Observe Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is a day of solemn assembly that is built right into the church year. It is a fast day, a day of mourning for our sin and the sin of all humanity before God, a recognition of our mortality save for the grace of God, and a request that the Lord remember our creation and breathe new life into our burned-out, dusty lives once more.
In many ways, Ash Wednesday corresponds to the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in that it is a day of public penance and renewal by putting our sin to death for the sake of atonement. For Christians, however, this atonement comes through Jesus Christ upon whom our sin was placed, like the ancient scapegoat on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16. It is Christ, not us by our own actions, who saves us from the ravages of sin, and it is upon him that our hope is placed.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a time in the church calendar where we undergo a discipline that helps us become better disciples. Lent was traditionally a time set aside for catechumens to learn about the faith before their Easter baptism. Although you'll hear people talk about giving something up for Lent, giving something up for Lent is like pruning dead branches off a plant so that energy can be directed toward new growth. Lent isn't about dying; it's about discipline so that new life can emerge, which sometimes means dying to what is dead (and death-dealing) in and among us so that there is room for the vigor of new life.
Traditional Ash Wednesday services include an imposition of ashes, which is the marking of an ashen cross on our foreheads with the pastor’s thumb dipped in a little olive oil mixed with the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday branches. The elements used for the imposition of ashes are important to note. In the ancient world people used ashes to symbolize their mourning upon a death and to signify sorrow for their sins. Olive oil was used to anoint people at death, to help with childbirth, to light lamps and to wash. Perfumed olive oil was used to anoint prophets, priests and kings for service to God. Notice the double meaning of both the olive oil and ashes, meanings pertaining to both life and death. Even ashes, which are the residue of death, also contain elements of life in them, for ashes are used for soap (recalling the washing of baptism). Ashes are also one of the prime ingredients in fertilizer used to promote new growth.
The mark of the cross upon the forehead, like the mark of Cain (Genesis 4), is God’s mark of grace upon us that we might not die even though we are obvious sinners. Indeed, the sign of the cross, spiritually branded upon us at our baptism, marks us as God’s own beloved, sealing us against the deadly power of the Adversary. Through the grace of Christ, we are destined ultimately for life, not death. Though the words during the imposition of ashes remind us of our mortality (“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”), they are uttered simultaneously with the sign of the cross to remind us of our baptism into Christ’s mortal death and life eternal.
If you decide to do an imposition of ashes as part of your Ash Wednesday solemn assembly, part of your preparation for the service will need to include education as to what the imposition of ashes is intended to do — not just remind us that we’re going to die (which is not necessarily a bad thing in our death-denying society) — but call for a sober examination of our lives so that we might live more fully in the abundant life of Christ.
If you plan to use Ash Wednesday as a day of solemn assembly, prepare for it just as you would for a solemn assembly. Look for symbols among your people where death needs to be acknowledged and cleared out to make way for new growth and work with these symbols, like the pastors in these stories of Lenten renewal did. Watch for such symbols unfolding among your people in their particular circumstances to see if you can connect them with the liturgical meanings of the Spirit’s movement in your solemn assembly. Pray and with pastoral sensitivity, watch. Watch and pray.
Download the Ash Wednesday Service. 
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