ASH WEDNESDAY: He will swallow up death forever

And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
And the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth,
For the Lord has spoken. — Isaiah 25:8

On this day, Ash Wednesday, the Church enters the season of Lent. This season is a time of prayerful and penitential reflection as our attention is focused on the sufferings and death of our saviour Jesus Christ.

This evening we will gather at a special Divine service where ashes can be placed upon our foreheads. As the imposition of ashes takes place, the pastor declares, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Now those are some sobering words. There is no joy or hope tucked away in that phrase. It forces us to face the grave reality. We will die, and when we do, we will return to the soil from which God first called humanity into being. Our time is short and death awaits everyone. The act of imposing ashes is almost a literal rubbing our noses in the fact of our mortality. Maybe that’s why not many people come to this service, because this service reminds us of how helpless we are in the face of death.

But into this gloom, which covers us like a pall, come these words from Isaiah. Death, our greatest enemy, which the imposition of ashes confronts us with, will not win the day. No, it will be swallowed up forever, never to cause us sorrow or reproach again.

I love the imagery of being swallowed up. When I eat a curry, or a pizza, or a hamburger, I swallow the food and it is gone – no trace remains. So it is when Jesus burst the bonds of death on that first Easter morning. He had death for lunch. Death could not stand in the presence of Jesus – the Resurrection and Life. Death has not only been defeated, but in Jesus no trace of it will remain. Death has been swallowed up in the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Death is still our enemy and its power is real. One day we will return to dust. It may seem death has won the day, BUT death was swallowed up on Easter morning. When Christ returns in glory to take us to live with Him forever, then there will be no trace of death left anywhere. Death cannot survive in the midst of life, and Jesus is the LIFE.

By Thy deep expiring groan,
By the sad sepulchral stone,
By the vault whose dark abode
Held in vain the rising God,
O, from earth to heaven restored,
Mighty, re-ascended Lord,
Bending from Thy throne on high,
Hear our penitential cry!
Amen.

(Saviour When In Dust To Thee LSB 419 v. 4)