I am well known for my idea as ministry as mud and mess, its
part of my pastoral identity and I think this becomes most realized on Ash Wednesday.
The person putting ashes on the other gets the ashes in their skin, under there
nails, and no one told me ashes itch growing up. The few times I’ve imposited
it has taken me a while to get the ashes out of my finger. It’s a little yucky.
But this
year I noticed on social media the comments about the style of ashes that people
received one person typed ‘I got a good one this year’ along with a photo. I
was tempted to comment back and say ‘it does not matter what matters is that
you are prepping to wear the ashes, and grow closer to God for the next 40
days!’ I refrained but it made me think of how often the rituals we observe and
celebrate as Jesus followers/The Way have become fashion accessories, or the
popular culture. Cross jewelry is no
longer about remembering your faith exclusively; it’s a fashion statement far
to often. Ashes apparently for some have become a reason to gloat a bit I’m a
little fed up.
But what really
gets me is that we never follow the basic rituals that Jesus TOLD us to do and
God for century’s before Jesus on the screen. Feed the poor, care for the
widows, tend the blind and lame, look out for the venerable, love one another.
But going to get ashes on your head is 20 minuets, the above take a long time
to enact and the results take just as long to show in a big way. Thinking about the volunteer work I have
done, I know that one sandwege to a homeless person in NYC is not going to save
him long term. But perhaps for today it will not only physically keep him
going, but remind him that someone here on earth is routing for him to survive
and to eventually thrive. Same with my work at the Psych Hospital, I often went
home going ‘I did not do enough I need to do more!’
But I learned that an act of
wearing my ashes in siting with an office of women who watched a terrible code
blue that ended in death, after the guy being worked on for almost an hour,
prepared them to face the reality. At the time I wanted to be in the action,
preparing the man for burial and comforting patients what a chaplain at the
hospital does. But in a difficult act of
humility, patience, and hope I sat with the women for hours thinking I did
nothing more then sit there and listen (not to discount this).
I had to
take some time off from volunteering for a while and when I came back the women
I spent the most time with told me how much she valued the time I spent with
her. This was almost two years latter and I was amazed that I had done enough
for the situation that day. I had provided a bridge between God and earth.
Wearing my ashes to say ‘we are messed up people and messed up things happen’.
Ashes are
messy, dirt is messy, and following Jesus is messy. Being in ministry means
going into trenches filled with mud, human fluids, rats and other things like
that. It means getting the mud and ashes under your nails that you can’t ever
get out. It means opening yourself to the possibility’s of seeing that we are
reluctant to get in the mud in the first place prefer our sanitized, disinfected
ways.
