Ash Wednesday Valentine: Leave Church Dirtier than you Came

The Normalcy of Cleanness

Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday this year.  This combination of holidays can actually be an opportunity for deep connection.

Will you be bringing your Valentine to church?

Ash Wednesday is the first day of the season of Lent, when last year’s palms are burned and worn on our faces.  This is wearing the story on our skin, not as an addition, but as an uncovering of what we believe to be there.

In Mark 7, some Pharisees ask Jesus why his disciples are dirty.  This is a way of questioning Jesus as a teacher, as if his students have not been taught how to live righteous, normal, or clean lives.  Jesus responds with a rebuke of the Pharisees’ self-righteousness regarding their own cleanness, norms, and traditions.

^“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Mark 7:8

“Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Mark 7:14-15

This teaching is immediately followed by the story of the Syrophoenician woman, who displays faith without observing any of their laws, traditions, or cultural norms.

This Wednesday is an opportunity to smear ash on our faces, bidding “farewell” to our norms of appearing clean, beautiful, or justified.

Valentine’s and Tattoos

Ash Wednesday is like a Valentine’s Day card that reads, “Our time is short”.  You open the card and inside it says, “but I’m here with you.  Let’s be real”.

1. Is there anyone who you would send this card to, inviting them into deeper conversation?
2. Could you imagine sending this card to yourself, being more present and honest with your own story?
3. What thoughts or questions are suppressed when we’re overly focused on appearing normal, clean, or justified?

In 2018, my sister and I got tattoos.  My sister went into remission from cancer, and we agreed to get tattoos together as a mile marker on that journey.  She read Corrie Ten Boom’s “The Hiding Place” while she underwent treatment, and she chose this quote for the tattoo:

“There is no pit so deep that he is not deeper still”.

This quote is another Ash Wednesday Valentine.  Suffering is not as deep as the presence of God.  Death will not be another doorway into earned or inherited hierarchy.  Heaven is not another system of normalcy, legalism, or oppression.  Our attempts at making ourselves more valuable, more acceptable, or beyond reproach are only temporary.  We are mortal, but we are not alone.

• When we consider mortality and our limited time together, what comes to mind?
• Are there feelings of gratitude for what we have received?
• Is there a desire for more knowledge of God and self, looking more honestly into the soul? 
• Is there a desire for more privilege, like having a mansion in heaven while others live in poverty?

A Smear of Honesty

Jesus told his disciples that the last will be first, and that prostitutes and tax collectors will enter the Kingdom of God before the teachers of the law.  Here’s a smear of dirt on your face to remind you that you are dust.

Here’s a smear in the shape of the cross to remind you what the mortality of Christ looked like.  It wasn’t beautiful, or clean, or normal.  It was dirty, defiled, and running down his face with blood and tears.

When the Pharisees asked, “why do your disciples eat with unwashed hands?”, the disciples didn’t understand.  Jesus even calls them dummies, because he has to spell it out that evil and corruption arise from uncleanness within.  They weren’t eating with dirty hands to make a theological statement, they were just dirty.

A Crack in the Cup

We are all dirty.  We are like cups that have only been cleaned on the outside.  If you have ever seen the inside of my car, then you know what the gunk inside an old coffee mug looks like.

Ash Wednesday can be an opportunity to look deeper into our soul, deeper into our cup, allowing the ashes to reveal something.  The cross of ash can be an uncovering of our mortality, a crack in the show of normalcy.  We can bear our soul to God without the polished justification that we hide behind.

Ash Wednesday is an opportunity to come to church and leave dirtier than when you came.  Mortality, confession, and soul-searching are all dirty work.  But you don’t put the ashes on yourself.  We do this work in relationship with one another.  You bear the ashes, and you bear witness to the ashes on others.

This is a unique act of spiritual vulnerability in community.  We’re so used to putting on a show of cleanness and normalcy.  This is a time of allowing things to be stripped away, revealing our mortality to one another.

Our time is short, but I’m here with you.  Let’s be real.

To read more posts, visit my column here.  Check out my writing in “Soul Food: Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership”, or listen to me read a portion of my writing for the podcast Read, Pray, Write.