Ash Wednesday Message from Bishop
I am grateful for conversations happening between colleagues online about Ash Wednesday this year; many creative, thoughtful, caring and Covid-safe ideas are being shared, along with good questions about how to approach a service that focuses on remembering mortality during a deadly pandemic.
The power of receiving the cross on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday is in the layering: there is a sign of sin and death traced and layered on top of the tracing in water and oil of the promise of life, rebirth, and liberation from sin and death. On Ash Wednesday, we feel the full weight of the ashy tracing. It does not negate or obliterate the liberating sign it is layered with, but it is a suitably tangible reminder of the reality of grief, loss, and death.
If you choose to forgo ashes this year–the rubrics say “may” for ashes–one possibility for a similarly weighty practice is multiple signings of the cross, adapted from a practice found in Welcome for Baptism (ELW Leaders Desk Edition, p. 594.) The prayer with multiple signings found here is, itself, a practice appropriate for this season (Lent is the traditional time for adults who are preparing for baptism at Easter Vigil to begin with this rite.) Roman Catholic writer and educator Michael Marchal pointed me to an alternate phrase, originating with Vatican II, that can be used during the imposition on Ash Wednesday, and that shaped this adaptation:
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your ears.
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your eyes.
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your lips.
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your heart.
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your shoulders.
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your hands.
Turn from sin and to the gospel; receive the cross+ on your feet.
Marchal said that catechumens frequently remark on two things related to this practice. One is the surprisingly powerful experience of having someone mark the cross on your feet. The other is the power in the gesture of receiving the cross, itself, so many times. “This rite is the best example of truth in advertising,” Marchal said. “You want to be a Christian, guess what? From head to toe, here’s the cross.” The cross we receive this way, head to toe, is a reminder of God’s incarnation: God’s choice to meet us in the full reality of birth, life and death. In this practice, the cross is an embodied reminder that God is where we’d least expect an all powerful being to be. It is a connection to both the reality of sin and death as well as to the promise of baptism.
This practice can be led online, with a leader pre-recorded or on Zoom, and people in households signing the cross each other or themselves. Give good instruction ahead of time to make room for differences in mobility: for example, many of us cannot touch our own feet. And yet Christ–and the multiple layers of meaning in cross–meets us and is signed there, even if we cannot reach with our hands. Bodies are shaped and work and move differently; God’s image is revealed in all. Also: essential to this practice is giving time ahead of worship to give explicit consent to touch and be touched. Let folks know this is coming so they can talk about it and work out who will do the signing for whom in their households.
Blessings on your caring and creative approaches to Ash Wednesday this year. It will be different; things are different this year. Christ will meet you, there.
Bishop Anne Edison-Albright (she, her, hers)
East-Central Synod of Wisconsin
bishop@ecsw.org
