Today, Wednesday, March 06, 2019, I met a number of people with ash smeared on their foreheads. These are believers majorly from the Catholic religion and they were venerating what they call the Ash Wednesday. According to the Catholics, this day marks the first day of the 40 days of Lent (fasting).
According to Catholic authoritative sources, this lent period ends on Holy Thursday, the fifth day of Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter) that marks the Last Supper. In addition to certain rules about foods and fasting, many Christians (and even non-Christians) abstain from certain foods, luxuries or material goods or certain activities and habits.
It matters that we inquire about this Ash Wednesday and find out exactly what it means and why the Catholics have found it an indispensable practice.
Human beings are symbolic beings; they communicate in symbols and understand through them. However, it is important that all symbolic beings understand that once what is symbolized is achieved then a symbol becomes irrelevant and of no use to those who have arrived.
We now advance to the question of the theology of Ash Wednesday and how relevant it is to modern Christians.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE
The use of ashes goes back to ancient cultures, long before even Judaism was. In the Ancient Near East cultures, dust or ashes were elements applied whenever there was mourning. Pasting the body with dust and ashes was a sign of three sets of moods:
- Grief and Mourning
- Attenuation and Humiliation
- Annihilation and Extinction
People in the ancient cultures abstained from food and fashion beauty in times of pain and loss and resolved to wear sackcloth, washing in dust and ashes. W.R Smith in his book ‘Religion of the Semites’ records:
“Ashes and Dust has a well-known usage in some savage tribes, in mourning for the dead, to smear the body with clay, the purpose being, perhaps, merely to have a visible sign of grief as a mark of respect for the deceased. Possibly, at a later time, the dust of mourning was taken from the grave in token that the living felt himself to be one with the dead”
The Ash and Dust symbols in horrible times were never Jewish or Christian in its inception but cultural and indigenously religious in their birth.
In the Old Testament (OT), because the Jews were part of the Ancient Near East cultures and part of the Sumerian religious beliefs, they emulated majority of this symbolism and only switched the deity that was symbolized with Yahweh. While other people used ashes in relation to their idols, the Jews used ashes in relation to their God. Such verses in the OT will be referenced by those who seek to defend the Ash Wednesday from the Scriptures.
According to the Jewish encyclopedia;
“A mourner cast Ashes (or dust) on his head (2Samuel 13:9), or sat (Job 2:8; Jonah 3:6) or lay (Esther 4:3) or rolled himself (Jeremiah 6:26; Ezekiel 27:30) in ashes (or dust).”
Because ashes are remains of cremation, the ancient cultures used ashes to signify annihilation and extinction (Psalm 18:42; Job 30:19). This was a sign of how grievous whatever had happened was and how sorry-repentant they were (2samuel 13:19; Job 2:12; Joshua 7:6; Daniel 9:3, Mathew 11:21, Luke 10:13).
Individual members of community and worshippers used dust and ashes to signify their nothingness to the gods and insignificance without the favour of the gods (Genesis 18:27, Job 30:19). Ashes or dust were used to symbolize how humiliated and a loser that the worshipper or a person was (Isaiah 47:1, Psalm 72:9)
This undeniable cultural background justifies those who argue that ash smearing has its roots in paganism. The use of ashes is not original with the Jews and neither is it or was it a practice of the early Christian Church.
USE AND ABUSE OF THIS THEOLOGY
Ash Wednesday is connected to lent (fasting) in anticipation of Easter (resurrection). For the Romans who crucified Jesus, it makes sense for them to smear ashes in lamentation and mourning for the dead god and exhibiting their grief for their horrible deeds on the now dead son of God.
Ashes symbolize that God is dead and his believers are dead in our sins as well. One could argue that believers are also mourning and lamenting the horrible sins, they have committed against the will of God.
However, this creates some theological tensions:
First, from both the OT and the NT, we are warned against the wrong way of fasting and symbolizing our faith (Isaiah 58:3-7; Mathew 6:16). Lent is not abstinence from some type of foods or not eating for a certain period of time and eating it later but rather giving that very food to those without (Isaiah 58:3-7).
Secondly, lent (fasting) cannot be signified for everyone to know since according to Jesus, this is not Christian but hypocritical and pagan (Mathew 6:16).
Third, the ashes that are put on the foreheads of believers are ashes of the burnt palms of the Palm Sunday. The victorious entry of God in the world culminates in ashes and this is what makes the whole thing blasphemous (Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19).
Finally, the disciples of Jesus Christ (Christians) should only fast and mourn with ashes on them if and only if Jesus the bridegroom is taken away from them (Matthew 9:14-15). Ash Wednesday, therefore, is a sign of the desertion and absence of God and not his presence.
God bless you I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest Isaiah White
@Think & Become
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 