© 2026 Evan D. Garner
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Richard’s forehead was the perfect canvas for ashes. He knew it, too. When he came up to the altar rail, he leaned forward with a satisfied grin on his face as he offered his giant, smooth, gently sloping, perfectly bald head to receive the ashen cross. The first time I gave him ashes, I was intimidated by the opportunity. Unaccustomed to such a spectacular specimen, I choked. My follow-through wasn’t clean. The horizontal line started as a sloppy smudge and then faded not far past the vertical. I apologized to him after church and promised I wouldn’t make the same mistake next year.
We clergy aren’t likely to admit it to anyone, but we compete to see whose crosses are the clearest, boldest, and most symmetrical representations of our mortality and penitence. At least I do. The secret is to rotate your thumb ninety degrees when doing the horizontal stroke. That way the line stays narrow, straight, and well-defined instead of smearing into an indistinguishable smudge. But, no matter how much pride I take in being the very best at imposing ashes, when you walk out that door, I want you to wipe them off. Like John Keats’ famous epitaph, I want the evidence of my work to be “writ in water,” as ephemeral as a Buddhist mandala that gets swept away by its creator.
“Beware of practicing your piety before others,” Jesus says, and he means it. In Matthew’s gospel account, Jesus only cautions his disciples with the word “beware” five times: beware of false prophets (7:15), beware of those who will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues (10:17), beware the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees (16:6ff.), beware that no one leads you astray (24:4), and beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. Jesus effectively equates showing off your spirituality with being fooled by false prophets and being persecuted by your enemies. Strutting around town with ashes on your forehead, therefore, is perilous. For Jesus, it’s an example of faithful disciples being led astray.
Ash Wednesday was never supposed to be about the ashes. In fact, in our tradition, we didn’t even have a spot in our liturgy for actual ashes until the 1979 prayer book was adopted. Earlier prayer books provided a penitential rite that could be added onto Morning or Evening Prayer, but the only mention of ashes was in the name Ash Wednesday, and that was only the stubborn relic of a medieval practice that Anglicans had put away during the Protestant reformation.
You may also be interested to know that there are no instructions in our prayer book for how the ashes are to be imposed. Making the sign of the cross with the ashes is a practice that belongs mostly to English-speaking Christians. Around the world, simply sprinkling them on top of the head is far more common. In fact, our prayer book makes it clear that ashes are entirely optional. We could leave them out completely. They have always been an add-on—a mere symbol of what the first day of Lent is really about. But do you know what isn’t optional? The invitation to the observance of a holy Lent.
This day is about starting Lent the right way. It’s about beginning our Lenten journey with a commitment to self-examination and repentance; to prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and to reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And none of that happens on the surface where other people can see it. Our Lenten renewal happens, as Jesus tells us, in our rooms, behind shut doors, where only our Father in heaven is watching, where our Father who sees in secret will reward us.
The principal physical gesture we use to make a right beginning of repentance and as a mark of our mortal nature is not the ashes we receive but the kneeling posture we adopt. Even if kneeling is something you can only do in your heart because your knees gave out years ago, that act of coming into God’s presence humbly on our knees centers us and our frailty in a right relationship with the Almighty, who loves us as God’s own children. The ashes we receive must complement that gesture of humility. They must come from that posture and reinforce it. The ashes are not the end we seek but a vehicle through which we are reminded of our mortality—that we are made of dust and that it is to the dust that we shall return. Whenever we show off our ashes so that others can see them, the entire gesture is obliterated. An act of humility before God cannot withstand even the tiniest boast from within.
If we are going to make a right start of this Lenten observance, we aren’t going to enjoy it. Lent is about remembering the things we don’t want to hear: we are mortal; we are sinful; we are utterly incapable, which is to say we need God completely. Ash Wednesday is about remembering that, in the eternal sense, all of our accomplishments are worth no more than a pile of dust. And the reason that truth is worth celebrating is because God loves the pile of dust that he has made into you and me. We are precious to God totally and completely because God chooses to love us. God’s love is unconditional. Anything we do this day that seeks to make ourselves better in God’s eyes—more worthy of God’s love—more deserving of God’s grace—serves to undermine what this day is all about.
We are nothing more than a wonderfully, beautifully complex arrangement of dust. In time, every speck of dust that comprises your body will be returned to the earth and scattered to the wind. There will be nothing left, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. But God loves you anyway. And that love is the only thing that has the power to put you back together again. Today is about remembering that that love is a gift you don’t deserve, but it’s one God has given you anyway. Don’t throw that precious gift away because you want people to see the ashen cross on your forehead, even if it’s the prettiest one you’ve ever seen.
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