Ash Wednesday 2019

"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."  We hear these words tonight.  Are they are warning?  Are they encouragement?  

These words come from the book of Genesis (3:19).  They are God's words, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."  Here they are a description of a consequence because Adam and Eve gave into temptation.  And actually, these words are only spoken to Adam, although we know that the same happens to women, too.

Here in the Bible they are stated as a consequence, but probably it went more like this.  Someone asked, "Why do we have to work so hard and why is giving birth so painful and why does everything turn to dust and why am I always having to dust these shelves and tables?"  And people thought about it and talked about it and they said maybe things weren't always that way, because it doesn't seem like they should be.  And they thought of human nature and how it might contribute to the dustiness of our lives and the way things fall apart.  And I think in a lot of ways they were right.

Sometimes all the things we do, don't add up to much, all the work we put in gets undone.  Sometimes life is going so well and we undermine it with our fears that we aren't enough.  Sometimes we've built something wonderful and someone else or even just life, knocks it down again.  Cities rise but also fall.  Eventually everything becomes ruins.  Everything on this earth returns to dust, except maybe styrofoam, but that's a topic for another time. 

Sometimes this feels like bad news.  Everything falls apart.  Everything dies.  Everything gets dusty. 

But what is the alternative?  Everything stays the same forever--that's scary, as the styrofoam example will tell you.  That rocks would stay rocks and ocean would stay ocean and people would live forever in these bodies.  That's the illusion we live under.  It doesn't seem like things are changing and then all of a sudden I say to myself, "How did that kid get so tall?" or "What is this new thing going on with me?  Am I mellowing out a little bit?  Maybe I am capable of finding moments of peace!"  We sing songs about God never changing, like "How Great Thou Art" "Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as thou hast been thou forever will be."  or "No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging!"  We like to think of God as our unchanging rock, but if there is anything we know about God it is that God never stands still for a second.  In Genesis God's spirit us moving over the waters, creating the heavens and the earth and all their creatures, the sun and moon and stars and plants, and on and on.  When the Israelites wander in the wilderness, God is in the moveable tent, the tabernacle, among them, sometimes going up the mountain with Moses, but always on the move, with the people.  And not just physically moving, but shaping the people into God's people, creating and re-creating them.  In the promised land, people try to stop God moving by building a temple, but God never asked for a house to live in.  When the Israelites are kidnapped into exile, and wondering how to be in God's presence if the temple is back home, God appears in the dreams of the prophets, with the people, moving them, changing their hearts, re-creating them, moving and changing.  For God to be still and unchanging, like a rock is limiting, confining.  But for God to be present in ever-changing wind and fire, always creating and re-creating us in relationship to God and each other, that's the miracle and that makes the dust.  Wind, water, flame: They are always changing, moving, powerful, and they make dust.  They grind away at mountain sides, they burn and turn to ash, they transform.  And transformation isn't always comfortable.

Part of our problem is our demonization of dust.  Dust is trash.  Dust is rubbish, worthless.  We are always trying to eradicate it and it always comes back.  It is a battle we are in.

But dust can be fascinating if you let it.  It is bits of other things.  It is bits of skin and hair, bits of you and me, bits of food, wood, clothing, rocks, dirt.  That is not worthless!  That dust used to be part of something else.  That broke down and has the potential to become something else.  That broke down and became something else.  Then that became part of us or our house or our food or our bodies and broke down again.  Now I will sweep it up and throw it out, but it will then become part of something else.  God took that dust, that dirt and formed the first human, dirt-person, earthling, Adam, Eve.  Isn’t amazing that you and I are also made from the dust and particles of other creatures and buildings and even the dust of the stars.  We humans have such a limited view.  What would it take to see like God sees the beauty, the life, the potential in a pile of dust?  So God spits in that dust and starts to shape it and create and even create such a fearfully and wonderfully made creature as you and me and your neighbor and your enemy and your pets and so on.  That we are dust, means we are connected to all other life and even all things not living, in that we share pieces.  We are a mosaic of all that God has made.

Remember the first time you saw the dust floating in a shaft of light?  Do you remember that wonder and awe and hope you felt as you watched all that sparkling dust?  Reclaim that wonder.  Go home and the next time the sun is out, open a window and sit and pray in thanksgiving for this wonderful world God has made and this dust that once was part of you and me and now is sent out into the world to be part of other realities.

It sounds like good news to me that we will fall apart and become part of everything once again.  That is death and resurrection.  That is creation and re-creation.  And we don't have to die to do it.  It is always going on, the shifting of dust.

The other part that I don't mind about the dust stuff, is that this world is so broken, I need God to recreate it.  I need to know that there will be a time when this body won't walk this earth, that I'll live in a different way, whether that is in heaven, or in unity with all creation.  I don't care, but the pains and failings of this life cause me to long for a time when I will be fully embraced by God and all my failings will be dust.  There are plenty of people in this world I can't bear the thought that they will one day be dust, but I can bear my own dustiness, and I can bear it when I think of God's plans for new life and resurrection.

One part of us that will truly be dust is our temptation to try to impress each other and our hypocrisy.  We know its dust and God knows its dust.  When we are trying to impress someone with our prayers or piety or clothing or perfect words, it will all fall apart, sooner or later, because there is always someone we can't please.  And the older I get, the more I say, "Who cares what they think!"  I do care at some level, but I am learning to let go of other people's opinions of me.  We will never please everyone.  But God gives us a more excellent way and it feels more honest, it can bring us moments of peace and true joy, and that is to do something good in secret.  To have a secret between me and God, someone helped, someone's life made easier, is so fun!  That is treasure stored up in heaven, not that we store up points to get us into heaven, but that we create heaven on earth for people who are struggling and in need, or that God creates heaven, the Kingdom of God through us, right here, right now.  We don't have to wait.

This cross we trace on our foreheads, is the same we received at baptism, with all the grace, and love and promises of God.  Today isn’t just about dust, but about relationship, about creativity, about what God is building in, with, and through us.

So don't be afraid of a little dust.  You're already dusty, that's ok.  By smearing it on, we're taking away the illusion that we've got it all together, that we're clean. We're not.  We're piles of dust that God formed out of chaos, breathed into and is working through.  We're imperfect, broken, incomplete, but not even that can stop God transforming, recreating this world into the Kingdom of God.