Isaiah 58:1-12 Psalm 51:1-17 2 Cor 5:20b-6:10 Matt 6:1-6,16-21
So much that is beautiful has been written about Ash Wednesday and I am grateful for the wisdom and riches from the prophet Isaiah, the psalmist, Rachel Held-Evans, Jan Richardson, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Anna Woofenden and Sara Miles who have written the words I am about to share. So, for the next few minutes, I invite you to close down your eyes, allow these words to seep into your soul, like oily ash, and remember you are dust.
[RHE]
We are made of stardust, the scientists say—the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, and the chlorine in our skin forged in the furnaces of ancient stars whose explosions scattered the elements across the galaxy. From the ashes grew new stars, and around one of them, a …cluster of dust coalesced to form the earth, and life emerged from the detritus of eight billion-year-old deaths.
[And then…] Once a year, on a Wednesday, we mix ashes with oil. We confess… We tell the truth. Then we smear the ashes on our foreheads and acknowledge the single reality upon which every … believer and atheist, scientist and mystic can agree: “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.” It’s the only thing we know for sure: we will die.
Remember you are dust…
Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice and let the oppressed go free…? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly;… Then you shall call, and the Lord …will say, Here I am
Remember you are dust …
[NBW:]
If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, … then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet. The water and words from our baptism plus the earth and words from our funerals have come from the past and future to meet us in the present. And in that meeting we are reminded of the promises of God: That we are God’s, that there is no sin, no darkness, and no grave that God will not come to find us in and love us back to life. The ashes we receive on our foreheads are a reminder that we are dust. But they are also a reminder that we are loved and forgiven by the One who made us.”
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return…
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; …
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return …
[Sara Miles]
[On Ash Wednesday, the Church] asks you to face the truth about yourself—that you are mortal, broken, and in need of love. It offers the reality of human failure, but also the grace that meets us there. The ashes mark us as dust, but also as beloved dust—dust that God has touched and loved, and will one day raise up. The cross we receive on our foreheads is not only a reminder of our mortality, but also a mark of belonging to a God who doesn’t leave us in the ashes.”
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin…
[Anna]
Each time I pressed the slightly oily ash onto someone’s forehead, I felt—even if just for that moment—a dissolving of the things that separated us from each other.
Ash Wednesday is the connecting thread that takes us from the hopeful waiting of Advent to the new birth of Christmas, walks us through Epiphany and into the depths of Lent, then goes with us all the way to the death on the cross, and finally, to the new life of resurrection.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin…
[Blessing the Dust For Ash Wednesday, by Jan Richardson]
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ, Amen.
Holy Adventures 