Ash Wednesday--Mortality

Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2010
2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10

Today we receive the ashes on our foreheads, a sign, to ourselves as much as to others, of our mortality, a reminder that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return,” as the words of the liturgy so brazenly proclaim. For, in America, it is easy to ignore our mortality, to think that we can live forever. After all, don’t we spend thousands of dollars on health clubs, vitamins, anti-aging creams, cholesterol-lowering drugs and spend our weekends on the ski slope or the treadmill—expecting to add a few years to our lives?

For Palestinians, living under Israel’s occupation, mortality is a daily reality—not some distant possibility. No matter how careful they are, at any moment the soldiers can knock on their doors, drag them or their husbands, wives, sons or daughters off to prison, or present the family with a demolition order, executable in two hours. For Palestinians, even if they obey all the rules (no additions to your house, no travels outside your town, no demonstrations against Israeli authority), there are no guarantees that the soldiers will not come.

When I read Paul’s words about all the hardships he has endured, I think of the Palestinians, “in great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…” (2 Cor 6.4-5). The young men who work in the secret tunnels under the border between Egypt and Gaza endure hardships, working underground in hastily-dug dirt tunnels….and they know mortality. Take two minutes to hear them in their own words: "Tunnel youth."

Remember these two young men as you finger the grit of the ashes on your forehead and ponder your own mortality.

Gracious God, in your incarnation, you experienced suffering and death. Comfort those who today suffer hunger and imprisonment, especially the people of Gaza. Let your suffering accompany us on our Lenten journey. Teach us be your lips and hands, offering words of encouragement and support and sharing our abundance with the people of Gaza, who have nothing. Amen.

If you have another 3.5 minutes, learn more about the tunnels by watching “The Tunnels of Survival (Gaza).”