A Recipe for Ashes

Take thousands of pounds of trash and put it into a special incinerator to produce electricity called H-power while creating thousands of pounds of ash (though far less than before).  Perhaps you read the recent article in the Honolulu Advertiser about the disposal of all those ashes in Waimanalo Gulch on Oahu.  That’s a lot of ash! 

Here’s another recipe. Take dried palm branches and burn them over high heat to soot, add a small amount of olive oil and you have another recipe for ashes.  These though are not ordinary ashes, not the kind you dispose of but instead ashes with a very special purpose in mind.  Who would ever think that such a simple recipe could have any kind of significance?  Yet these ashes signify the beginning of our journey.  Our spiritual journal begins at baptism.  Ash Wednesday is a reminder of that beginning as we start the journey of Lent - the journey to the cross with Jesus Christ.  On Ash Wednesday the sign of a cross is made on our forehead – it is a cross that tells a story.

• Take one part palm ash – these palm branches were used on palm Sunday from years past.  Palm Sunday is the day they celebrated Jesus arrival at Jerusalem by waving palms and singing praises.  It was the beginning of the week when Jesus goes to the cross for us.  It is these palm branches, ones of praise, which now become a symbol of Christ’s death on the cross. 
• Take one part olive oil – olive oil was used in healing arts at the time normally applied with prayer (James 5), now it is a symbol of our prayers of repentance and healing through Jesus forgiveness. 
• Mix together and apply to the forehead in the shape of a cross – that cross reminds us what journey we have begun on the way to the cross of Good Friday, it is a small picture of our journey here on earth.  Thanks be to God that it is not our cross but Christ’s at the end of this journey.