Ashes-on-the-Go

This will be the tenth year I have been providing Ashes-on-the-Go in Elmwood Park near the entrance to UNO. I thought it would be a right and good thing to share my thoughts on this practice with my All Saints Church family.

Fr. Keith and Archdeacon Betsy

First, a note on what Ashes-on-the-Go is not—it is not an attempt to replace the regular Ash Wednesday liturgy and Eucharist that we have at church. We offer four services throughout the day, 7 AM, 12:10, 5 and 7 PM. Committed church-goers should be attending one of those, worshipping in community and supporting each other. As Scott Gunn, director of Forward Movement, says, Ashes -on-the-Go “is for seekers and, perhaps, wayward Christians. It’s really an invitation…to realize that all that glitters is not our salvation…[It] doesn't short-circuit the practice of committed Christians, but rather expands the circle to include borderline practitioners and seekers.”

I can tell you stories of encounters over the years: The frazzled mother, in tears, late to day care and then work, who was so grateful to be able to receive ashes and blessings on a day, like most for her, that would include no time for peace. The bus driver, trying to make ends meet, who started work at 5 AM and would end it at 10 PM as a taxi driver. The father who went home after receiving ashes to get his son, on his way to be deployed in just a few hours. The students who don’t know what Ash Wednesday is about (or what church is about, for that matter), who stop inquisitively, listen to the explanation, and then ask to participate in our sign of sin and repentance. The car of young men who stopped, asking, “Does God hate [gay slur here]?” and paused in stunned silence to hear more when I said, “Of course not!” The people who stop and ask for prayers of healing for a loved one. The people who have been horribly hurt by the church, or by “religious” family members, who need to vent their pain and are surprised when I listen and apologize. The woman who returned through the morning traffic to bring hot coffee from Starbucks, to say “thank you” for being a sign of the church out in the world.

Some see Ashes-on-the-Go as an opportunity for evangelism. While that is not untrue, I see it much more as an opportunity for loving presence in the world, an opportunity for grace in a time where so much of life is grace-less. To those who complain that it is “cheap grace,” I answer it is exactly the opposite. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about that term, he said, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Ashes-on-the-Go is about repentance—or at least about confession that bids us into repentance. It is a sign of the very Cross of salvation, of the pain and affliction that we placed on Jesus and continue, by our greed and complacency, to place on so many of our neighbors near and far, and on the earth itself.

Ash Wednesday as a church practice has its origins by the 10th century and possibly as early as the 6th century. Both the Old and New Testaments have examples of ashes being used as marks for people in mourning and those seeking forgiveness. The ashes are not a Sacrament, limited to the initiated, but a symbol and an invitation and a blessing, open to all. The words we use at the imposition, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” are found in Genesis 3:19. I made this little flyer that I hand out to help explain what Ash Wednesday is. It includes this prayer from the Ash Wednesday liturgy: “We confess our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people; our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work...our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us.” We have so much to mourn, so much to repent…and the church has a primary role in being a voice calling out to people in the wilderness of our marketing and consumption-driven culture.

True discipleship requires being in a community of other disciples, for help, for fellowship, for discipline, or education, and for joyful worship. But how can people discover this that message is only heard behind our closed doors on Sunday mornings? After the Crucifixion, the disciples hid in fear and darkness and anxiety for what they thought was the death of their faith. I wonder sometimes that we’re doing the same today. Even at the moment they had locked themselves in, Jesus was out walking the highway to Emmaus, telling the story of God’s love to fellow travelers on the road. Ashes-on-the-Go is an opportunity, as least for me, to imitate Jesus, to be out on the road, literally and figuratively, with fellow travelers, and to engage them in discussion about how very near the Kingdom of God is, even in our daily grind.

I’ll be in Elmwood Park at the entrance to UNO from 7:30 to 9:00 AM and 11:30 to 1:00 PM on Wednesday, if you want to drop by and join me, or offer a prayer (or bring some coffee).