Devotional for Ash Wednesday by Emily Brewer

^{Ash Wednesday}

^{Prayer Walking}

Photo by Emily Brewer

¹ Shout out, do not hold back!

Lift up your voice like a trumpet!

Announce to my people their rebellion,

to the house of Jacob their sins.

² Yet day after day they seek me

and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness

 and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments,

 they delight to draw near to God.

³ “Why do we fast, but you do not see?

 Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,

and oppress all your workers.

⁴ Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

and to strike with a wicked fist.

Such fasting as you do today

will not make your voice heard on high.

⁵ Is such the fast that I choose,

a day to humble oneself?

Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,

and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Will you call this a fast,

a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindicator shall go before you,

the glory of the Lordshall be your rear guard.

⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

Isaiah 58: 1-9a

Last year my Lenten discipline was prayer walking. I was preparing to walk 250 miles in June with the PCUSA Walk for a Fossil Free World, advocating for the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from fossil fuels. I had to get my body ready to walk 10-15 miles a day for two weeks, so each day in Lent I would walk and pray for a different community affected by climate change. 

As I built up stamina and the muscles in my legs, I also built a kind of resiliency in thinking about climate change. For many of us, it’s hard to wrap our minds and hearts around the reality of climate change: People will die. People are already dying. 

Dying is natural, of course, as those familiar Ash Wednesday words remind us: “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” What is not natural is that some people are dying sooner and more terribly because of the greed and actions of others. The words of judgement in Isaiah upon the nation that pretends to be righteous, that oppresses its workers, that does not share resources, are for us. It is because of actions like these that we are in this situation. 

My prayer walking was a kind of repentance, and also a reminder of our belonging to each other and Creation: a reminder that climate change is real, and communities are experiencing it now, and those communities are also the ones with the most wisdom and creativity in mitigating climate change and fighting the greed that causes it. 

Ash Wednesday calls us to remember and face that we are dust, we are finite, but this is not a reason to despair. Instead, this is a reason to work together. It will take all of us working together to mitigate climate change and bring justice to the parts of creation that are already suffering. 

Prayer: God who moved across the waters of creation, move among us now. Help us to remember that we come from the Earth, and we will return to the Earth. We belong to the Earth and to each other. Help us remember. Help us change. Help us heal. Help us live the way you intend. 

credit: amb photography

Bio: Rev. Emily Brewer is the Executive Director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, a 75 year old organization committed to ending militarism, war, and violence through practices of active nonviolence. Emily is committed to working for climate justice as a way of preventing violence and being in solidarity with people and communities who experience climate change first and worst. She lives in Brooklyn, New York but will always consider East Tennessee home.