Part 2 of a 3 part post. Part 1 praises the spirit of Ashes to Go and begs deeper pastoral questions. Part 2 focuses on the liturgical tradition around Ash Wednesday, exposing some valid reasons why ashes became sublimated and the offering, in turn, somewhat confused. Part 3 offers a deeper pastoral response, grounded in the original tradition around ashes, for our current context and times.
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For me, it started with a really basic question: Why ashes? As it turns out, this question has nagged Christian communities nearly since ashes were introduced as a liturgical symbol or act. Ashes had to do with initiation and life’s conversion, and yet they quickly became something else, something, I’d say, less. What I’d like to see is a return, not so much to the original use of ashes, but rather to the spirit of a church which knew how to practice Christian initiation of adults and, for those already a part of the body, how to mentor and model a life of genuine faith and embrace that which is truly counter-cultural in an world of competing empirical interests – be it the first several centuries or, in fact, this 21st one.
Our pastoral response to increasingly secularized people should not be a continuation, indeed, reification of a centuries-long mishandling of this day. Our response should be a renewal of the earliest spirit surrounding Ash Wednesday, revisiting the ways in which early Christians practiced initiation and helped form women and men in the story of God’s salvation. Ash Wednesday is not supposed to be an invitation to the already-initiated, although that’s what it’s become. Ash Wednesday should be about lifestyle change, about conversion – baptism, at its core. That’s why, more than likely, I’ll be connected to a worshiping community (note I didn’t say “within the four walls of a church”) on future Ash Wednesdays to come.
Truly, why ashes? I promise this is no ‘slippery slope’ argument, but consider this: Would it be right to venture forth with the pre-consecrated Host and offer folks at a subway terminal Christ’s Body and Blood? Or would it be fitting to stand at a street corner with a bowl of water and offer baptism?
By and large, someone’s answer to a hypothetical question about Wafers to Go, say, is more quickly arrived at than their answer to whether or not ashes can be imposed inside or outside the context of a worshiping assembly. Thus, the first point I’d like to offer is that there’s a very clear, very basic distinction between sacraments and ashes, and that’s something the church should bear in mind, not to mention take quite seriously. Eucharist and Baptism, of course, are sacraments. Ash Wednesday has a pseudo-sacramental quality about it. Eucharist and Baptism share deeper layers of meaning as well as participate much more clearly in the story of God’s salvation. Ashes were a later addition and not an entirely clear innovation, even at the time. A body which is broken but gives new life is not only a profound spiritual concept but is also inherently woven to other levels of meaning of the Body of Christ. Water points to Jewish purification rituals and Jesus’ action in the Jordan, not to mention the process the people of The Way developed for initiation and faith development, a process which was counter-cultural in its larger empirical setting. Ashes, on the surface, suggest something compelling, but the connections are feeble, the nuances too great, and the revisions and human tinkering simply too obvious.
Why ashes? was obviously a question for Cranmer and those who participated in developing the Prayer Book tradition. Significant portions of the Sarum Blessing of the Ashes were used in compiling the rite which was was, in 1549, offered as “A declaracion of scripture, with certein prayers to bee use the firste daye of Lent, commonlye called Ashwednesdaie.” By 1552, the rite was re-named “A Commination against sinners, etc.” At least in common parlance it was called ‘Commination’ for the bulk of the Anglican liturgical tradition, up until the liturgical renewals of the 20th century. One notable exception is found in the proposed but unsuccessful 1689 BCP in which the High Church party made some inroads in offering the new title “The Proper Office for Ash Wednesday” and drawing a more clear connection to “the due preparation of all persons for the worthy receiving the Communion at Easter,” and which was mentioned “was of good use till superstition corrupted it.”
But where Cranmer, in the 16th century, used the gist of Sarum’s rite, he retained barely a hint of ashes in the liturgy itself. Several key phrases from Sarum’s prayer of blessing the ashes find their way, in Cranmer’s text, into the second Collect following the Suffrages, but that prayer is an appeal to God’s mercy and the phrase “…of your mercy deign to bless these ashes which we have resolved to put upon our heads, etc.” is noticeably removed. Even the words of the anthem which would’ve been intoned in the Sarum rite while worshipers received ashes is moved, in Cranmer’s text, to a final prayer and was, in 1552, changed from “antheme” to “this that followeth”, again, with no suggestion of ashes – or what many reformers feared to be a late-medieval innovation – being distributed. Liturgical historian G. J. Cumming argues that there’s an equally strong connection to the Quarterly Excommunication found in the Sarum rite, indicating that Ash Wednesday, for the English reformers, wasn’t so much about ashes or interior life change but, rather, public discipline and the maintenance of good order. Marion Hatchett says as much, suggesting that “one aim of English reformers was to restore public penance as a means of discipline.”
At least by the 16th and 17th centuries, then, the meaning of ashes – note, in 1549, it’s labeled “the first day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday” – was already disconnected as a symbol denoting interior change. In fact, retaining the act of imposing ashes, an individual act, detracted from the larger goal of developing a properly-organized, truly Christian kingdom. Thus the ashes were sublimated, being too disconnected, too ‘superstitious’. By the time the Prayer Book distilled what its framers would’ve called the best of the tradition, the day commonly called Ash Wednesday had mostly to do with Christian kingdom-building: made clear in the introduction to the Commination in the 1662 version, “…in the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons stood convicted of notorious sins were put to open penance, and punished in this world …; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend.” Ashes had become, over time, a communal practice. And in the English reformation it was judged not necessarily an efficacious one, and thus removed.
But it was, nevertheless, called Ash Wednesday so in many local contexts ashes were used. For the first time in an American Prayer Book, the BCP 1979 provides a proper liturgy for the imposition of ashes, albeit as an option. Hatchett affirms that “many felt the need of a special service for Ash Wednesday. Unauthorized forms, which frequently included the use of ashes, had come into use and seemed to meet a real pastoral need.” The imposition of ashes was brought back, and perhaps it never really went away, at least in local contexts. The church simply responded to people’s needs, not dissimilar to the claims made by those who are distributing ashes to go.
But what practices, then, were brought back? The original intent or the misinterpretation? And what were the people saying, in truth, when they said they wanted, they needed ashes? And was it a need worth meeting, or rather one worth getting underneath, one worth transforming? I would argue the latter, that what we’re offering is not the original use nor is it the most fitting understanding of ashes. Rather, there’s a deeper need under the desire for ashes. The church would do well to spend some time getting back there, which would involve work of transformation, not merely service.
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Part 2 of a 3 part post. Part 1 praises the spirit of Ashes to Go and begs deeper pastoral questions. Part 2 focuses on the liturgical tradition around Ash Wednesday, exposing some valid reasons why ashes became sublimated and the offering, in turn, somewhat confused. Part 3 offers a deeper pastoral response, grounded in the original tradition around ashes, for our current context and times.
from the rectory porch 