Across the Pastor’s Desk by Mark Boorsma

 

Millions of Christians on Wednesday will have a cross-shaped smudge of ash drawn on their foreheads, beginning the season of Lent (related to the word lengthen, as in days getting longer, and still the common word for spring in some languages).  The use of ashes (think “sackcloth and ashes”) continues the ancient and biblical expression of repentance, about which you can read in Esther 4:1-3, Job 42:1-6, Jeremiah 6:26 and in Jonah, chapter 3, for example.

I happen to be a lifelong Lutheran, so this Ash Wednesday ritual has been my experience for as long as I can remember. As little children, if my siblings and I made it through the Ash Wednesday service without fussing or misbehaving, Mom and Dad rewarded us with a stop at the five-and-dime store for a treat — candy or gum or the like. What a sight we kids must have been, all bouncing in with crosses on our brows, eagerly choosing a treat.

Which might also help explain why, even though it indeed remains a sign of penitence and sorrow for sin, it has always for me doubled as something like a divine kiss upon the forehead. I do not find it shameful or embarrassing to wear that cross, because it displays a divine signature with which I have been claimed, redeemed, forgiven and set free for service.

Best of all, my role as a local pastor gives me the privilege of drawing this cross on so many brows on Ash Wednesday, making temporarily visible that divine kiss, otherwise invisible but still surely there, on every forehead. You are deeply loved, and the one who made you declares that eternal truth — on Ash Wednesday and every day.

Mark Boorsma is a pastor at Ascension Lutheran Church in Albert Lea.