S2 Ash Wednesday: Ashes And Honesty

A smudge on the forehead can feel small, but it opens a wide door. We explore Ash Wednesday as a truthful beginning to Lent—less about performance, more about presence—drawing on the ancient use of ashes as signs of grief, humility, and honest turning. Steve reflects on why last year’s palms become this year’s ashes, how mortality grounds rather than shames, and why the most faithful move we can make may be to stop pretending we’re invincible.

Together we reframe repentance as realignment with love, not punishment, and we name the quiet relief that comes when community levels the room: no experts, no winners, just open hands. The ashes don’t change God’s posture toward us; they change ours. That shift invites practical steps—pausing to name a limit, bringing what we cannot fix into God’s presence, and asking a brave question: where am I being invited to turn this season? Along the way, we challenge narrow visions of Lent that focus only on giving things up or on self-improvement, and we move toward relationship, solidarity, and mercy that frees rather than burdens.

Whether you come from a liturgical background or have only watched Ash Wednesday from a distance, this conversation offers a gentle doorway into the season. Expect clear language, ancient context, and concrete practices that help real people in real time. If you do receive ashes, receive them as blessing, solidarity, and promise—the promise that God meets us in our limits and walks with us in our uncertainty. If you don’t, inhabit the moment anyway: tell the truth about your life and let love do the growing.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs gentleness today, and leave a review so more people can find a path into an honest Lent. What turn are you being invited to make?

Let's Get Into It!!

Transcript

Ancient Roots Of Ashes And Lent

Mortality As Grounding, Not Guilt

Shared Humility And Community

What Ashes Do And Don’t Do

Honesty Over Performance

Repentance As Realignment With Love

Beyond Self‑Improvement: Toward Relationship

Freedom From Shame And Belonging

For Non‑Liturgical Listeners: A Gentle Invitation

Speaker 0:09

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Ancient Truth for the Modern Heart. I'm Steve Pozzato, and as always, I'm really grateful you choose to spend this time with me. And even more grateful that you are spending this time on Ash Wednesday with me. Whether this day is deeply familiar to you or something that you've only seen from a distance, or maybe even something you're not entirely sure what to do with, I want you to know from the very beginning that this is not an episode about doing something correctly. It is an invitation to walk together. And I want to talk today about two things. First, I want to talk a little bit about where Ash Wednesday comes from, and then I want to talk about what I believe it can become for us. And not what it has to be, okay, what it can be, I think. So let me begin with something very honest. I didn't grow up in a church tradition where ashes were part of worship. I didn't grow up in a very religious household at all, as a matter of fact. So the first time that I saw people lined up quietly waiting for a smudge of ash on their foreheads, I remember thinking, why? Why this? Why mark our faces up? And then when I was sort of grappling and discovering this idea with Ash Wednesday opening Lent, I thought, well, why do we begin Lent like this? And over the years, as I've lived with this day more deeply, I have come to believe that Ash Wednesday is not meant to be about dramaticism. It's meant instead to be truthful. Historically speaking, the practice of using ashes as a spiritual sign is far older than Christianity. In the ancient world and throughout Old Testament, ashes are associated with grief, with repentance, with humility. People sat in ashes when something had broken, they wore ashes when life had been disrupted. They covered themselves with dust when words were no longer enough. Ashes were not meant to be decorative, they were meant to be honest in those times. Long before there was an official church calendar, God's people were already using physical signs to express inward turning. And over time, the early church gathered those ancient practices and shaped them into what we now recognize as the beginning of Lent. And by the early medieval period, Ash Wednesday had become a shared communal starting point for the season. Not a private devotion, but a public beginning. And that detail, my friends, matters to me because Ash Wednesday was never meant to be something that we do alone. It was always meant to be something that we enter together. Traditionally, the ashes are made from palm branches of the previous year's Palm Sunday, which means something very important is happening symbolically. Last year's praise, last year's celebration, last year's joy becomes this year's ash. And that's not because joy disappears, but because time changes everything. Even our holiest moments do not stay frozen. There's something that's very quietly wise about that, I think. We don't begin Lent pretending that life hasn't happened in between. We begin by acknowledging that it has. And when ashes are placed on the forehead, the words most often spoken are simple. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Those words, they can sound harsh and remind us of mortality. But I don't hear them that way anymore. I hear them as grounding. Remember in Genesis we hear that God breathed life into the dust to create humans. They remind us of something we spend most of our lives trying to forget sometimes, though, that we're not limitless, that we are not permanent, that we're not in control nearly as much as we think we are. And strangely, that that truth can be freeing. Again, our own mortality, and again, God breathed life into the dust. And when we stop pretending to be invincible, we finally become honest. Now I want to say something gently, because I know that for some people, Ash Wednesday carries an emotional weight. It can feel heavy and somber, even uncomfortable, and I understand that. But I don't believe this day exists to make us feel ashamed of being human. I believe it exists to help us become more honest about being human. And there is a big difference there. Ash Wednesday is not meant to say you are failing. It is meant to say you are fragile. And those two phrases are not the same message. One of the quiet lies our culture teaches us is that strength means never needing help. Many of us have struggled with that. And that maturity means having it together, right? That faith means being unshakable. But scripture tells us a different story. Faith begins with dependence, not with competence. We depend on God, and we depend on one another and on this world of which we are a part. And so Ash Wednesday can gently disrupt our performance there. It interrupts our image, it softens our self-protection, and it reminds us that we are creatures before we are achievers. And here's something else that has come to matter deeply to me. The ashes are placed on our forehead, the most visible part of us, which means this is not meant to be a hidden humility, it is a shared acknowledgement. I am human. You are human. And we are walking on this road together with God. For me, this is one of the most important theological truths behind Ash Wednesday. It doesn't separate the strong from the weak, it levels us. No one comes forward for ashes as an expert. No one receives ashes because they have earned the season. All of us come with the same hands open. And that brings me to the spiritual heart of this day. Because the ashes themselves do not do anything. They don't cleanse us, they don't save us, they don't change God's posture toward us, but they do change our posture. In the same way that holy water is only holy when you do something holy with it. Ash Wednesday is not about convincing God to be merciful because we are using ashes as some sort of, I don't know, potion or spell. I don't think Ash Wednesday is meant to make us feel small either. And I don't think that it is meant to make us feel guilty. It's about allowing ourselves to finally receive mercy. And I think it's meant to make us honest. And honesty is what allows love to grow. So quite often we carry a quiet pressure to present a version of ourselves that is doing better than we actually are through this world, right? The version that says, uh, Monday again, right? Or, well, I'm living the dream when people ask how we're doing. We do it in church, we do it at work, we do it in prayer sometimes, and we even do it with God. But this day, Ash Wednesday, invites us to stop pretending, to come as we are, to name our limits, to name our weariness, to name our need. And I want to be clear about something here. This is not self-condemnation, it is self-recognition. There's a very old phrase in the Christian tradition that says, remember who you are. Know thyself. Ash Wednesday is not about remembering how bad we are. It's about remembering who we are. Created, dependent, loved, mortal, held. And now I want to talk honestly about repentance for a moment because that word, well, it carries a lot of baggage. Repentance in its simplest biblical sense doesn't mean to fall to your knees and beg for mercy, but it means to turn, to reorient, to change direction. It is not meant to mean self-hatred. It's meant to mean realignment. Not punishment, not guilt, not an act of atonement that you must do before you are able to receive the gifts from God. Those are freely given. But it doesn't have to. And so Ash Wednesday opens Lent by asking a very quiet but a very brave question of us. And that is, where might my life be out of alignment with love? Not with religious rules. I believe that your religion should prove itself to your faith, not the other way around. Where are we out of alignment with love? Because God is love. Repentance is not about becoming more religious, it's about becoming more honest, more open, more responsive, more alive to God and to other people. And I believe this is why Ash Wednesday stands at the doorway of Lent. Because before we change habits, before we adjust practices, before we choose disciplines, before we come together, we first tell the truth about who we are. We're limited. We're complicated. We're capable of deep goodness and we're capable of harm all at the same time. And here's where I want to be especially clear because this is central to how I understand Lent. Ash Wednesday is not meant to turn us inward for 40 days. It is meant to turn us toward God and through God toward one another. If Lent becomes only about self-improvement, then I think we're misunderstanding it. If Lent becomes only about personal discipline, I think then we're narrowing it. And if Lent becomes only about giving things up, I think we're missing the deeper invitation. The ashes do not point us toward isolation, they point us toward humility. And humility always opens us toward relationship. And again, I'd like to speak very plainly here. I do not believe that Jesus gave his life so that we would spend our faith burdened by shame. I believe Jesus gave his life so that we would be free enough to tell the truth. To feel faith, to feel redeemed because we are. And so Ash Wednesday creates a rare and beautiful moment, a moment where we, you and I, all of us together, are allowed to say, I am not finished. I'm not perfect, and I'm not self-sufficient all of the time. And I am still loved. It's a pretty powerful combination, I think. Now I'd like to say something to those of you who may not come from traditions where Ash Wednesday is practiced. And there are some of us out there for sure. Again, I was one of them, and I know that there are many of you that still do not fully understand the ashes. And I get that. And that's okay. Your faith is not about understanding them. You might be listening and thinking, is it necessary? Is it biblical? Is it required? And I want to answer you honestly about that. No. It is not required. It is not commanded. It is not a spiritual obligation. But it is a gift, a tool, a doorway, an invitation. And like every spiritual practice, it only becomes meaningful when it serves love, not when it replaces it. So here is how I would invite you to approach Ash Wednesday this year. Not as a ritual to observe, but as a moment to inhabit. You might begin today by simply naming one place in your life when you feel tired, one place where you feel stretched or you feel uncertain or out of control. And instead of trying to fix it, simply bring it to God's presence. Ash Wednesday gives us permission to stop performing strength. And I also want to say something very important here too. Ash Wednesday is not only about what is broken, it is also about what is possible. The ashes do not mark the end of the story. They mark the beginning of a journey, a journey toward healing, a journey toward deeper love, a journey toward that realignment. And this is why the church places this day at the front of Lent. Because honesty must come before transformation. And here is something that I've learned ministerially. People do not need more pressure to improve. They need more safety to be honest. And honesty is what actually opens the door to change. I believe that Ash Wednesday creates that safety quietly, without explanation, without performance, and without comparison. It allows us to stand next to one another and say, without words, we are all of us learning, growing, becoming. And I'd like to offer a simple way to engage this day, no matter where you are or how your church practices, or whether you are able to attend a service or not, sometime today, pause. Just briefly, and ask yourself an honest question. Where is God inviting me to turn this season? Not what should I give up, not what should I fix? Where am I being invited to turn? Toward forgiveness, courage, rest, generosity, truth, reconciliation. Let that be your Ash Wednesday prayer. Because Lent is not about becoming something else or someone else. It is about becoming more fully who God is already shaping us to be. And if you do receive ashes today, I hope that you receive them gently, not as judgment, but as a blessing, not as shame, but as solidarity, not as performance, but as promise. The promise that God meets us in our limits, that God walks with us in our uncertainty, the promise that God does not wait for us to be stronger before loving us. My friends, Ash Wednesday is not a dark doorway, it is a truthful one. And truth when it is held inside love becomes light. So let us begin this season together, not perfectly, not impressively, but honestly. Let us pray together, my friends. Gracious God, we come to you as we are, limited, loved, and learning. Teach us to tell the truth about our lives. Teach us to receive your mercy without fear, and teach us to walk gently with one another as we begin this season together. May this lent not make us smaller, but make our love larger. Amen. Wherever you are today, however you come, may you know that you do not walk alone. And where you walk, carry your light. Because wherever you carry your light, there you will go in peace. Be well, my friends. And until next time, farewell.