Ash Wednesday call to worship
Ken Sehested
Dearly beloveds,
the ashen interposition stakes its claim upon us
in this midweek assembly, and
the Word is announced by trumpet’s blast
rather than a piccolo’s peep.
We approach the hour of trembling.
But the Beloved One – who nestled with us
even in our gestation—this One has a
reprimand to announce.
In the midst of our modern conveniences –
in our sheltered presumptions,
our decent good order,
our fashioned attire, and our
tamed and housebroken piety –
we have all but lost the capacity for trembling.
Ash Wednesday is when
we are confronted anew that
the faith we espouse is consequential;
that there are convictional repercussions
for this assembly’s profession.
If there is no skin in the game,
then the sanctity we display is all for show;
the offerings we make,
all smoke and no fire
If our ascetic practices fail to include
loosening the bonds of injustice,
freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry and
relieving the agony of the aggrieved,
then our reverence is all wax and no wick.
We have no claim on the promises of God
short of the practices of life immersed
in the pathos of God
in a world beset
by ruin and predicated on violence.
But blessed are we in doing the truth in compliance
with Heaven’s appeal and the Spirit’s bias.
Then shall our light break forth like the dawn
then shall a river of mercy flow and
a garden of abundance grow;
our wreckage, mended;
our breaches, repaired;
our streets, restored.
Let the ashen stain announce
our confidence that
dust is not the last word.
# # #