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Why is Ash Wednesday on Valentine’s Day this year? It’s because of Easter.
In the church, there are moveable and immovable feasts. Christmas, December 25, is immovable. Easter, on the other hand, is moveable. In the Western Church, Easter determined based on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon that occurs on or after March 21. Most of the time. Paschal Moon, Astronomical Moon, and the date of Passover can also affect the date. Once the Easter date is determined we count backwards to figure out Ash Wednesday. Forwards to determine Pentecost. Would it be better if Easter were a fixed day or fixed Sunday? Maybe. But maybe, too, there are lessons to be gleaned from not being in control of when Easter will be, for we cannot control when or where Jesus appears in our lives, neither can we schedule or manage the power of resurrection.
All of this is to say, Ash Wednesday is on Valentine’s Day this year! (Or is Valentine’s Day on Ash Wednesday? I’ll let you decipher this chocolate/peanut butter dilemma). It is a day to mark the beginning of Lent. To name our mortality and celebrate the freedom we have to follow Christ as he journeys into the wilderness. “What Wondrous Love is This?” the hymn asks, and it is a grand question for us to ask in the upcoming season – a season that, at First Presbyterian Church, New Bern, also includes not-to-be-missed Lenten Lunches.
On Ash Wednesday, the Sanctuary will be open all day for you to stop by. There will be ashes you can place on your forehead. There will be other prayer stations, too. And then we will gather for worship in the Sanctuary at 7:00 pm for service that will include the imposition of ashes for those who would like to receive them. The traditional words as the ashes are placed are “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I have some colleagues who plan to shift that a bit this year and use ““You came from love, and to love you shall return.”
The 7:00 pm worship service will also be live streamed. If you plan to live stream and would like to pick up ashes for that service, they will be available in worship the Sunday before and in the church office that week.
I look forward, as always, to worshiping with you.
Ash Wednesday Poem, by Lisa M.Caldwell-Reiss (used with permission)
Will stopping this Wednesday to receive
the sign of the cross in dirty ash
Upon tired foreheads really make a difference
Mark us for a moment, a season, a lifetime?
Will this emblem on our own skin
Soak in where words have not
and choices have not?
I wonder at its hope and purpose.
People of candle flame and tongues of fire,
Walkers on water who have dipped
beneath the cleansing surface,
Taking a night to dabble in oily ash and stain.
Would that Sunday, yet two months away,
dawn at all, if not as bright,
with trumpet call to new life if we could not
stand in this other truth, as true
as resurrection but more gritty?
Does its honest presence make the revelation
The breath, the rising sun possible?
We stand with grimy hands, flinching,
Drawing back from the itchy sensation
Of ash and oil and human nature.
Holding ourselves still
And breathing deeply until, we can be,
wholly in this grubby skin,
Waiting, with creation for the water and the flame.
Tossing scraps of paper sin into a smoky burner
Watching as they are consumed,
disintegrate and rise,
Prayers for healing, longing, hope, to God.
We laugh, upside down and unrelenting,
A laugh like Easter morning.
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