On Communing on Ash Wednesday

As some of you may recall, last Lenten Season I put out an article entitled “On Fasting From Communion on Good Friday,” in which I discussed the phenomenon of Lutheran (and others as well) churches deliberately excluding the Sacrament of communion on that day that they otherwise would have had during the service as a way to mark a sense of loss and “bad-ness” upon the day of our Lord’s Death. This year, I figured it would be good of me to mirror that article with one for Ash Wednesday, which is another day in which Communion is often absent, where it otherwise would have been present.

Unlike Good Friday, on which the sacrament is often excluded for reasons relating to theology or piety, Ash Wednesday is a day on which the sacrament is excluded for practical reasons alone. I am far more sympathetic to this concern. After all, how is this even supposed to work? Are we to have the congregation come up in a line for the imposition of ashes, have them return to their seats, go through the Eucharistic Liturgy, and then have them come up again to receive Communion? Are we to say the Words of Institution first and then administer the elements as well as the ashes in a row with altar servers? It’s not exactly simple or obvious, or smooth, and it only gets more complicated if a congregation only has one pastor. And then there’s the concern of the centerpiece of the service. Will the imposition of Ashes get overshadowed by the administration of the sacrament? What will the parishioners go away with from this service if we have all of these things going on here? All of these are good questions. These are questions I ask myself and struggle with as well

But all that being said, there still are good reasons to administer the Eucharist today. For one, if done properly, Ash Wednesday is a day wherein we hear not only about our mortality and incoming death but also of our hope of resurrection unto eternal life in Christ our Lord. And, again, if preached correctly, this is accomplished through His life, His death, and His resurrection, and is received by us in Word and in Sacrament (especially Baptism and the Lord’s Supper). Then comes in the big concern here. If we’re preaching that we partake of Christ’s death and resurrection for us through the sacraments, but then aren’t administering them, then we’re making promises to our congregants without delivering on those promises. An Ash Wednesday service without communion is one which “preaches” by its liturgical rubric that we are going to die, and any resolution to that news (such as the Eucharist) is not present. It may be preached in the sermon, but it is not answered in the liturgy. What a dreadful message that! But with the Eucharist, well now it is far different isn’t it? Now we can preach the full gift of eternal life, and even better, we can do it in the midst of our own mortality and impending death, and preach it in a way in which its promises are immediately delivered to those who hear it and receive it in faith. To administer the sacrament of the altar puts at the very forefront of the congregation’s mind, the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death for us. So that those wages of sin (death) are seen as paid, not as yet unpaid. Not as something you must yet face, but as something He has already faced for you. That the blotting out of sin is heard as accomplished. That the creation and renewal is actually happening. That as the ashes imposed upon those who have confessed their sins, and they hear of the death they must suffer for those sins, they then immediately after (or a short while after) hear that God is not leaving them in that death, but taking that death upon Himself, dying that death for them, and then in exchanging granting them His own eternal life and glory – now this is the whole meta-narrative of God’s redemptive story. That is the whole message of God’s salvation of the whole world. And so, to leave Ash Wednesday, communion-less, while understandable for pragmatic reasons (and I’ve done it myself this way) is only half of the liturgical story. A liturgy without the sacrament of the altar is an unfinished liturgy. It leaves us with the un-answered question of “what now?” “What must I do to be saved?” The Sacrament of the Altar answers that question for us; it is the answer to that question for us, and it’s answer is, take and eat. For as Our Lord says in John 6; I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;  this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. This is the bread which has come down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread, will live forever. This sacrament, this bread, this flesh, this Eucharist, is the answer to the dreadful news of our mortality. This sacrament is the medicine of immortality. This communion is our fellowship in the eternity of God, and the life that we share in together as one in Christ. It is this sacrament (and Baptism also) which allows us to proclaim with boldness the truth of our epistle reading for today from 2 Corinthians, Though dying, behold, we live. And that’s not merely given as an abstract hope to be preached, but its made a concrete, tangible, havable, seeable, tastable, touchable, locatable reality for us to be given and received.

Is so great a promise not worth the pragmatic headache? Maybe it isn’t. But I like to err on the side of hoping that it is. and if it isn’t, then perhaps its the Ashes that needs to go (which do not save), not the very source and summit of the Christian life which needs to go. For Christ our God instituted the Holy Supper, but mere men invented the tradition of the imposition of ashes. If we cannot have them both (we can), then we must go with the one God gave us, the one which saves us, and the which gives hope to us. Because God did not bring you into church tonight to remind you that you will die, but He brought you into church to remind you that you cannot die. Because through the death of Christ, you have already died. And through His resurrection from the grave, you one day will rise.

So then, impose the ashes. And then wash them off. For death cannot have the last Word. Not in our sermons, not in our liturgies, and not in our lives. For whoever believes in Him, though they die, yet shall they live. Thanks be to God.