Dec. 14: Beauty for Ashes

Ash Jesus, Zhang Huan, 2011. Ash, steel, and wood, 260 x 320 x 320 cm.

Oak Tree with Gold, Roger Wagner, 2011. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.

“Beauty For Ashes”from the album Carry Away. Performed by Shane & Shane, composed by Kendall Combes and Shane Corey Barnard.

Poetry:

“Ritual for Ash”
by Cindy Williams Gutiérrez

We will smudge
our shoulder blades with wings of ash.

We will sow
your remaining ash in an untilled field.

We’ll toss
red carnations, red dahlias, red hibiscus.

We’ll release
white doves and flutter white handkerchiefs.

We’ll return
to the field to watch brave bulls roam.

We will wait
for the grass to catch fire.

CHRIST GIVES BEAUTY FOR ASHES

I’m writing this devotional from Berlin. It is a city I have long held as a symbol of restoration. In the past one hundred years, the city has suffered deeply from war and conflict. It was decimated by bombs and reduced to rubble, burnt, and in ashes. It was then divided by the wall for nearly three decades. For the years since, the city has been in a process of rebuilding and restoration. On the edges of the city is the forest of Grunewald where we find Teufelsberg. This hill was formed out of the literal tons of material from the destroyed city. It is now covered with pines, birch, and oak trees as the forest has reclaimed the ground. I took a walk there amidst these trees, they crowned the hill made from the ashes. This is one powerful place where Berlin embodies the prophecy, a promise of restoration that is ultimately fulfilled in Christ and the Church.

In its truest expression, our faith is embodied like this. We don’t simply ascribe to a system of beliefs, we don’t only speak words of life, we also follow Christ in expressions of real-world love. Love is an action not just a feeling. And it takes physical effort. This means that we work and act in the material world, just as Jesus did.

The season of Advent offers wonderful invitations into this as it directs us to the incarnation. It points us to Jesus, who came with skin and bone and blood. Our faith values the body as a creation of God. And it values the material world as a place God created for us, in which we have been invited to participate.

This resonates with me as an artist and creative person. In making art or writing a song, we get to engage in God’s material world and make our ideas incarnate through creative acts. This is parallel to feeling love but having to act on it to make it real. Just like Isaiah, “Ritual for Ash” by Cindy Williams Gutiérrez beautifully pulls at this thread while hinting at a cycle of life in its use of actions: smudge, sow, toss, release, return, wait.

We follow Christ’s love as we trade pain for care, replace distraction for presence, and even exchange death for life. In pairingAsh Jesusby Zhang Huan withOak Tree with Goldby Roger Wagner, we have powerful visual symbols of Christ’s call to restorative love. Christ became the ashes for us, he absorbed the destruction and death that we emit. And he does this with open arms. He willingly trades us his beauty for our ashes, he joyfully releases us from being bound, having been bound himself. He delights in surrounding us with gold and calling us to be fully alive and growing. This is love.

Loving like Jesus means we value his creation and partner with him in the loving work of restoration. It means we create and repair from our shared anointing with the Incarnate One. Let us be those oak trees of righteousness we see in Wagner’s painting. Let us love in action. Move the rubble, plant the trees, dust off the fallen, salve the wounded. Rebuild the broken city. Rebuild the broken life. Let us give beauty for ashes because that is what Jesus does.

Prayer:
If you are able: speak this prayer aloud with your arms open wide.
Lord Jesus, thank you for your incarnation. Thank you for becoming the ashes for me. Thank you for your open arms. Help me to follow you in giving beauty for ashes, trading joy for mourning, and making the exchange of praise for despair. Help me to live an embodied faith in you. Help me to be like you, love in action.
Amen

Steven Homestead
Artist, Composer, Writer, and Curator

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, please visit our website by going to https://ccca.biola.edu/advent/2024.