An Ash Wednesday Virtual Worship Service Invitation

“We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2nd Cor. 5:20b-21)

This Ash Wednesday, March 2,2022 at noon EST, Church and Society invites you to join our staff and interns for a special virtual worship service - to encounter God and be restored through the word of Rev. Allison Mark, who serves on our board, and the invitation to ashes by Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe.

Everyone is welcome to view and participate by going to our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/GBCSVideo) or Facebook Live (www.facebook.com/umcjustice) starting at Noon EST on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022; we invite you to prepare a bowl of ashes mixed with a few drops of oil to participate virtually with us.

While scattered across many places, this worship service will be a chance for the Church and Society community to join together, be present for one another and build up one another in the love of God as we receive this holy blessing of the ashes.

With each stroke of a finger forming the sign of the cross in sticky dark ash, we are naming the truth of human life. We are made from the dust of the earth. Our lives are all marked by the stuff. No one can escape it. A sobering thought.

Yet, the ashen cross made on our foreheads is also a gesture of hope, a blessing.

Many of us are exhausted by a pandemic, pained by the violence against black lives, and the xenophobic hate that has arisen in our communities. Divisions, invasions, and the sounds of war leave us with a feeling of alienation and anxiety from our own humanity.

Where do we look for hope when we are breaking under the weight of uncertainty, doubt, and distrust in our families and in our communities? How do we continue to love our enemies, seek reconciliation, and love God’s justice and peace with humility and courage?

We can take heart on Ash Wednesday. God loves us into a fuller humanity than the one our worst inclinations may suggest to us. We can look to the ash marks on our siblings’ foreheads, and upon our own and know that God has not left us alone. Rather, God goes through our mortal condition in Jesus Christ to free us for love and justice.

May we receive such a blessing and find hope in it together. See you March 2nd at noon!