Each year, in my previous parish, as the Ministry Team was preparing for Ash Wednesday, we had the same conversation. Are we going to use ashes this year, or not? Some years we did, some we didn’t. It wasn’t a fixed part of our tradition.

And that seems good to me. If you have to do something every year, it can become a mere ritual. But if you never do it, you might miss out on something that could be helpful. The symbolism of ash is to do with repentance (we repent in sackcloth and ashes, Matthew 11:20-21) and mortality (‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, the BCP Burial Service, cf Genesis 3:19).
Lent is as good a time as any to think about repentance and mortality!

A couple of years ago, I read a book by Richard Giles, called “Times and Seasons”[1]. It’s a commentary on the church’s liturgical year from a perspective very different to my own, as Giles is from the Anglo Catholic tradition of the Church of England. (The Bishop who ordained me said, in the Church of England, there was “High Church, Low Church and ‘no church’”. No prizes for guessing he thought I was in the ‘no church’ category!)

Giles is very good at thinking through and explaining the ‘reason for the season’, from Advent to the end of the church year. And he’s very good on Ash Wednesday! He comments on the fact that the use of ashes in worship has become more mainstream than it used to be. These days, you can find it in Common Worship provision; and in the Methodist Worship Book. In the Church of England it used to be the preserve of those with more catholic leanings. There was no official liturgy so you had to borrow from the Roman Catholic Church, and that felt very naughty! So, if you prided yourself on being an Anglican with catholic tendencies, you could wear the ash on your forehead as a badge of honour throughout Ash Wednesday.

Giles is very quick to point out the irony: you come out of the service proud of your religious observance, when during the service you’ve just heard Jesus warning you about:

“practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
(Matthew 6:1).

His liturgical suggestion is that before the end of the service we all turn to our neighbour and wipe the ash from their foreheads, reminding them that their prayers have been heard and their sin is forgiven. So they have the symbolism of the imposition of ashes without turning them into a public display of piety.

What’s good about Giles’s observation is that he is making it about himself. We often use passages like the one in Matthew 6 to point the finger at others. (As has often been said, when you point one finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back yourself!) It’s not difficult to spot religious hypocrisy in other faiths, in other parts of the church, in other Christian traditions, or even elsewhere in our own congregations. What’s difficult is to spot it in ourselves. But if it wasn’t going to be an issue, then Jesus would never have spoken in the way that he does in Matthew 6.

We might read this chapter as a critique of other Christians, whose practices we don’t entirely trust. We might even read it as a critique of the Judaism of his day (conveniently forgetting that Jesus was a faithful Jew). But we ought to read it as a critique of ourselves. In fact, that’s the only way to read it. The only way to read scripture is as God’s word to us. God doesn’t need to speak to us about what others are getting wrong! He needs to speak to us.

The fact that Jesus is not talking to others should be clear: he says “when you give alms”, “when you pray”, “when you fast”. He’s talking to his disciples, and through them to us, assuming that they and we will give, pray and fast. And when we do those things we need to make sure that we are not among the hypocrites. Jesus has plenty to say about hypocrisy. It’s easy to think he’s talking about others. But he’s not. He’s talking about us.

When you give, don’t blow your own trumpet. When you pray, don’t expect an Oscar. When you fast, don’t expect others to be impressed by your display of worthy humility. (Incidentally, I plan to write a book on humility. When I do, it will be the best book on humility ever. Ever!)

But there’s another twist: you may give, fast and pray in secret, in order to receive God’s reward. But that may be equally self-serving. We may do it in secret to give ourselves the comfort of self-righteous gratification. Ideally, we are to give, fast and pray, simply because it is what Jesus expects of us. We need to be able to pray for grace:

“To give, and not to count the cost
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labour, and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will”.

(Ignatius of Loyola)

In Lent, we often talk about giving something up. One of my favourite cartoons shows a vicar slumped in front of the TV, surrounded by crates of beer. “What are you giving up for Lent?”, someone asks him. “Religion”, he replies. It’s not a bad idea.

[1] Times and Seasons: Creating Transformative Worship Throughout the Year, Richard Giles