Sporting gold-trimmed purple robes and a broad smile, the Rev. David Gierlach stood on a bustling Chinatown street corner Wednesday, offering passers-by the rite of having black ash smeared on their foreheads.

About 100 Christians too busy or forgetful to attend church the morning of Ash Wednesday agreed to receive the sign of the cross from him, accompanied by the words from Genesis 3:19: "Remember that ‘you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’"

It was the second year Gierlach decided to bestow the ashes beyond the doors of St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church, he said. He said the response was "so warm and positive last year" at Mayor Wright Homes, across the street from his Palama church, that he decided to do it this year in Chinatown, joined by associate priest Imelda Padas­dao.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, 40 days (not counting Sundays) prior to Easter during which Christians fast or give up something that requires spiritual discipline, such as not eating meat, according to Catholic tradition.

In some churches the emphasis is not on self-denial, but on adopting a discipline or practice that will enrich their life or the lives of others, said Gierlach, St. Elizabeth’s rector since 2007.

Special attention should be given to daily meditation and prayer in line with self-examination and penitence. The ashes are obtained traditionally from the charred remains of branches from the previous year’s Palm Sunday.

At Wednesday’s noon service at St. Elizabeth’s, about 20 parishioners, who included Bill Eng, Francis Kam and Laura Iwami, lined up to receive the sign of the cross.

Gierlach, who also serves as chairman of the Hawaii Public Housing Authority, began his sermon Wednesday by saying, "This is the day when we most emphatically, most directly, most plainly come face to face with the upside-down, bizarre and frank foolishness of our faith.

"While our common sense teaches us to strive to get ahead, while we take pride in standing out in the crowd … today, we are drawn back to the heart of our faith that says to each and every one of us: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

"In a society that does everything it can to avoid thinking about, looking at or even considering the possibility of death, to become a follower of the one (Jesus) who dies in order to really live is to be a weirdo, something strange and even frightening to the sensibilities of most folks."

Gierlach borrows an analogy from Robert Farrar Capon, a former Episcopal priest and author, to explain the common view of the Christian life. To most people, he said, Jesus is like a lifeguard who warns everyone to get out of the ocean when it suddenly gets rough. He rescues a drowning little girl and is lauded as a hero, but "despite the drama, no one is really changed," he said.

"But that’s not Christianity. Christianity is more like this: We still have the Jesus/lifeguard warning everyone to get out of the rough surf." But this time, when the lifeguard goes out to save the little girl, both drown. The people find a note from the lifeguard, saying, "The little girl is safe in my death. There is wonder and there is mystery, and for those who sit with the implications of that note, they are forever changed."

It’s the gospel’s ultimate paradox, he said, that people find new spiritual life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When they are baptized into Christianity, their old selves become "dead as doornails" because they’ve made the choice to give up worldly, selfish concerns, and "it is Christ who lives in us," he said.

Gierlach said, "Recognizing our own deaths is the point of Ash Wednesday. Wearing the ashes on our foreheads marks us as dead — dead to the common sense of the world, dead to the insistent demands for security and safety, dead to all of the fears and anxieties and false hopes of our best thinking."

Church member Suzanne Langford said that during Lent, "I’m going to give up my work time to meditate on (Gierlach’s message). … I need to die to my human self. To me that means more than giving up my chocolate or coffee. I’m going to pick a time, and that will be very hard."

In the daily bustle of meeting so many demands, people don’t take time to correct "our self-indulgent appetites and ways" and other transgressions noted in the Litany of Penitence in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, even though some things seem small, Langford said.

For example, she said the other day "someone who I value said something that was actually racist, and I let it go. I have a sense that if I spent time with this (meditation, the next time) I’m going to say, ‘Stop! I don’t think we can actually say that about one people. I gotta stop you there, friend.’ "