Lent at South Church – a Ritual for Ash Wednesday at Home

The South Church community’s Lenten journey has a special theme this year: Six Ways of Knowing: Encountering God, Ourselves and One Another through the Senses– Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste, Touch and Intuition.
Each Sunday service will focus on one sense and invite you to reflect on how you have, are or hope to encounter the sacred through real life, ordinary and extraordinary sensory experiences.
Let us start our immersion into this theme by marking ourselves with ashes. You will need a source of flame- a match, lit candle, fire pit or fireplace or access to a stove. You will also need a fireproof vessel (a dish or bowl or ceramic flowerpot), a small sheet of paper, and something to write with.

Guide for the Ritual – adapt as needed, South Church style : )

Mark your entry into sacred time through a sensory experience, such as listening to music, ringing a bell, lighting a candle, anointing your hands with essential oil or lotion or drinking a special beverage.

Reflect on these 2 passages from scripture:
“I have refined you, but not as silver. I have tested you in the fire of adversity.” (Isaiah 48:10)
“When you walk through the fire, you will not be consumed, nor will the flame burn you.” (Isaiah 43:2)

God’s “fire” in scripture comes not to punish but to purify- which is to say- to make a thing more itself, to give it integrity – so that its outside matches its inside, to reveal the strength and beauty within. The promise is that we will not perish in the fires of adversity; rather, than “burning” away what is false, destructive or unnecessary, this sacred encounter will leave us more whole, more alive, more ourselves.

Meditate on a place or places in your life where God’s fire might be needed. Write these thoughts down and hold the paper over the flame as you invite God’s refining fire.Drop the lit paper into the fireproof vessel and let it burn out. After the ashes cool, use the ashes to mark your forehead and signify your assent to be on our communal Lenten journey.

More about Lent

Lent is a 40 day season of reflection, prayer, fasting, and intentional generosity done in preparation for Easter. The 40 days are intended to invoke recollections of God’s presence in the lives of our ancestors– the flood of Genesis, Moses’ sojourn at Mount Sinai, Elijah’s journey to Mount Horeb, Jonah’s call to Ninevah to repent and Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness. Lent is the Church’s perennial invitation to go inward more deeply in order to strengthen our capacity to go outward– to put our faith into action through the ways we interact (or don’t) with the world. It may sound like a contradiction, but we invite you to think of it as a paradox. Simply put, one meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection in our lives today is to see it as a model for transformations of all kinds– personal, communal, societal, global. The first step is to consider ways of being that no longer work for ourselves and communities. Surrendering these old ways, articulating our deepest hopes for new ways yet unknown, assenting to and even embracing minor and major “deaths” of all kinds are prerequisites for new ways, for new life, forEaster. Resurrection necessitates “death” as a preceding act. Mother Nature knows this– the trees surrender leaves- which die and fall to the ground. The tree then enters into dormancy, a kind of tomb. This fallow time makes it possible for new leaf buds to appear and for the growth of the tree to continue.

So, the way to transformation, new ways of being, the way to Easter, is through the death of our “old selves.” This is why we mark ourselves with ashes: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).
Whether you consider yourself religious or not, there is great human value in pondering the Paschal mystery – the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Every life is formed with this same pattern. We all endure our own passions, deaths and resurrections many times before our lives come to an end.

Source: https://southoldlocal.com › 2017/04/09

Finally, the Rev. Dr. David Gambrell, from the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Office of Theology and Worship says “The common thread—whether one is new to the church, estranged from the community, or wanting to grow in faith and faithfulness—is a deeper and more authentic relationship with God and one another through Christ. Lent points to the cross, where Jesus is lifted up with arms outstretched in compassion and welcome. And Lent points beyond the cross to the empty tomb, where Jesus offers new and abundant life to all.”