Las Vegas is one of the last places I expected to find spiritual inspiration on something other than perhaps the pervasiveness of sin. But Tracy and I won a trip there a couple of years ago at a fundraiser for the Arts Center, and we traded in the Cirque de Soleil tickets for a chance to see Céline Dion on stage at Caesars Palace. For as long as I’ve known Tracy, she’s wanted to see Céline Dion in concert, and this seemed like our best bet.
After we waited in our seats about a half an hour for her finally to come out and grace the stage, she proceeded to belt out some of her beloved ballads that powered us through the 90s and early 2000s – “The Power of Love,” “It’s All Coming Back to Me,” and the hit song from the “Titanic” movie soundtrack “My Heart Will Go On.”
Toward the end of the concert, she sang another song from a movie soundtrack, a new song from the recently released “Deadpool 2”. I hadn’t seen the movie, so I hadn’t heard the song. But with scenes from the movie flashing across the curtain behind her, she sang words that immediately struck me, that seemed like a psalm, that sounded like a prayer. It was like a bit of church right there in Caesar’s Palace! See what you think:
What’s left to say?
These prayers ain’t working anymore
Every word shot down in flames
What’s left to do with these broken pieces on the floor?
I’m losing my voice calling on you
‘Cause I’ve been shaking
I’ve been bending backwards till I’m broke
Watching all these dreams go up in smoke
Let beauty come out of ashes
Let beauty come out of ashes
And when I pray to God all I ask is
Can beauty come out of ashes?
Have you ever felt like that? Like your prayers weren’t working anymore? Like you were losing your voice calling on God, only to watch your dreams go up in smoke? Only to be left with the broken pieces of your life scattered on the floor?
These words tap into a longing many of us have in our hearts, a question many of us have on our minds. We long for beauty to come out of the ashes among us. And we wonder if such a thing is even possible. Can such a thing as beauty come out of such a thing as all these ashes?
You see, we know ashes. We know brokenness. We know ugliness. We know loss. But what we need to know is whether that’s all there is, or can God do something about these ashes? Can God somehow bring some good out of this?
“Can beauty come out of ashes?”
This Wednesday is an important day in the church calendar. It’s a day called Ash Wednesday. It’s a day that marks the beginning of the season of Lent, the 40 day journey with Jesus to the cross, and beyond the cross, to the empty tomb.
It’s a day when we are marked on our foreheads with the sign of the cross in ashes that were made from the bright green palm branches of last year’s Palm Sunday.
Ashes from beauty.
Many of us don’t need ashes on our forehead to be reminded, as the old liturgy puts it, that “we are but dust and ashes.” We know that gritty truth all too well. But it probably does help to be reminded of the greater truth that the season of Lent – and indeed the story of Christ as a whole – tell us, which is that God did and that God does bring new life out of death, beauty out of brokenness and ugliness, beauty out of ashes.
So this Wednesday, I hope you’ll come to worship to receive the ashes and to remember this good news. Come as you are. Come in your beauty. Come in your brokenness. Come in your ashes. And let us make our way together toward the life of beautiful abundance that God offers us all in Christ Jesus.
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