It may be time to get rid of ash crosses on Ash Wednesday. It may be time to make sure that our ritual actions are in conformity with the purpose of the ritual action and with the Scriptures we read to interpret those actions.
But I’m ahead of myself. Let me back up.
History
One of the many oddities of contemporary Anglicanism in the Episcopal Church is the assumption that the liturgy you love so much, the one that possibly drew you into this part of the church, is something new in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The Ash Wednesday rite is certainly one of those.
Cranmer’s first prayer book included a rite for Ash Wednesday (“The First Day of Lent, Commonly called Ash Wednesday”) and was intended to be used after Matins and the Litany and before the Eucharist. In the next prayer book of 1552, the title was changed to “A Commination Against Sinners.”
Commination is a word that has fallen out of use in English, but it was quite in vogue in the 16th century and comes from the Latin word meaning “threatening.” Many of the reformers desired to bring back public penance. Cranmer’s solution was to transform the medieval rite for Ash Wednesday into a replacement for private confession “with a homiletic and moral emphasis, consisting of a formal species of devotional denunciation aimed both at the self and at the community” (Brian Cummings, The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, p. 719). In short, it was a “ritualized cursing.”
Maybe most oddly to the modern Anglican is that “of the ashes themselves, no trace remains.”
The restoration of the actual use of Ashes on Ash Wednesday (shocking!) was one of the many innovations in the 1979 prayer book that is a return to an earlier practice, not a pure innovation. The bidding to penance; the imposition of ashes; the use of the Miserere, Psalm 51—all this is quite recognizable to the medieval liturgical tradition.
But what you will not find in this restored rite is any direction about how or where the ashes are to be imposed on the individual. All that is printed is this:
If ashes are to be imposed, the Celebrant says the following prayer
Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
The ashes are imposed with the following words
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
The following Psalm [51] is then sung or said (1979 BCP, p. 265)
In keeping with the prayer book tradition, the ashes remain optional for this rite (though I don’t think many places forgo the ashes).
But notice what is absent: the rite says nothing about making a sign of the cross on the forehead.
As Neil Alexander explains quite helpfully in Celebrating Liturgical Time, the medieval practice was often to impose on the forehead. But this arose, not out of an echo of the sign of the cross on the forehead with chrism at Christian initiation, but out of the practice of imposing ashes on a tonsured monk. Since the tonsure meant that the monk had no hair, this method of pressing ashes onto the forehead in the shape of the cross developed as an alternative.
But the original method was quite different: instead, ashes were sprinkled on the head. In fact, there is a long history of ritual directions in the West that prescribe sprinkling, not the form of the cross. Since the sprinkled ashes on the top of the hide would slide right off the bald head of the monk, pressing the ashes into the forehead, often in the shape of the cross, developed.
All this may be interesting as a historical tidbit. But that’s not the reason for this article.
The Gospel
Instead, the motivation is the Gospel for Ash Wednesday (Matt. 6:1-6,16-21; NRSV):
Jesus said, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
There is more than a slight disjuncture between putting ashes on your forehead (and walking around all day with them in clear view) and the very direct admonition of Jesus.
What is remarkable about what we hear from Jesus in Matthew, chapter 6, is how he describes secrets. The Scriptures provide us both names for God the Holy Trinity, along with descriptions of God: He is Love, a Consuming Fire, a Bridegroom, a Suffering Servant, a Great High Priest, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And Jesus, here in Matthew 6, adds another. God is the One “who sees in secret.”
Now such a Name could inspire fear, as a means to manipulate you into not doing bad things. Parents can slip into this kind of approach with the kids: “Don’t cheat, God’s watching!” “God can see, even in the dark back seat!” This is true; but Jesus is saying just the opposite. The Father’s identity as the “One who sees in secret” is meant to be a consolation to us, a source of comfort. Jesus is telling you to act against every instinct you have: that when you do engage in acts of piety, do everything you can short of deceit to keep them from being known. Dallas Williard suggests that the decision to keep secret one’s acts of piety should be considered a proper Christian discipline.
“God does not need a strong light to perceive good actions: for those things, which appear to be buried in darkness, are open to his view,” Calvin writes. “We have no reason, therefore, to suppose that what escapes the notice, and receives not the testimony of men, is lost: for ‘the Lord dwells in the thick darkness’” (we read in 2 Chronicles). The Father not only “sees in secret,” Jesus teaches us; He “is in secret.”
A Proposal
This Ash Wednesday, consider restoring the older practice of sprinkling ashes on the head, rather than putting them out there for all see. Prepare your congregation, of course! But consider also preaching about the God who is in secret and his call to humility: that is something that should be hid under a bushel.
The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Publisher of the Living Church Foundation, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, and a scholar of early Christian liturgy.
