St. John’s Lutheran Church
5 March 2025 + Ash Wednesday
Rev. Josh Evans
Nothing gets a bunch of clergy and seminarians so riled up, it seems, as a singular Facebook post advertising an upcoming Ash Wednesday service with “Glitter Ash.”
You heard that right:
Glitter. Ash.
Popularized in 2017, the Glitter Ash “movement” was organized as a way of making a statement – to take the ubiquitous symbol of the ashen cross traced on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday and mix it with a bit of glitter, the idea being for progressive Christians to be more visible not just as Christians but as a particular kind of Christian – the kind of Christians, for instance, that might fly a rainbow flag in front of their building or proclaim “Black Lives Matter” from their sign.
Not surprisingly, the movement has taken hold among queer and queer-affirming Christians in particular; and in fact, the practice of blessings with glitter goes back even further to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an LGBTQIA+ activist organization formed in San Francisco in 1979 that uses drag, religious imagery, humor, and a bit of irreverent wit in its commitment to community service, ministry, and outreach to marginalized communities and – in their own words – “to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency, and guilt that chain the human spirit.”
Even so, when my own seminary shared their plans on Facebook earlier this week for a Glitter Ash service today, on Ash Wednesday, I was conflicted – and I was clearly far from the only one.
On the one hand, I get the thought behind it –
proclaiming not just the symbolism of mortality in the ashes,
but also the hope and resilience in the glitter,
particularly for marginalized communities.
And yet, on the other hand,
even, presumably, as a part of the “target audience” for Glitter Ash,
I realized: I need the ashes more.
(Not to mention I hate glitter – which might just be a lingering effect of the trauma of working as a holiday temp employee at Pier 1 Imports, where I learned that it’s apparently not a Christmas ornament if it isn’t covered in glitter. But I digress…)
Maybe this Ash Wednesday, more than most,
I need the honesty – and the promise – of the ashes –
the gritty, black, oil-and-palm ashes.
***
Earlier this week at our Monday night Bible study, in response to the very icebreaker question I posed to the group – What is your most meaningful Lenten memory? – I was reminded of my own:
It was 2012, and it was my first time participating in “Ashes to Go.” Along with one of my pastors and a fellow Urban Village Church goer, we stationed ourselves just outside a Blue Line train stop on the North Side of Chicago during the busy morning rush.
After a while of imposing ashes on the foreheads of Chicagoans on their way to work, I’ll never forget what came next: An SUV coasting down Damen Avenue – a fairly busy street – slows down as it approaches us. The driver’s window rolls down, and a woman, spotting my pastor, yells out, “Hey! Can you come here and do the kids real quick?” And so he did, right in the middle of Damen Avenue, at rush hour.
I’ve participated in Ashes to Go several times in different places in the years since then, and what always strikes me is the response among those who stop to receive the ashes – grateful for the opportunity when they might otherwise have not been able to make it to church or simply have forgotten all about it.
***
It’s easily one of my most meaningful Lenten memories.
For the church and the people I first got to do it with
and for the ritual itself –
a reminder of our mortality,
our creatureliness,
our utter dependence on and connection to the earth.
Earth to earth,
ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.
Ultimately, these ashes are a reminder
that we’re not the ones in charge.
Today, on Ash Wednesday, in one of the most extended rites of confession of the entire church year, we confess our shortcomings, our failures, our brokenness, our human limitations – not for the sake of feeling sorry for ourselves, but because we know and trust that God’s mercy and capacity to forgive and to heal are always deeper and wider than we can ever conceive or imagine.
The 17th-century English poet and priest John Donne puts it this way
in one of my favorite poems:
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow’d in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
There’s “the sign of hope” for me:
the ashen cross.
Faithful cross, true sign of triumph…
symbol of the world’s redemption…
I need the honesty of the ashes.
I need the reminder:
of my morality,
of my finiteness,
of my limitations.
I need the reminder:
that I can’t do it all,
that I don’t have to.
I need the reminder too:
of my connection:
to the earth,
to the Creator,
to my fellow creatures.
I need the promise of the ashes.
Will you meet us
in the ashes,
(writes contemporary artist and minister Jan Richardson)
will you meet us
in the ache
and show your face
within our sorrow
and offer us
your word of grace:
that you are life
within the dying,
that you abide
within the dust,
that you are what
survives the burning,
that you arise
to make us new.
And in our aching,
you are breathing;
and in our weeping,
you are here
within the hands
that bear your blessing,
enfolding us
within your love.
***
There is an honesty and a promise
in these ashes –
the gritty, black, oil-and-palm ashes.
In the ashes
is a rootedness to God
and a connectedness to one another.
In the ashes
is the cross,
not denying the reality of death,
but confronting it head-on.
In the ashes
is the promise
of “life within the dying.”
We need these ashes,
we need this cross:
the ultimate sign
of subversive, resilient hope,
of death transformed,
of life renewed.
