Sabbatical Soundings - Part 2 Ash Wednesday - dust or water?

I had an odd Ash Wednesday this year. Not only because my Extended Study Leave (Sabbatical) has taken me away from parish ministry altogether for the whole of Lent, Holy Week and Easter, but because it was the second day of our Transatlantic crossing from Southampton to Miami. 

I saw a meme about Ash Wednesday coinciding with Valentine's Day this year, which it does, every so often. It went something like this:

Q:(addressed to a priest) "What are your plans for Valentine's Day?"

A: "I'm rubbing dirt on people's faces and telling them they're going to die."

It is my privilege every year to do just that. Or at least to say to people who come forward to have an ash cross marked on their forehead, that they should:

"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ."

It's a profoundly moving moment for me, not least as I look back on seven years in this parish and remember those people whom I've ashed and whose funerals I have subsequently conducted. 

Ash Wednesday, like the whole of Lent invites us to consider our mortality. Not in a morbid way, but because through Lent we move inexorably towards the death of Christ on Good Friday. But it's also because we're invited to consider how we will spend the days of the life that we have. Lent is an invitation into the fullest possible life - life with God - and that's why we examine our disciplines of prayer, worship, reading, fasting, generosity, and through these practices (as the Common Worship Eucharistic Preface has it) "learn to be your people once again".

Making ash from
the previous year's Palm Crosses

One of the reasons for using ash on Ash Wednesday is because the Biblical tradition tells us that humans were made from the dust of the earth, and we return there after death when we're buried. The first human, named Adam, deriving from the Hebrew word for soil or earth was so named because God created humans from the dust of the earth. (You can read all about that in Genesis Chapter 2.)

Anyway, this year as we headed out into the Atlantic ocean, I discovered that dust and ash are quite hard to come by on a cruise ship. I should perhaps have thought of that before I left but I had other packing issues. There is no soil on the ship (not even any artificial plants as it turns out) and very little dust because they keep the place scrupulously clean in the aftermath of Covid. No dust to use to mark the start of Lent and to remember our mortality. 

However, we were completely surrounded by water.

The finished ash!

That got me thinking. Israel was a people more accustomed to the desert than the sea (think Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah) so their understanding of where humans began will have been influenced by this. But water is essential for life  - and desert people certainly knew that. While the desert is an important part of the story  of God's people, Israel, water is significant too. They were saved from their life of slavery in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters at the time of creation. They passed through the Jordan river to enter into the Promised Land. Some of this is echoed in the Christian Baptismal rite where the prayers say: 

"Over water the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through water you led the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land." 

(Common Worship Baptism, prayer over the water)

We have a different understanding of where life began from those who wrote down the stories of Genesis. We know now that all life on earth began in water, and that humans are made of about 60% water. 

In the Christian tradition, water is most often associated with new life through Baptism rather than mortality and death, although there are some interesting connections. Some people still request that their coffins are sprinkled with water at their funerals to signify and recall their Baptism. But the words I couldn't quite remember on the ship (no internet to look them up!) were these ones:

"We thank you, Father, for the water of baptism.

In it we are buried with Christ in his death."

(Common Worship Baptism, prayer over the water)

Easter is the traditional time for Baptism in the church and Lent was the traditional time for preparation for Baptism when candidates for Baptism would learn about the spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith in preparation to "die with Christ and be raised to new life in Baptism" on the feast of the Resurrection. For us, Lent usually begins with dust and ends with water.

However, this Ash Wednesday, I found a way to reflect on the meaning of the beginning of Lent, my own death and Christian life with an entirely different set of imagery and metaphors, something that I'm still pondering. 

It was no less meaningful for being different. And there was a lot of water!