Sermon: Ash Wednesday 2014

Ash Wednesday: March 5, 2014
2 Corinthians 5:21b-6:10 [really more like 5:16 through 6:10]

I read online from a friend,
That she struggles enough with self-esteem the rest of the year,
And doesn’t appreciate a day like today,
Being told we’re dust:
Dirty, low-down, side-of-the-road,
Wipe on the rug before you track it into God’s house, dust.
I get that. All too well.
When I was in first grade, my mom was busy and I wanted her attention,
So I sat in the garbage can and pouted.
I told her I couldn’t do anything right
and I was just garbage.
Not sure if I understood all the implications,
But it got her attention anyway.
So for many of us,
Who hide our insecurities behind big words, big actions, big prayers, big checks, big smiles,
Those of us who get up each morning
and frantically try to re-mold ourselves
into a seemingly normal, healthy, happy, strong, successful person,
Isn’t it cruel, even abusive,
For us to make you stand up here
While we call you “dust”?
For so many who struggle all our lives with not being “good enough”,
Do we need one more reminder of our sin,
Of our falling short, not just of our own or our family’s expectations, but of God’s?
These questions are valid, even vital,
But to me, the problem for most of us isn’t that we’re so puffed up and think we’re spotless, sinless, clean and lily white.
The problem is we know we’re dust,
And we need God to help us re-frame
what that means.
It’s not about putting ourselves down.
It’s about reconciling, return, restoration.
The psalmist says, “Restore in me the joy of your salvation.”
Paul says, “we entreat you on behalf of Christ,
Be reconciled to God.”
Joel says, “Return to the Lord your God.”
The restoration, the reconciliation, the return, is a return to dust:
Not necessarily in the sense of actually dying,
But rather, of letting our false self crumble.
Returning to the dust by remembering we’re part of the universe, the world God spoke out of nothing, and proclaimed good!
We’re not some uniquely awful, nasty, sinful, irredeemable substance,
We’re dust.
We’re all made out of the same stuff as forests and mountains, stars and supernovae.
The very elements in our body were formed billions of years ago in a dying star,
And they came into being on purpose,
Because God wanted us here.
We all are dust, scooped up in God’s hands, formed in God’s image, breathed to life by God’s breath.
When we say, “You are dust,”
We’re not putting each other down,
We’re lifting each other up.
We are dust: built with the building blocks of God’s creation.
We are dust: the clay God formed once,
and God can re-form.
Yes, we are the ashes of misplaced expectations, and broken relationships, some of which we set fire to ourselves.
Yes, we are the deteriorating remnants, the compost of previous attempts to live in God’s light.
But remember, we are dust: not stone.
We are potential for change.
We are dust: the only place where living seeds can grow.
We are dust: part of the world, which, through Christ, God reconciled to himself.
We are dust; soil, which knows no state or class or ethnic or national boundaries.
We are dust: part of the new creation, begun at the fertile ground, not in Eden,
But at Golgotha. The place where our Lord Jesus became our sin, even though he knew no sin, so we might become the righteousness of God.
The cross was the gateway where he entered into our death, so we and the whole creation could enter into new life.
We are dust: good dust. God’s dust.

When we return to the dust during our lives,
In seasons like this,
It’s to remember that the fake person we keep trying to put together will crumble,
And that’s a good thing.
It’s to remember we’re already connected and reconciled, both to God and each other, through the cross of Christ.
It’s to get some practice with what Paul called the “ministry of reconciliation”: not a ministry of putting down nasty, sinful unbelievers,
But of telling every living person the Good News that they, too, are the dust of God’s making, part of the new creation begun at the cross.
It’s pointing out the reality that even in this brief blink of an eye we call life,
We can be reconciled, to God and each other,
Whether we see it or not, whether we believe it or not.
But when we do believe it,
We can let God’s spirit thaw out and break up that frozen, uptight clod of resentments and failures we had taken to calling our “selves”,
And start being our real selves in Christ.

To repent is to change our spiritual direction;
to reorient our minds; to just tilt our heads ever so slightly and shift our perspective on this heap of ashes: this short span of time
in which we currently move and breathe.
It’s not a makeover. It’s not a diet.
It’s not a costume of piety and prayer we wear for forty days, hoping to fool God and others.
It’s a return to the authentic selves God made.
Young or old, we don’t know how many more ashes will touch our foreheads.
We don’t know how many more times we’ll start this walk, down this dusty road of Lent.
What we do know is each time we do it,
Each time Christ reminds us of our true selves in him, it’s a practice run for the last dawn:
The day when we’ll wake up, we’ll feel warmth and light in the East, and this last time, it won’t be the rising sun, but the sun of righteousness: the light of Christ.
We’ll wake up, newly made, raised from death, like Jesus was, a new creation, formed once again from the infinite potential
Of dust.
Let us return, and thank God that you and I
Are dust.
Dust together.
Dust infused with, and loved by,
and reconciled to God.
Amen.