Ash Wednesday, is the beginning of the Church’s penitential season (Lent) to survey our sin and death problem and prepare for God’s solution in the passion and cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ash Wednesday is God’s invitation to prepare with penitent hearts to return to his grace and mercy as he is poised to accomplish a redemption that overcomes our problems of sin and death. His plan is to have us travel with Jesus to Jerusalem, where he will execute the deliverance we all need from the twin curses that hold us in death’s grasp. We come with rent hearts – not garments or hand wringing. The gracious God intends to embrace us by the saving work of his Son. Let’s face it: penitent hearts are not easy to come by. Our sinful self rebels against the idea that we cannot improve on godliness by our own efforts and resolve. Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, where our God is out to remind us of our death problem and fashion repentant hearts. He provides us five weeks of Lent to survey our godless sinful condition in anticipation of the outpouring of his mercy and forgiveness in the cross of our Lord Jesus.

We need to remember that we embark not on the road to glory but on a cross road, a cross experience, and a cross destination. We make our journey as baptized children of God who have already been united to Christ, the crucified, in whom we live and serve in his Church. So, we begin in and with the cross. On the journey and at our destination, we shall meet up with Christ and his cross and thereby find ourselves, our true selves – apart from him in his law and in him in his gospel. We begin our journey reminded of our fundamental frailty, the death problem that reduces us to ashes. On the journey through the valley of the shadow, we shall meet and experience a death to sin from which we will find, again for the first time, righteousness and life in Christ, now and forever. So, gather up your dust . . . and let us be on our way.

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