Ash Wednesday 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Excursus on Ash Wednesday

The Meaning of Ashes

Ashes represent many things. The heaped up ashes in a hearth may indicate the benefit of warmth on a cold winter’s night. The charred remains of a personal property and its smoky ash from human or natural causes, indicates something entirely different. The product of a crematorium represents something jarringly dissimilar from the contents of a burn barrel or a campfire.

The Product of Destruction

Despite the positive and negative differences in the resulting ash, one thing is constant, ash is the product of burning and henceforth the destruction of something that once existed in a different form.

Metaphorical…