Ash Wednesday is the most uncomfortable day of the year. Its very name tells us this is not going to be a "feel good" praise service. In recent years, this day always reminds me of my first Ash Wednesday in a small, rural Ohio congregation I served in the mid-1990's.

Accustomed as I was to larger congregations always having a supply of ashes on hand in the sacristy for Ash Wednesday's imposition of ashes, I never gave it a thought - until about 3:00 Ash Wednesday afternoon, when I decided to go over to the church (the pastor's office was in the parsonage) to prepare them for the evening service. When I got there, I hunted everywhere. Though I did manage to find the crown of thorns with my open palm, way in the back of a dark cabinet I was groping around in, there were no ashes to be found. Upon asking the 10-hour a week secretary, she informed me that the previous pastor always went into downtown Toledo on Shrove Tuesday and bought a single packet of ashes from the religious supply store there.

Clearly, it was too late for a trip into the city. Instead, I went to a friend's, took a scoop of ashes from their fireplace, went back to the church, and prepared them. All was ready.

That evening, the worship service, including the imposition of ashes, went without a hitch - very solemn, very moving.

The next day, I ran into two parishioners in the little local grocery store. One, the mother of one of our confirmation students, said, "What was IN those ashes last night? My daughter now has a bright pink cross burned onto her forehead!" I answered, "Just ashes and water. Maybe she's allergic to dust or ashes?"

A few minutes later, I came upon another parishioner - a retired pastor's wife in her 70's, who had a very direct way of putting things. Without even a hello, she got right to the point: "Honey, what was in those ashes last night?" (I hate being called "Honey" by anyone but my husband!). However, at that moment, I noticed a bright pink cross on her forehead, vainly attempted to be hidden with very fine, gray bangs.

A little more flustered this time, I again responded "Just ashes and water."

"Where's you get the ashes?" she demanded.

"From a friend's fireplace," I answered.

"My god, girl, don't you know wood ash and water make lye? Half the congregation is walking around town with red crosses burned into their foreheads!"

So, 75 good souls of Salem Lutheran congregation ended up being living illustrations that week of the baptismal declaration that we "have been marked with the cross of Christ forever!" (Just to put your minds at rest, this morning's/evening's ashes are made from palm ash and olive oil...).

But even without the lye, Ash Wednesday is the most uncomfortable day of the church year. When ashes are imposed -- that black, unsightly, cross-shaped smudge on our foreheads -- we confront in a most disturbing way the fact that we will die. We speak the unflattering truth as we mark you: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," echoing God's words to Adam and Eve after they broke the ONE rule God had made in the Garden of Eden, quoted again in the words of committal spoken at the cemetery as we prepare to bury our dead, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Interesting also, isn't it, that we use the term "imposition" of ashes, rather than perhaps, "anointing" with ashes, or "blessing" with ashes, or "consecrating" with ashes. We impose the ashes as if we know we do not particularly welcome them, as if we were as much as rubbing our faces in the dust and ashes of our mortality - and who longs for that?

As if that wasn't enough, Ash Wednesday is the most uncomfortable day of the year for another reason: it's uncomfortable because of all the confessing it requires, and traditionally, with no pronouncement of forgiveness until Holy Week. I don't know about you, but my sins are an embarrassment to me. My self-centered smallness, my offenses against God and people are not things I am eager to acknowledge in public, or even to God for that matter. Wouldn't it be much easier on our fragile self-esteem to make a little Lenten deal with God to give up something relatively insignificant - like chocolate - as a symbolic way to remember Jesus' sacrifice of his life for me?

But that's not what "self-denial," one of the spiritual disciplines of Lent, means. Self-denial means to give up ourselves, to offer ourselves and our illusions of righteousness and our sin to God - in order for God to re-create us in the image of Christ. God asks through the prophet Joel in our first reading:

Yet even now, says the LORD,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Return to the LORD, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.

God isn't nearly as interested in symbolic actions or tradition or ritual as he is in you - the "real" you, the you you hope no else really sees. The "real us" is quite different from the way we usually imagine ourselves to be, or the way we'd like others to see us. Sin casts its shadow over us many times a day - we try to be people we aren't; we take issue with Jesus' teachings and commands about serving the poor and the outcast, and refuse to let God soften our hearts; we cherish things, and spend more time attaining and protecting them than we do people; we fail to love as we have been loved.

These Lenten disciplines - self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love, strengthened by the gifts of word and sacrament -- aren't for God's sake; God doesn't need them, and given what Jesus experienced on the cross on Good Friday, I'm not so sure he's particularly impressed with our giving up chocolate or movies for Lent! The disciplines of Lent are for our sake.

Ironically, Ash Wednesday and the spiritual disciplines of Lent call us from self-deception back to reality: we, even the most righteous, most faithful among us, are all sinful, all flawed; and while we are wonderfully made, we are nevertheless mortal, made by God's artistry out of mere ashes and water, to which every one of us will one day return.

Like Good Friday, Ash Wednesday and the Lenten disciplines are not very popular, even among Christians. We don't like to know how sinful and flawed we are. Even more, we don't like someone preaching at us about how sinful and flawed we are! We consider thinking about death and ashes to be rather depressing and morbid.

But sinful, flawed, and mortal is not all that we are. By the grace of God, we are precious sons and daughters of God, whose repentance is important to God, who wills abundant life for us in Christ, both now and for all eternity. God loves us sinful, flawed, and mortal creatures so much he bought us from sin and death, trading Jesus' life for ours, paying for us with Jesus' blood. It is that reality, that indescribable gift that gives us the courage to tell the truth about ourselves not only to God in confession, but to ourselves in the deepest, darkest, most frightened places of our hearts.

Ash Wednesday is an uncomfortable day. Lent is not for sissies. Is God calling you today/tonight to serious repentance, to changing the direction your life is heading? Or is God calling you to fasting or self-denial? Is God calling you to regular, intentional prayer, or to midweek and Sunday worship? Or to works of love and service?

I invite you to meditate on the Joel text, and on these questions, during Communion, and write down next to the Joel text in your bulletin, one Lenten discipline that you feel God is leading you to commit yourself to. The Lenten disciplines will be read out loud after the next hymn, and are printed in your bulletin. Then, invite God's spirit to move and work in you by means of that discipline, and through you, touch the world with his love and grace. Amen.