​This past week I stumbled on on an old blog post of mine from a few years back about church marquees  - this weird fascination I have where I'm simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by them. More often than not they portray a version of Christianity I simply cannot identify with.

But it's not just church marquees I'm failing to identify with these days.  As we enter another presidential election cycle, as we continue to struggle as a society with terrorism and immigration and health care and human sexuality, the rhetoric is rising to new frightening levels.  It's as if Jesus and the church are being hijacked and contorted in ways that render them unrecognizable, at least to me.  And it's happening so often now that I'm kind of numb to it - which concerns me.

The obvious counter to all of this must come from the community of faith.  More and more I'm beginning to view this as a specific calling for the church in our day and time - not just to do all the things churches are supposed to do, but to also intentionally speak up and out toward a different kind of Christianity than the one so frequently promulgated over the airwaves.  Certainly we do this by living out the kinds of things Jesus called us to do - feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give voice to the oppressed and marginalized. 

Even so, our words still matter.  And while I'm in no way advocating for a church marquee outside our church on busy Providence Road (my Buildings and Grounds folks will be most pleased to hear that), I do wonder: how awesome would it be if the thousands of people who drive by our building on their way to and from work each day might experience a more nuanced, loving and even prophetic kind of Christianity?  Makes one wonder.....

In the end, what matters most is not the catchy slogan we stick on a church sign, but how the people of that church live out the message in their daily lives.  That always resonates more than the crazed candidate or catchy headline.

​(signs above created at this website - give it a visit and have some fun!)

He moves to stand in front of me,
The ritual of the Ash Wednesday service propelling him forward.
Her eyes meet mine, and I see in them
Something deeper than this strange thing we call "imposition."
It is almost as if he knows, somehow;
So I don't have to say the words I've prepared:
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I can tell she knows them already, lives them every day
Words that rested on his heart when he buried his mother last year
Words she hears whispered in the evening newscast about another ISIS beheading,
Words he lives into when a sought-after job promotion
Brings longer work hours and increased expectations.
Nothing but dust.

So I simply say his name as my blackened index finger
Drags the ash across her forehead.
Peter.   Will.  Lilly.  Hunter.  Ruth Ann.  Kathleen.  Irva.  Monte.  
Tom.  Another Tom.  Bruce.  Carolyn.  Michelle.  Rhonda.
And now it is my turn, and as the cross is formed
I hear my name called.  And my eyes speak the truth:
I am dust, and to dust I shall return.

There is hope in the ashes
Faithful expectation embracing the bitter raw world 
Of death, terrorism and fear, endless ladder climbing.
There is hope in knowing
That we come from and one day will return to dust.
For even dust has a Creator.
Even we have a name.

We leave the sanctuary silently, so words
Will no longer get in the way.
Later she would say to me, It's my most favorite service of the year.
And now, finally, I believe I know why.
Ashes. Dust. A name.
At 
long
last.
Hope.