Mark 6: 1-6, 16-21
Sermon "A Covenantal Journey"
Worship Notes
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of our forty-day journey through the desert of Lent. As we embark on this journey, we travel a path of discipleship that has us look to the cross of Christ, consider our sin, and see that the grace of God always acts first through his covenant with us. The liturgical color during the season of Lent is purple. During this penitential season, our worship leaders will enter the sanctuary to the sound of a tolling bell.
This worship service focuses on our personal confession of sin and culminates in the imposition of ashes. The ashes, which are created by burning the fronds from palm branches used in the 2008 Palm Sunday worship service at Westminster, are imposed in the shape of a cross on the foreheads of individual worshipers. This outward sign of our repentance before God also serves as a visible reminder of our own mortality. This reminder of our sinful mortality and finitude make similar this Ash Wednesday service that begins our Lenten journey and the Good Friday service that will mark its end. The imposition of ashes will occur in silence, allowing us to experience the universal nature of the repeated phrase "Dust you are and unto dust you shall return."
The music through which we worship is chosen to enlighten the themes of repentance and penitence. For example, we will sing a setting of Psalm 51, which is a cornerstone scriptural text for Ash Wednesday. The psalms are the earliest hymns used by the reformed church and, through singing this setting tonight, we connect this aspect of our worship into the timeless roots of God's larger church. The prelude is a setting of a Bach chorale that expresses a cry for mercy. The choir's anthem, composed by Richard Farrant (1530-1580), is a prayer that we may walk with a "perfect heart" alongside our God. A similar prayer is expressed in the postlude setting of the African American Spiritual, "I Want Jesus to Walk With Me," which is found as hymn 363 if you choose to follow along as you prepare to begin your Lenten journey tonight.
