This is my first chance at leading an Ash Wednesday service, so I am so pleased to have this opportunity.

In the dark of winter, we get a wake-up call in the night: we are all mortal. The ashes are also a signal that we are embodied souls. We do not seek our spiritual selves in some great ethereal, abstract place in the great beyond: our lives are met here and now.

In the back of our minds, we suspect that if the world ran according to our dictates, everyone would be better off. To receive ashes is an act of humility. to receive ashes is a blow against arrogance. Human beings have limits and mortality. It is  wrong to expect perfection of ourselves or others. with the humus of ashes, we mark  ourselves as human. to receive ashes is a reminder that we are capable of reducing relationships to cinders, that cruel words can reduce love to smoke and ash. It is an outward mark that we are not only sinned against but we sin against others.

Our  OT reading makes clear that Israel was not ritualistic. It decries meaningless ritual as a formalistic gesture. It wants our spiritual lives to be well-integrated with our private and public lives.  It is striking that the word hypocrite is chosen, as in ancient times, it had the sense of an actor wearing a mask, but in our time it means showing a side that does not match our interior states. In the Sermon on the Mount Presbyterians have probably paid much attention to its injunction to be privately religious, on order to avoid being labelled as hypocrites. .In the OT reading we are called for private good and public justice. Indeed, it comes close to saying that prayers go unanswered due to public injustice, not matter the aggregation of individual charity.Since we are earth-bound, earth-formed creatures, we share a common nature, aspirations and failings mixed together. Once again we venture out into the wilderness that place where God can be as close as each breath and as far away  as a distant star. we travel it with Jesus and start the road toward Holy Week.