The Very Rev. Robert V. Taylor
I invite you to imagine this scene. It is Ash Wednesday in a large urban church. In the tradition of that place one of the clergy is available throughout the day to impose ashes for anyone who wants to receive them. The lines form early in the morning with people on their way to work; the line snakes through the church all day. Most of those who come are unfamiliar faces to the clergy.
My friend, who is rector of that congregation, was sitting in the pew meditating as he watched the expectant faces, the attentive body language, of those waiting to receive ashes. He was startled, surprised and unprepared for what he saw. He noticed a woman in line wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women. After receiving the ashes she stopped to say “thank you” to him. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked. “For the ashes. I come every year for them” she said. My friend was a little perplexed and said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but you are Muslim and yet you are thanking me for the ashes that you come each year to receive. I’m not sure I understand.” She smiled broadly at him; one of those wise smiles from deep within. Thinking for a moment she said, “The ashes remind me to be grounded, to pay attention to my life, to become the person of love I try to be. Coming here to receive them makes me think of being welcomed by God.” She added, “Thank you for this gift. And now, I have to go to work.” My friend watched her leave, marveling at the sight of this woman leaving a church, wearing a hajib with ashes on her forehead. Although he’d been a priest for 29 years he felt as though he had just had an insight into the Ashes of Lent unlike any other. The unexpected love and generosity of God has been experienced in a surprising way through this visitor.
When I first heard his story I thought about the Holy One always breaking through the enclosures of what we think we know. I wondered if the ashes are as compelling and inviting to many of us as they are to that occasional visitor. I wonder what the ashes of Lent mean for you? Do we share the yearning of that occasional visitor? The story is a window in to the generosity of God; the generosity that Lent invites us to rediscover, the generosity of Jesus who always invites people in, never excluding. Are the ashes an invitation to pay attention to your life, to draw closer into the love that Jesus bears? To go beyond the quick fixes that we’re tempted by in our own lives and go deeper.
In today’s Gospel we encounter Jesus faced with the choice of easy solutions; to be an instant rock star meeting the worlds needs and remaking it as he might see fit. The temptations were designed to keep him from trusting his voice, denying his imagination and manipulating his generous compassion by setting him off course. Instead, Jesus trusts his own voice and imagination. This story invites us to trust our own voice and imagination as well.
The gift of Lent is modeled after the spacious forty days that Jesus spent wrestling with all that conspired to keep him from his life’s purpose. As he wrestled with the ashes of the world and those of his own life he was able to trust his own imagination. Look at his tempter! He was offering a menu of ago old cheap illusions, of ways to avoid being fully alive. The tempters enticements were rancid, old news, devoid of any imagination. The tempter did not understand that getting mussed up in the ashes and the muddiness of life had allowed Jesus to know the truth that we are made in God’s imagination.
Jesus was preparing to invite people into a dance, or a walk to the center of a labyrinth; a way of going deeper into the heart of generous love that must have seemed insane to the Tempter.
Joseph Campbell says that each of us must have a place that we go to every day where no one knows you and where you owe no one anything; a place where you do not know who you work for, who you are married to; a place that is for our own self. Jesus’ time in the desert was such a place. Lent invites us to return to or create those spaces to listen to our voice, to trust our imagination.
Do the ashes invite us to return to that which grounds us on our spiritual journey? I had an unexpected and amusing reminder of that grounding in my own life a few years ago. I was on a short list of candidates being considered for nomination as a Bishop in California. The time arrived to interview with a team representing the Search Committee. The came to Seattle for interviews with a variety of people and used the offices of a rabbi friend at a neighboring synagogue. The Temple was a familiar place to me. I had attended and participated in services there. It was a fairly typical, wet, grey January morning in Seattle.
After parking the car I suddenly realized that I couldn’t find the correct door to enter through. I felt a tinge of panic. This was not a time to be lost! As I went from the front doors, headed towards the north side of the buildings, I took a massive slide! There I was dressed for the interview, wearing a suit, looking fairly formal, sliding on the moss and mud, and finally landing on the ground. My hands were grazed and covered with dirt. There was mud on my trousers. The materials I had inside a folder were splattered with mud and dirt. As I fell, I was surprised by my reaction. As I braced for the fall and the dirt I was laughing at myself and my impeccable timing!
It was a great moment! It felt messy. It made me think about the root word for humility, of humus which means “earth” and which is related to the word for “low” and “humble”. They are words which reflect our dependence on the Divine One and on one another. The interview went well and afterwards I wondered if that had something to do with falling in the mud. Any potential for self-importance in the interview was tempered by the foibles and imperfections of my own steps and missteps. The unexpected gift of landing in the mud was the reminder to take myself lightly.
Whatever the mud or ashes are experienced as in your own life, it is usually an invitation to walk lightly into what beckons us. The ashes of Lent invite a return to the grounding of your life. Our own journey to the heart of Divine Love is usually discovered in getting mussed up in the dirt and ashes. It’s there that we re-discover our oneness with God. Through the ashes you discover or re-discover that you are loved for no reason than that of your existence. Emerging from the ashes we are able to open some of our self-fulfilling enclosures which keep us from loving with abandonment.
The ashes, the mud, are not about gloomy glumness. As Jesus emerged from his forty days, with clarity about his person, his life and his work, so we are invited to become fully alive in new ways through the work we do in Lent. We’re invited to be re-grounded in the truth that the only message of Jesus is one of generous love. God says to us, “Please know that you are loved for nothing other than your existence. Please know you are loved and beloved of God. And so is every single person. Please, I need you to be my helpers in making that love known. Please!”
Robert V. Taylor invites you to visit www.robertvtaylor.com
