads.
Thus Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and it’s next Wednesday.
Because Lent was a time of fasting, the day before Lent started, it became the pattern to celebrate and use up all the foods prohibited during the Lenten fast — meat, fish, eggs and fat. In England, the eggs and fat went into pancakes.
So the day became known as Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday. Shrove comes from ‘ to shrive’ i.e. to make your confession and to repent, which is what Christians did on Shrove Tuesday and the two days before.
We’re going to remember Ash Wednesday today, and I’m going to encourage you to join the Christian Church around the world, and through the last 2000 years, in using the 6 weeks of Lent as a period of reflection – reflection on who you are and where you stand in your relationship with Christ.
Lent is an invitation to each of us to undergo a spiritual stocktake, or inventory.
To review our lives as followers of Jesus.
To face up to who we are: our successes, failures, strengths, weaknesses.
It’s spiritual inventory time. Six weeks for cleaning out your spiritual wardrobe and drawers of the clutter you’ve accumulated over the previous year.
See it as a positive opportunity, not a negative; ask: ‘What will I do during Lent to strengthen my relationship with Christ, to better serve others, to become more Christ-like?’
not ‘What am I going to give up? Chocolate or smoking or swearing…for 6 weeks!’
Lent is when we put our good intentions into practice — a six week period to build some new habits.
I think that Ash Wednesday and Lent are a better time to make new resolutions than New Year’s Eve is.
Lent is moving us toward something, reminding us of the reason for our resolve; New Year moves away and evaporates. It gets thinner.
We’ll mark this occasion by sharing bread and wine together and by the symbolic action of receiving ash in the sign of the cross on our forehead.
Imposition of Ashes
Ash Wednesday gets its name from the ashes associated with it.
Traditionally the ash used is from the burnt palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, but we will use a mix of earth and charcoal and oil.
Earth and fire, symbols of creation, and oil, a symbol of prayer and of the Holy Spirit.
A reminder of our mortality and vulnerability (’ashes to ashes and dust to dust’ from many funeral liturgies), and a reminder that we have our life by the breath of God.
A reminder that our lives will have no lasting significance without God, and that without God’s renewing work there is no more to life than being a collection of protein molecules and genetic information.
The traditional words said in Catholic churches this Wednesday will be: ‘From dust you came, to dust you will return’.
Communion
During communion, the taking of bread and wine, the presence of Christ, I invite you to reflect on what you might do over these six weeks of Lent: to strengthen your relationship with Christ, to pray, to serve other people, or to change some aspect of your behaviour, attitudes, or thinking.
Whatever you decide… write it down on newsletter space if you want (see newsletter back).
And as well as taking bread and wine, come to receive the sign of the cross as a blessing, or as affirmation of your new resolve this Lent.
Words of Institution
Ashing: “(name person where possible. Sometimes I ask for their name) you are dust, recreated in the image of God. Go in Peace”
TRACK during communion was ‘When I Survey’, Chris Mason-Battley ex Unspoken. Disk two #5 (5.44 looped).
Post Communion Responsive Prayer (in newsletter)
Lord, into our emptiness:
breathe your fullness.
Into our tiredness:
Pour your energy.
If we are discouraged:
Bring us courage.
If we are afraid:
Bring us hope.
If we do not know the way:
Give us your wisdom.
For we are your people
And you are our God,
Forever and ever,
Amen
(source unknown, modified.)
NB. One year when Lent didn’t start on a communion Sunday we read Ps 51 from Message (all had a printed handout). I then said, ‘During the playing of this piece of music (Here is Love, version of hymn by Chris Mason-Battley ex Karakia) I invite you to reflect on what you might do over these six weeks of Lent: to strengthen your relationship with Christ, to pray, to serve other people, or to change some aspect of your behaviour, attitudes or thinking. Whatever… write it down on the newsletter space if you want, and during the track, if you wish to, come to receive the sign of the cross as a blessing, or as affirmation of your new resolve this Lent.’
The Season of Lent
Symbols, Colours, Music, Images, Ritual Actions, Miscellaneous Ideas
The season of Lent is usually characterised in churches by a mood of restraint and simplicity, sometimes emphasised by the removal of decorations from the worship space.
We encourage Citysiders to take a positive view of Lent as an opportunity to pick up some new disciplines or habits that might enhance their spiritual journey, rather than focusing on the aspect of ‘giving things up’. Space in a Lent service or in a church newsletter can be provided for people to write down some hopes and intentions regarding the season.
Stations of the Cross (see section 6). The content of each of the stations or points along the pathway that led Jesus to the cross can be developed individually with meditations over several weeks, or used together in one service. Some churches have permanent visual images of the Stations in their buildings, which are available for people to come and meditate on whenever the church is open.
The Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholics of the Byzantine rite celebrate the Feast of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Lent. This feast commemorates the return of icons (sacred images) to the churches in the Byzantine Empire at the end of the long ‘iconoclastic controversy’. Fear of idolatry had led to the official banning of icons in 730. They were restored in 843, by the Empress Theodora after the death of her iconoclast husband Theophilus. This date could be used to celebrate art and artists, although there might be a conflict here between the celebration of images and the more usual practice of stripping the church of its decorations to create an atmosphere of restraint during Lent.
Texts, Prayers, Readings.
It can be helpful to give people daily or weekly readings for Lent. Either scripture alone or a mix of scripture and other readings. Art relating to the themes can also be useful.