Ashes for action

An important day in the life of the Christian liturgical calendar is Ash Wednesday, which is this Wednesday, March 5. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, which is the forty-day journey “in the wilderness” leading up to Easter. On Ash Wednesday, we, humans, remember that we are dust and to dust we will return. As said by clergy at many graveside services, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” On Ash Wednesday, we remember that we are ashes — mortal — as actual ashes are placed on our foreheads as a reminder of this humbling reality. The ashes represent mortality but also mourning, penitence and repentance. 

Lent is a liturgical time of “giving up.” Often during Lent, one might “give up” something like chocolate or social media or watching sports on TV or some other beloved activity. This type of fasting is a spiritual practice in which people “give up” something as a sign of “giving up” themselves to God. 

In the Bible, the fifty-eighth chapter of the book of Isaiah describes how the people of Israel engage in this type of fast as good religious people do. They abstain from food and wear sackcloth and ashes as a sign of mourning and penance. They are liturgically literate and ritually right. They want to draw closer to God, and this is the way they know how to do it. But this is the spiritual irony — they seem to move farther away from God as they dive deeper into themselves. They can’t figure out why their fasting won’t work, and so they ask, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” 

They can’t figure out what’s wrong with their fast diet until they are told: “You serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” The critique here is that their fast diet is an abstention, not just from food, but from others. They delight in the divine but ignore human beings. They abstain from loving their neighbor, revealing how a ritual ethic can become disconnected from a righteous ethic in life. Fasting in their way leads them toward ethical negligence because it has become self-serving. 

The idea of “giving up” is problematized through an emphasis on “giving to” others. This becomes clear when the meaning of fasting in this episode is reimagined to include such things as “to loose the bonds of injustice,” “to let the oppressed go free” and “to share your bread with the hungry.” Fasting, as redefined here, is not being drawn more into oneself but being drawn outward toward others. It is selfless service; thus, the imposition of ashes on foreheads should never be severed from service in the world. Contemplation should never eschew action.

If there is ever any abstention in fasting, it should be the abstaining from indifference, inactivity, egotism and injustice. In his sermon “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” Go ahead and have ashes placed on your foreheads, but know that those ashes are a call to action.

The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery is Dean of Duke University Chapel. His column runs on alternate Mondays.