In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            I don’t know how familiar you are with Ash Wednesday, so forgive me if you already know these things. Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, which, except for Sundays, makes up the 40 days before the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Now there are all sorts of historical factors that go into this. 40 days for Lent goes back at least to the 6^th century, and maybe to the 3^rd century, because of the obvious connection to Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness after His baptism. Ashes on the head—probably not in a nice cross-shape, but sprinkled or put on the head with sackcloth—were originally related to public penitence after a public sin, and that public penitence often did happen during Lent. In the 10^th century, in England, ashes on the head became popular for the first day of Lent. It was probably only in the 20^th century that Lutherans picked it up again, for what it’s worth. Maybe you care about some of that stuff, and maybe you don’t.

But what about ashes? Maybe you like the practice and maybe you don’t. Lutherans, at least on social media, get riled up every year about whether we should do ashes or not. Take it or leave it; it’s not a command of God. There does seem to be something powerful about it, which is probably why it is often popular. Except, if you pay attention to the Scriptures for today, we have sort of mixed messages: ashes are a sign of repentance, and they go with sackcloth (Esther 4:1; Isaiah 58:5; Jeremiah 6:26; Daniel 9:3; Jonah 3:6; Matthew 11:21). But when we receive the ashes on our foreheads, we don’t hear those Scriptures. We hear the words of God to Adam, from Genesis 3:19, which have nothing to do with ashes: You are dust, and to dust you shall return. We do have dust and ashes together when Abraham says to God that although he is only “dust and ashes,” yet he will dare to speak to God about Sodom (Genesis 18:27). In Hebrew, it’s a pun: I am aphar and epher: dust and ashes.

Ashes can be symbolic of any number of things, I suppose, but here’s one way to think about it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that picture that gets passed around this time of the year, which has all sorts of different ways that ashes look on foreheads. So there’s a very dark, careful one that says, “first in line.” The OCD version is exactly perfect. There’s a “hasty” one that is just one line. There’s the mini, which is a small cross; an “add toner,” which is very light, and the priest’s or pastor’s revenge, which is a giant, black cross that probably goes down to your nose. I noticed on the jar of ashes we have here that there’s a note about using enough olive oil until it becomes a paste. I did have to use some oil, or else they wouldn’t stick at all, but I like loose ashes that fall down your face and make a mess. Because that’s how sin is, isn’t it? Sin is never neat, never perfect. It never stays confined to our minds or ourselves. Sin is never something that we do “as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.” It has a way of sneaking into crevices of our lives, until we don’t even realize how deeply ingrained are the habits we’ve made: bitterness, gossip, anger, lust, selfishness, a forsaking of God’s Word and Sacraments, and any number of other things that only God’s Word can expose in us.

And sin does that because it doesn’t come from outside of us, where if we do some bad things long enough, we become “sinners.” Jesus says that it is not from the outside that all the evil in the world comes, but “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19). So unless you and I can give ourselves new hearts, full of the opposite of all those things, then we will never be able to reconcile God to us. This is, in fact, the difference between the only two kinds of religion there are in the world. There is the kind of religion where people think they can do some stuff, show themselves worthy, repent enough, purify themselves, cleanse their minds, or hearts, or hands, and God will accept them. But only if you do those things well enough, or long enough, or sincerely enough. But how would you know? How would you be sure that you had fully cleaned up the mess of sin in your heart, in your mind, in your actions, in your life?

On the other hand, there is the kind of religion where God wants you to have His eternal life so deeply that He appears in human flesh—dusty and ashy flesh—and reconciles you to Him. For your sake, God made Jesus sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. If Jesus became sin on the cross, that means there is no sin left for you; there is only the perfect relationship of the Father and the Son, into which He brings you. He will stop at nothing, not even death itself, to deliver you from your own heart, your own thoughts, your own actions. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, and that reconciliation is delivered in the “ministry of reconciliation,” by which He serves you. Reconciliation is to re-establish an interrupted or broken relationship. Ours is the breaking; but God’s is the remaking.

Ashes can be helpful if they remind us of the fact that sin means that we will return to dust, from which God made Adam. But ashes are only a symbol. The ministry, or the service, of reconciliation is not just a symbol. You can make whatever you want out of symbols. But God gives something more, so that you will know you have been reconciled to God. He uses water, and not just as a symbol of life and washing. Instead, we have a specific word: wash people with water—baptize—in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He uses bread and wine, and not just as a symbol of His body crucified and His blood poured out. Instead, Jesus Himself promises with a specific word: this is My body and this is My blood. Take and eat and drink, for the forgiveness of your sins. So when you go home tonight, wash the ashes off your forehead. Wash them off and remember that watery Name God put on you. Or wash them off in anticipation of God putting that Name on you in baptism. Lent is not just a time to give something up for a little while, and then go back to the way things were after. Lent is a good time to practice and renew the things Christians do all the time: to practice hearing, reading, and learning God’s Word. To practice receiving His gifts. To practice prayer. To practice the love of our neighbor. To practice examination of ourselves in light of God’s Word. To practice repentance, and to receive Christ’s absolution. Especially, Lent is a good time to be joined or rejoined to the Body of Christ in a particular place. Do not receive the grace of God in vain.

Lent reminds us that sin is messy and gets everywhere. Lent reminds us that in this world, death is certain. But as much as we see and experience realities; as certain as they seem to us, we have something more certain and more real: God’s own promise, grounded in the risen body of Jesus Himself. In a favorable time, God promises He will listen to us. In a day of salvation, He says He will help us. Look, now is the favorable time; now is the day of salvation. And soon this Lenten world will come to its completion and end in the new, resurrection world that God has prepared in Christ for you, and for the whole, reconciled world.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 3/5/25