Redeemer Lutheran Church
Redeemer Lutheran Church

The Teaching Corner

Question:  Where do our ashes for Ash Wednesday come from?

Traditionally, the ashes used during Ash Wednesday worship to mark our foreheads come from the burned palms of the previous Palm Sunday.  This is both a way of recycling those palms for another church use as well as providing some wonderful symbolism.  On Ash Wednesday, our most penitential day of the church year, we mark our foreheads with ashes reminding ourselves that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”  It may sound morbid and depressing, but it is really a reminder that we are nothing on our own.  Death will eventually claim all of us--the good, the bad, and the in-between--and our sinful nature should doom us to ultimate destruction.  But those ashes we smear on our foreheads are in the shape of the cross.  Jesus’ death on the cross was a death that defeated death for us and so those ashes become a symbol of hope for us as well as a reminder of our mortality.  A palm is a symbol of life, and just as the life of those palm branches strewn before Jesus as he arrived at Jerusalem led to death for Jesus on the cross, those palm ashes in the shape of the cross move us on our journey from death to life.  For it is only the cross, an image of death itself, that has the power to lead us through death to life.

 

    While the tradition is for congregations to prepare their own ashes from their own leftover palms, burning and preparing those palm branches can be a tricky or messy affair and so many congregations simply order palm ashes for Ash Wednesday from church supply companies.  The past two years we have burned the leftover palms from the previous Palm Sunday to create the ashes we use for Ash Wednesday.  Burning those palms yourself from palms actually used by the congregation has a good symbolic feel to it.  However, it can be a rather messy business, since even after the palms are burned down the ashes need to be sifted before they can be used.  (This year, since I forgot to make sure we kept a number of last year’s palms, we will be using ashes left over from the previous year’s burning--the ashes of 2013’s palms.)  The ashes cannot just be used by themselves however, for they are basically dust and wouldn’t stay on anyone’s forehead or make the sign of the cross, and they would make a big mess without the addition of oil to the ashes.  Finding the right mixture of oil and ashes is a trial and error process that they don’t teach you in seminary.  If for no other reason, having your own supply of ashes from your own palms is beneficial because it provides extra for when the pastor messes up and puts too much oil in with the ashes.

 

Redeemer Lutheran Church

140 E 32nd St

Jasper, IN 47546

 

Phone: 812-634-1123

Email: redeemerlcjasper@gmail.com

 

Pastor: Rev. Adam Ruschau

Secretary: Kristine Harris

Worship Times

Saturdays  5:00pm

Sundays   9:00am

(Aug 10-Oct 26)

 

(Holy Communion is typically celebrated at all weekend worship services)

Sunday School  Times

Adult--8:00am Sundays

(Aug 10-Oct 26)

Children's--9:30am Sundays

at St. John's Boone Township

(Aug 17-Oct 26)

 

 

 

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