Dust and ashes?

Ash Wednesday 2009
Yearly I am struck by the irony – which I am sure has not escaped you either – that on the only day of the year on which our Christian observance shows – when we go out into the streets with a large sooty smudge on our foreheads and trickling down our noses – we have the Gospel passage in which Jesus tells us most insistently and most severely that our observance should not show. I know there are ostentatious people around today, and I suppose there are even people who are ostentatious about their Christianity. There are indeed those who are pushy about their moral stance, and you do get the odd noisy procession or celebration, but on the whole we – especially we Anglicans – prefer to hide in our pews and keep a stony face, and sing and respond as unobtrusively as possible. We like to give our contributions to the collection in those little envelopes so that no-one can see what we are giving; I have derived a certain amount of innocent amusement from watching the various methods of discreet giving. There is the careless toss: the coin (this does not work with notes) flies rapidly from the fingers and disappears quickly among its fellows. There is the protective crouch: the hand, containing the donation, descends into the collection basket and crouches, crablike, over its contents as they release the offering into the heap. There is the nervous stab: in which the thumb and forefinger insert the coin violently, as into a slot machine, into the contents of the basket, burying forcefully. This too, is dicey with notes, except in an unusually generous congregation. And then there is the furtive plonk, in which the donor glances almost fearfully at almost any point in the church, thus distracting attention from the donation, which is placed rapidly down as if both money and basket were red hot. Sometimes I feel I should like to see some shameless person hold up a £50 note, raise a horn to their lips, play a quick fanfare and place the note reverently (on its own little silver salver) upon the heap of fifty pees and pound coins.

We need a touch of ostentation, a touch of shamelessness, a touch of chutzpah, in this area, to counterbalance the vast weight of it elsewhere. I am not just talking about the collection; in fact, I am not really talking about the collection at all. I have spoken before about the absurdity of attempting to show one’s own humility and devotion to holy poverty by denying glory and richness to the house of God. I would like to see, among so many people who, by their actions as well as by their words, declare ostentatiously “I matter”, a few who will equally ostentatiously declare “God matters”.

God matters, God’s church matters, God’s servants matter. Of course I matter; but that is, frankly, only because I matter to God, because in some way I am part of God’s glory. “The glory of God is a living human being”. Of course it matters that I become a complete and actualised human being, and fully myself; but it only matters because I am part of God’s creation, a unique part (as are all the other parts) and the perfection of God’s creation and God’s plan for his creatures matter. And, incidentally, nothing else does.

I acknowledge that it is hard to tell the difference, sometimes, between a person who is showing himself off and a person who is showing God off. It is difficult sometimes even to tell the difference within oneself. But, firstly, the difficulty in distinguishing does not mean that there is no distinction, or that nobody in fact shows off God; and secondly it is not necessary, as it is most likely not possible, to have completely pure motives. I think that if I make it clear that God matters, that God matters primarily and uniquely, it is a small price to pay that I am drawing attention to myself. I do not mind if I am criticised for standing in a pulpit and holding forth; just as I did not mind, in my hermit days, if I was criticised for wearing a monastic habit, for presenting myself as “holy”. Nobody criticises a police officer for drawing attention to herself and presenting herself as “virtuous, law-abiding and courageous” or a doctor for presenting himself as “intelligent, hard-working and caring”. How you perceive a doctor, a police officer, a nun or a preacher, and whether or not you feel resentment or jealousy, is your baggage and not mine. I am not presenting myself as a professional – much less a successful – seeker of God; I am simply saying that God is worth seeking.

I am sorry if all you can see is a woman standing in a pulpit and holding forth with her own opinions. What I want you to see is the overwhelming importance of God. I acknowledge that I am a sinner and that my motives are mixed; but I am doing, from that point of view, the best that I can. I am acting out, in a manner approved by the church, my conviction that God is what matters. On Ash Wednesday we act out, in the manner approved by the church, the fact that we are sinners, yes, but above all that God made us out of the dust of the earth and that we would not exist at all were it not for God; that we have no existence apart from God and independent of God, nor would we want to. In addition, by marking in this way the beginning of our forty days of penance we proclaim that Christ became human for us, was tempted in the desert for forty days, gave us the new law, led us out of slavery, and lay forty hours in the tomb. None of that, surely, should make us seem to be glorying in ourselves? We may, I should have thought glory in the Cross of Christ without being accused of self-ostentation.

People forget – and the Pharisees criticised by Jesus forgot – that if we do penance it is for a reason and that reason is that we are sinners and belong to a sinful race. It does not show that we are holy it just shows that our sins are sufficiently flagrant to have come to our notice. Religious observance is so rare nowadays that people tend to think that simply by taking part in it we are presenting ourselves as somehow superior beings. It reminds me of the frequent reaction when I entered the monastery and, more so, when I became a hermit. I was widely accused of thinking I was holier and better than everyone else. What a strange idea. On the contrary. In the Eastern tradition it is assumed that one becomes a monk in order to repent of one’s sins, and a hermit because one’s sins are such that they need more intensive repentance and reparation. The hermit who goes into solitude because he thinks he’s holy won’t last unless he undergoes a major change of heart: there are a few amusing stories to that effect in the Lives of the Desert Fathers.

So please don’t be intimidated by those who think you are showing your holiness off together with the sooty smudge on your forehead. Remember that you are approaching as near as we ever do nowadays to covering yourself in sackcloth and ashes, and that you are doing penance for your sins. We are all dust, and unto dust we shall return; the only difference between those with a smudge and those without is that we know it, and know that God will raise up that dust on the last day.

By all means keep your exceptional penances under wraps; we are asked to do that, and that was what Jesus was getting at; the observances he mentions were optional ones, which should have been done in secret. But not the observances laid down by the church – let people see our faithfulness, such as it is; it is not ours, but that of the church.

But there’s one thing that Jesus recommends which we should keep to scrupulously. I’m not suggesting that we should all dance out of church today singing the forbidden A-word. But don’t forget that we are saved, that our repentance and penance, through the sufferings and merits of Jesus himself, are all fruitful, for ourselves and for the whole world; and let us look forward with all spiritual longing, as St Benedict says, to the holy feast of Easter.