ASH WEDNESDAY

              Some of my preacher friends were discussing Ash Wednesday services in their various churches. My though was “What do Baptists have to do with Ash Wednesday?” Such observances began in the Roman Catholic Church in the ninth century. During the reformation the practice did not transfer to the protestant churches but over the years it became popular in the liturgical ones (Episcopal, Presbyterian, etc.). As a child growing up in a Baptist church, which was very formal but not liturgical, I never knew of Ash Wednesday or Lent until I studied them in school.

            The explanation of the ritual is that ashes in the form of a cross on one’s forehead represent mourning and repentance, recognition of our mortality, and the beginning of the forty days of self denial which is Lent.

            I have no problem with the observance. One Catholic source claims that more people attend the Ash Wednesday service than attend at Christmas or Easter. The practice has become so popular ashes are offered on street corners and in drive-thrus.

If someone asks me what I am giving up for Lent, however, I reply, “Nothing.”  The call of Christ to self denial has no time limit. “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”  (Matthew 16:24)

 

Grace and Peace