“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Whether it’s the cemetery
you drive by every day, the charts showing the number of COVID deaths in the US
closing in on one million, or the health issues that you or a loved one are
facing, death is a daily companion. We might actually prefer a respite from the
signs of death all around us. My guess is that this is why Ash Wednesday
attendance isn’t as high as other holy days. Coming to church and hearing of
our wickedness and impending death isn’t exactly most people’s idea of a nice
outing.
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” This sense of dustiness
is something the Psalmist could identify with. Traditionally ascribed to King
David, we hear the prayer “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness;
in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through and through from
my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.” Death, as we know from Genesis 3,
comes about as a result of Sin. After Adam and Eve had eaten of the fruit they
had been expressly prohibited from eating, God says to Adam, “By the sweat of
your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you
were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Disobedience to God
creates a distance from God, and because God is the author and giver of life,
the name for that distance is death. As St. Paul puts it, “The wages of sin is
death.”
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The result of such sin is
that we are under condemnation. As we will pray in the Litany of Penitence, “We
confess… that we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by
what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” The litany will then enumerate
many ways in which we separate ourselves from God and fall short of the call of
love. As Psalm 51 puts it, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever
before me.” And so what are we to do about this Sin? How can we close that gap
created by our idolatry and rebellion? Well, in First Peter we read “For the
time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.”
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” We come on Ash Wednesday
to remember this – both the realities of Sin and Death which we are captive to.
We come to have ashes imposed on our foreheads as an acknowledgment of this
truth. And, we do so on behalf of the world. For many reasons, people do not
come to church on Ash Wednesday. That is okay because we are here as signs to
this sinful and broken world that the righteousness of God has been given to
sinners, that death is not the final sentence for our sin but rather the bridge
to a fuller life in Christ. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthian church, “For
our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God.” Yes, the ashes are reminders of our mortal nature,
but they also remind us that we belong to God, which is a sign of grace.
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Remembering that we are
dust is important because dust is ready to be shaped by God. Dust is what we
were made out of. Dust is all that we were ever made to be. Genesis 3 tells us
that it was from the dust of the earth that humanity was formed, so if being
called dust strikes us as offensive that tells us that perhaps we’ve started
thinking too much of ourselves. The word “humility” is related to the word humus,
which simply means “soil.” Humility is not thinking poorly of ourselves, it’s
thinking properly of ourselves. Being called dust is not punishment, it is reality.
The thing about dust is that it is ready to be shaped by God.
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The prophet Jeremiah uses
the metaphor of God as the potter and us as the clay, and what is clay but moistened
earth? Our response to Sin and Death is to plead for God to shape us. In Psalm
51 we hear, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within
me.” That word “create” is the same used for God’s action at the beginning of
Genesis – we pray to be made new by God. And what is so helpful about this
prayer is that asks for God to transform us, not our situation. The prayer is
not “Lord, put me in a better situation, take away the temptations, surround me
with nicer people, give me more resources.” No, there is an awareness that what
needs to be remade is us.
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Dust, of course, can’t do
this reshaping itself, it is just the raw material. God is the one who does the
shaping. We do not have to earn this transformation, we do not have to be
worthy enough of God’s salvation, we do not need to do the work of remaking
ourselves. It is put so well in Romans: “God proves his love for us in that
while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” When we were stuck in Sin and
Death is exactly when Christ came for us. All that is left for us is to receive
this clean heart by Christ’s salvation.
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The way this remaking
begins is with the dry dust becoming wet clay through the waters of Baptism. Growing
further into our Baptismal identity and vocation is how God reshapes us. And so
if you are looking for a Lenten discipline, this is it – to go back to Baptism;
to remember that righteousness is a gift from God, not something we have to
produce; to rest in the reality that we are enough and that God will not love
us any more if we dropped 15 pounds, or if we volunteered more, prayed more, gave
more, or yelled less or cursed less. There is nothing that you can or need to
do this Lent to be more deserving of God’s love. Yes, such disciplines can help
to remind us of God’s grace, and in that, disciplines are helpful tools, but
they are just that – tools, never the goal.
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The purpose of Lent is to
draw us into a deeper celebration of Easter. As Psalm 51 says, “Deliver me from
death, O God, and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness… Open my lips, O
Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.” How glorious it will be on
Easter when we shout with joy at the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. As St. Paul
writes about the glory of Easter, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of
death is sin… But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ.” This is why the ashes that we receive are imposed in the shape
of the cross – as a sign that all is made well by the cross of Christ. As we
know from St. Paul’s letter to Rome, “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor
depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“Remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” This is the good news
that because we are made from the dust of God’s own creating, we will, for all eternity,
be held securely in this love of God which is our Alpha and our Omega, our beginning
and our end. Sin does not diminish this love. Death does not stop this love.
This love is ours, given by grace, and it is what allows us to follow Jesus in
the way of love, which is the way of life. “Remember that thou art dust, and
unto dust shalt thou return.” Thanks be to God.
