Bits from Beth

February 18, 2026

 

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. I want to share a column on Substack written by Rev. Benjamin E. Cremer.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of lent as the church journeys toward Easter.

 

I have always been struck by how much of the Christian church burns the palm branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday for the ashes of the current year’s Ash Wednesday.

 

For me, the symbolism is powerful. We waved palm branches as Jesus entered our city riding on a donkey. We cried “hosanna in the highest,” yet when he turned out to be the kind of king we didn’t want, we were found saying “crucify him!” later that week.

 

We wanted him to ride into our city on a war horse, yet he rode into town on a donkey instead, a symbol of peace.

 

We wanted him to lead an armed militia to overthrow Rome, yet he led a band of fishermen, tax collectors, noble women, and children instead.

 

We wanted him to vanquish our enemies, yet he came in calling us to love our enemies instead.

 

We kept waiting for him to tell us to take up our swords and follow him, but he called us to take up our crosses and follow him instead.

 

So we put him on a cross ourselves, trading him in for a known insurrectionist who would lead the kind of revolt against Rome we actually wanted (Barabbas, who’s name means “Son of the Father.”). We traded in the true Son of the Father for the son of the father we preferred. Oh how often we still do that today.

 

I’m reminded of the quote by the American psychologist Gustave Mark Gilbert who observed high-ranking Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg trials. He said, “I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think l've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

 

Jesus is the Word of God who became human and dwelt among us (John 1). God experienced the fullness of human life, suffering, and death out of love for us. Yet there are those who claim to worship this very God today who claim empathy is itself an evil rather than its absence being a root of evil.

 

The ashes of our burned palm branches represent our misplaced expectations of the kind of king Jesus should be in contrast to the kind of king he came to be for us.

 

As we begin this journey of lent, may we begin by acknowledging the ashes of our best laid plans laid to waste. May we repent from all the ways we have expected Christ and his kingdom to look like the kings and empires of this world. May we rediscover the hope of Jesus, who brings breath where we only see dust and life where we only see death. Not through the violent forceful ways of the world, but through the self sacrificial love of the cross.

 

Then perhaps, when we hold palm branches on Palm Sunday this year, we will be more open to receiving the kind of king Jesus actually came to be.

Grace & peace,

Beth