Ash Wednesday Mugshots

A friend of mine has recently signed a book deal. After getting his MFA and spending years on a novel, he is venturing into what might be the hardest part of the process: getting a professional headshot. You don’t have to have published a book to understand the immense pressure of a good headshot. If your workplace has a staff page, or if you happen to be in a certain church’s directory, you know that a good headshot is hard to find. It must be perfectly imperfect. You need to look good so people take you seriously, but looking too good is a clear sign that you take yourself too seriously. The hair needs to be tussled just right, the eyes need to be warm but not over-eager, the smile must be sincere but intelligent.

You can try to shrug off the importance of appearance, but this is what it means to be a person. Persona, a Latin word meaning “face,” comes from Greek theater. Our faces are how we present ourselves to each other, where we signal our attractiveness, sophistication, or trustworthiness. It is the face that most discloses our emotional state, most often against our will, to reveal empathy, disgust, joy, or despair. Those who feel shame might hide their faces, just as pride can tilt one’s head. The reason why facecare is a $100 billion industry is because people will not only judge a book by its cover; they will judge you by your face.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ time were guilty of prioritizing their proverbial headshots. They were style over substance. They gave to the needy, but only so that they would be praised by others; they would pray long prayers and fast, but only to be seen by others. They are like The Onion headline, “6-Day Visit to Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture.” What good is being good if you don’t look good doing it?

Jesus is fed up with the facade. He calls these leaders hypocrites, referring to the Greek actors who wore different masks to play various roles. The Bible tells us that, while mortals look on the outward appearance, the Lord looks on the heart, which is not always good news. We may put on a good face, but scratch just below the surface, and it’s far less pretty.

Ash Wednesday is an invitation for self-examination or, rather, self-excavation. We may work hard to build our spiritual resumes, but the chief engines that motivate us are often less altruistic than we’d like to admit. Guilt, desire, fear, ambition: these are often what makes us tick. Attempting a cover-up is a reasonable strategy, but denial eventually gives way to reality. As the Bard reminds us, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” We may win Best Performing Artist, but no performance is good enough to impress the grim reaper.

In the end, our truest portrait is not a headshot but a mugshot. If you or someone you know has ever been arrested, you’ll know that there’s nothing perfect about a mugshot. It is taken after you’ve been caught and accused and are feeling alone and afraid. In the eyes of a holy God who demands perfection, it is the most authentic portrait of ourselves. And yet, God doesn’t want our curated headshots. He prefers our mugshots.

A few weeks ago, The New Yorker published an article featuring The Sisters of Mary Morning Star, a group of Catholic nuns from Waco, Texas, who were invited to visit women on death row in a nearby prison. At first, they declined. Their contemplative order was devoted to silence and rarely interacted with the outside world. But, after considerable time in prayer, they agreed. According to one of the inmates, on their very first visit, “Something supernatural happened. There wasn’t a moment of discomfort. We opened our arms and they opened their arms and we embraced one another.” They shared a surprising amount in common, both living in rooms they called cells, both wearing the same clothes every day. One sister said, “We are not what the world would call beautiful women. The prisoners cannot feel lower than us. There’s nothing in our appearance to make them feel not beautiful or not elegant.” But their common ground went far deeper than the surface. As one nun observed, “We’re connected because we’re sinners.” Here, there was no need for pageantry. You could present yourself as you actually were.

For the past ten years, these two groups of women have cooked food for each other, prayed together, and worshiped together. Many of the inmates’ experience of prison has become so much less miserable that they essentially see God’s providence in bringing them to death row. When an inmate named Melissa was put to death by lethal injection, her fellow sisters were there, praying for her. Before the drug began flowing through her veins, their deacon would make a sign of the cross on her forehead.

The sign of a cross on one’s forehead is not a symbol of piety or showmanship, but of repentance. We may try to play the role of good, law-abiding citizens, but the truth of the matter is that we are all on death row. We are beyond the help of correctional facilities. Our date has been set, although we don’t know when.

And yet, our sentence has somehow been overturned. To our amazement, we have been released by the one who was wrongly convicted, the one executed on our behalf. As the book of Isaiah prophesied his coming, “He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.”

Jesus goes beneath the surface. He descends past our masks of hypocrisy to the very pit of hell in order to set us free from the powers of sin and death. To do so, Jesus did not try to save face, but became “one from whom people hide their faces” (Isa 53:3). The cross, smudged on one’s forehead, is a reminder of one’s death — “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” But this facial disfigurement is simultaneously also a symbol of new life from death: the very instrument of Jesus’ death is also your salvation.

Make no mistake: an Ash Wednesday mugshot will make for a terrible headshot. With this black smudge on your forehead, you will likely not get any callbacks or job offers. But this embarrassing mark is far better than presenting yourself well. It is how you are presented to God, our righteous judge, who pronounces you not guilty.