Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel, The Sun Also Rises, ends with one of the most famous lines in literature: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” The last words are spoken in bitter irony.  They sweep away the false hopes of all the things that we might dream of, but which can never be.  You can hear the sadness and cynicism that drips from them. 

No one likes to have their illusions destroyed.  We often prefer to remain in denial, even when it’s killing us, rather than face the truth.

Ash Wednesday is the liturgical equivalent to the ending of Hemingway’s classic.

We approach the altar, harboring whatever delusions we have about our goodness and our invulnerability.  With a little smudge of ashes, all our self-satisfied ways and all our silly hopes that mortality will make an exception for us are just blown away.  “You are dust; and to dust you shall return.” 

This is not only the truth about our eventual mortality, it is also the truth about the ways in which we choose death.  We choose death when we sink into self-destructive patterns of living.  We choose death for those whose needs we refuse to see. We choose death when we choose sides and nurture tribalism and division.

Ash Wednesday is a liturgical cure for denial.  We are fallible and finite; even our greatest strengths cannot conceal our weakness and vulnerability. Ash Wednesday ushers us into Lent with a harsh dose of truth.  Ash Wednesday strips away our false beliefs: that we are sufficient in ourselves, that we are as good as we would like to believe, that we are as powerful as we pretend.  Our illusions are stripped away, but we are not left exposed and bereft of hope.  We face the truth about ourselves in order to prepare to walk in the way that leads through death to life – the Lenten journey that leads to Easter joy.