It could also be time to eliminate ash crosses on Ash Wednesday. It might be time to make it possible for our ritual actions are in conformity with the aim of the ritual motion and with the Scriptures we learn to interpret these actions.
However I’m forward of myself. Let me again up.
Historical past
One of many many oddities of latest Anglicanism within the Episcopal Church is the belief that the liturgy you like a lot, the one which probably drew you into this a part of the church, is one thing new within the 1979 Ebook of Frequent Prayer. The Ash Wednesday ceremony is definitely a kind of.
Cranmer’s first prayer e book included a ceremony for Ash Wednesday (“The First Day of Lent, Generally known as Ash Wednesday”) and was supposed for use after Matins and the Litany and earlier than the Eucharist. Within the subsequent prayer e book of 1552, the title was modified to “A Commination Towards Sinners.”
Commination is a phrase that has fallen out of use in English, however it was fairly in vogue within the sixteenth century and comes from the Latin phrase that means “threatening.” Most of the reformers desired to deliver again public penance. Cranmer’s resolution was to rework the medieval ceremony for Ash Wednesday right into a substitute for personal confession “with a homiletic and ethical emphasis, consisting of a proper species of devotional denunciation aimed each on the self and on the neighborhood” (Brian Cummings, The Ebook of Frequent Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, p. 719). Briefly, it was a “ritualized cursing.”
Possibly most oddly to the fashionable Anglican is that “of the ashes themselves, no hint stays.”
The restoration of the particular use of Ashes on Ash Wednesday (stunning!) was one of many many inventions within the 1979 prayer e book that could be a return to an earlier observe, not a pure innovation. The bidding to penance; the imposition of ashes; the usage of the Miserere, Psalm 51—all that is fairly recognizable to the medieval liturgical custom.
However what you’ll not discover on this restored ceremony is any route about how or the place the ashes are to be imposed on the person. All that’s printed is that this:
If ashes are to be imposed, the Celebrant says the next prayer
Almighty God, you might have created us out of the mud of the earth: Grant that these ashes could also be to us an indication of our mortality and penitence, that we could do not forget that it’s only by your gracious reward that we’re given eternal life; via Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
The ashes are imposed with the next phrases
Keep in mind that you’re mud, and to mud you shall return.
The next Psalm [51] is then sung or stated (1979 BCP, p. 265)
Consistent with the prayer e book custom, the ashes stay non-obligatory for this ceremony (although I don’t suppose many locations forgo the ashes).
However discover what’s absent: the ceremony says nothing about making an indication of the cross on the brow.
As Neil Alexander explains fairly helpfully in Celebrating Liturgical Time, the medieval observe was usually to impose on the brow. However this arose, not out of an echo of the signal of the cross on the brow with chrism at Christian initiation, however out of the observe of imposing ashes on a tonsured monk. For the reason that tonsure meant that the monk had no hair, this methodology of urgent ashes onto the brow within the form of the cross developed in its place.
However the unique methodology was fairly completely different: as an alternative, ashes had been sprinkled on the top. In reality, there’s a lengthy historical past of formality instructions within the West that prescribe sprinkling, not the type of the cross. For the reason that sprinkled ashes on the highest of the disguise would slide proper off the bald head of the monk, urgent the ashes into the brow, usually within the form of the cross, developed.
All this can be fascinating as a historic tidbit. However that’s not the rationale for this text.
The Gospel
As an alternative, the motivation is the Gospel for Ash Wednesday (Matt. 6:1-6,16-21; NRSV):
Jesus stated, “Watch out for training your piety earlier than others with a view to be seen by them; for then you don’t have any reward out of your Father in heaven.
“So everytime you give alms, don’t sound a trumpet earlier than you, because the hypocrites do within the synagogues and within the streets, in order that they might be praised by others. Really I let you know, they’ve acquired their reward. However if you give alms, don’t let your left hand know what your proper hand is doing, in order that your alms could also be accomplished in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And everytime you pray, don’t be just like the hypocrites; for they love to face and pray within the synagogues and on the road corners, in order that they might be seen by others. Really I let you know, they’ve acquired their reward. However everytime you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who’s in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And everytime you quick, don’t look dismal, just like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces in order to point out others that they’re fasting. Really I let you know, they’ve acquired their reward. However if you quick, put oil in your head and wash your face, in order that your fasting could also be seen not by others however by your Father who’s in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“Don’t retailer up for yourselves treasures on earth, the place moth and rust eat and the place thieves break in and steal; however retailer up for yourselves treasures in heaven, the place neither moth nor rust consumes and the place thieves don’t break in and steal. For the place your treasure is, there your coronary heart shall be additionally.”
There’s greater than a slight disjuncture between placing ashes in your brow (and strolling round all day with them in clear view) and the very direct admonition of Jesus.
What’s outstanding about what we hear from Jesus in Matthew, chapter 6, is how he describes secrets and techniques. The Scriptures present us each names for God the Holy Trinity, together with descriptions of God: He’s Love, a Consuming Fireplace, a Bridegroom, a Struggling Servant, a Nice Excessive Priest, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And Jesus, right here in Matthew 6, provides one other. God is the One “who sees in secret.”
Now such a Identify may encourage worry, as a way to govern you into not doing unhealthy issues. Dad and mom can slip into this sort of method with the youngsters: “Don’t cheat, God’s watching!” “God can see, even in the dead of night again seat!” That is true; however Jesus is saying simply the other. The Father’s id because the “One who sees in secret” is supposed to be a comfort to us, a supply of consolation. Jesus is telling you to behave towards each intuition you might have: that if you do have interaction in acts of piety, do the whole lot you possibly can wanting deceit to maintain them from being recognized. Dallas Williard means that the choice to maintain secret one’s acts of piety ought to be thought-about a correct Christian self-discipline.
“God doesn’t want a powerful mild to understand good actions: for these issues, which seem like buried in darkness, are open to his view,” Calvin writes. “Now we have no motive, due to this fact, to suppose that what escapes the discover, and receives not the testimony of males, is misplaced: for ‘the Lord dwells within the thick darkness’” (we learn in 2 Chronicles). The Father not solely “sees in secret,” Jesus teaches us; He “is in secret.”
A Proposal
This Ash Wednesday, take into account restoring the older observe of sprinkling ashes on the top, slightly than placing them on the market for all see. Put together your congregation, in fact! However take into account additionally preaching concerning the God who is in secret and his name to humility: that’s one thing that ought to be hid underneath a bushel.
The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D., is the Government Director and Writer of the Residing Church Basis, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah Home Theological Seminary, and a scholar of early Christian liturgy.
