Ash Wednesday: Following Jesus to the Cross

by Brett Harris

Somehow, Ash Wednesday always sneaks up on me. I know it’s coming every year, and yet I’m always surprised when I find out that it’s almost here. I might be able to give myself some grace on letting it fly under my radar this year given all that’s swirling around in the world and within the Alliance, but I’m not going to let it slip by this year as I’ve done in the past. 

It feels like this year, maybe more than others in recent past, is a year that we need the spiritual practice and discipline that comes with the lenten season that begins today. This feels like a year that we truly need to walk with Jesus during these forty days, to listen to the lessons he teaches, to heed the warnings he offers, to witness the ways he heals the wounded, and to follow him to the cross.

Last year, a group of Alliance leaders gathered at Davidson College to discern the next phase of our Churches that THRIVE for Racial Justice work, an initiative that accompanies congregations as they seek to deepen their commitments to antiracism and liberation through shared learning and communal practice. As we reflected on where we have been, named our growing edges, and looked toward where we are headed, the Rev. Dr. Christine Wiley offered a word that has stayed with me. She reminded us that committing ourselves to the work to which we have discerned God calling us, the work of liberation, demands our willingness to go with Christ to the cross.

Not close.

Not around.

Not in view of.

To. 

To experience the life that only comes through resurrection, we have to confront the world as it is. We have to confront the world just as Christ did. 

Attuned to the cries of the hungry and wounded. 

Mindful of the ways those in power twist our faith into a weapon of empire and courageous in our efforts to reclaim our faith as a tool that builds beloved community.

Unflinching in living out our values and our callings.

Doing so may, at times, make us feel as though we are dying. As if there is no chance of coming out this journey alive, or without new wounds that will need to be healed. 

And, still, we must follow. 

We must follow and trust that maybe, just maybe, these forty days spent in prayer and petition and penitence, in walking with Jesus to and through the cross, may just be what we need this year to clarify where God is leading us next.

To that resurrection life that lies beyond the cross and within the empty tomb.

The only way we can get there–to the new life we all seek as followers of Jesus, even the new life we seek for the Alliance–is to work our way through all that we are facing as individuals, as an organization, as a nation with Christ as our example. And the best way to heed his example is to follow him, watch how he does it, and then, as he said to the lawyer to whom he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, “Go and do likewise.”

Today, we are all reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return, but it’s important to remember that it is only out of the dust that new life is born. It is only out of the dirt and the decay and the soil, that new life can grow. 

We may want to skip ahead to Easter and skirt around the difficult work ahead of us in our communities as we navigate the grief and the harm and the violence that seems to engulf us today, but we cannot get where we are going, where God is leading us, unless we confront the world as it is with Christ as our example. To me, that what these next forty days are for: to remind us how to do so.

I may be stumbling into Ash Wednesday this year, less prepared for it than when I was pastor, having prepared no ashes this week nor written any liturgies nor even with a moment’s consideration for what I might give up or take on this year, but I’m stumbling into it trusting that if I follow Christ’s lead on this journey, I’ll find new life on the other end. May it be so for us all.