Ash Wednesday

From Eugene Peterson's book The Pastor: A Memoir

Jan and I were visiting a Benedictine monastery, Christ in the Desert, in New Mexico. One of the brothers was leading us on a path from prayers in the chapel to the refectory where we would have lunch. The path led through the cemetery. We passed an open grave.

Jan said, “Oh, did one of the brothers just die?”

“No, that is for the next one.”

Three times a day, on their way from praying together to eating together, the monks are reminded that one of them will be “the next one.”

And I was reminded that there is a long tradition in the church’s life that the pastoral vocation consists in preparing people for “a good death.”

Ash Wednesday is like that open grave. When ashes are smeared onto our foreheads, the pastor says: "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." It is a reminder that life has an end.

We don't talk about this much anymore, but the first Methodists made a sort of cult of dying a "good death." Methodists would repeat stories of how someone had died at peace with their God, happy to go on to the next life.

The story of John Wesley's own death has been told and retold for more than 200 years. Here it is according to J.F. Hurst's book John Wesley the Methodist:

Wesley died on 2 March 1791, in his eighty-seventh year. As he lay dying, his friends gathered around him, Wesley grasped their hands and said repeatedly, "Farewell, farewell." At the end, he said "The best of all is, God is with us", lifted his arms and raised his feeble voice again, repeating the words, "The best of all is, God is with us."

Maybe. The point of the stories about Methodists dying a good death was that it was important to the first Methodists that they knew with assurance that their sins were forgiven so that they could die with grace and peace in their hearts. They could die without any unresolved issues between them and their God. It would be nice.

"Lord, let me know my end," the Psalmist prays. "Let me know how fleeting my life is." (Ps 39:4)

Life is too short to waste very much of it on unforgiven resentments against those who have sinned against us or unresolved guilt about sins for which we will not fully accept God's forgiveness.

The message is, I think: Give forgiveness and get forgiveness and move on. Life is short.