ASH WEDNESDAY 2011

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. These are the words spoken each Ash Wednesday as the ashes are put on our foreheads. They are taken from the book of Genesis Chapter 3 – after God learned that Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. God then told Adam and Eve what their life will be like outside of the garden and said, “ out of the ground you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Dust – the word in the original Hebrew is Adamah. It means a very dry kind of dirt or soil, dirt without much moisture or half-decomposed organic material like we find in our forests. Dust is the end stage of dirt I guess.

Or, it is the beginning of new life. If we go back to chapter 2 in Genesis, God forms the first human being from the dust of the ground. If we were reading the verse in the original Hebrew – it would be God formed the Adam – the first human – from the Adamah – the dust of the ground. God made us from dirt – if you will - and to dirt we will return.

Today, we receive a reminder of that as we receive the ashes. I was wondering why the church decided some time years ago to use ashes on this day instead of dirt. Probably because ashes are a powerful symbol – they are what is left AFTER something is burned away. They can become the bed from which new life rises – think of the rebirth of Mt. St. Helens. Ashes used to be used in making soap that we use to clean our bodies or our clothing. For me, though, the main message I have received from the ashes over the years is the message of my sinfulness, my unworthiness. The dust of the ashes on my forehead focuses my thinking on the negative truth about myself in relationship to God and God’s will.

But maybe there is another way to look at it that includes the positive, life affirming truth as well. Hey – we are formed out of the very stuff of the rest of creation. The earth is our blessed mother and God the Father the giver of our breath. We are kin to all the other created things – the animals and the plants. What a joy and comfort to know that when the breath leaves us we will go back to rest in our mother’s arms.

In the story in Genesis 2 and 3, sin enters the world when Adam and Eve fail to accept they are creatures, made by God from the dust of the earth, and instead want to be on the level of God the creator. We will hear the story of the serpent’s temptation and eating the forbidden fruit this coming Sunday. Today, as we make an extended confession of sin, and as we receive the ashes on our foreheads, I encourage us to think of our sin – individually and collectively – as the failure to accept our “creatureliness”, our dependence on God our Creator, our interdependence with all the rest of creation.

In Lent, we talk a lot about returning to the waters of baptism where we are washed clean, and made new by the power of God again and again. This is a good image for us as we think about God’s forgiveness and mercy for us.

But this Lent, we will be talking not only about the cleansing waters but also about the BLESSING of being created from the earth; to put it more graphically, the BLESSING of being dirt people.

When we affirm and celebrate our coming from mother earth and receiving our breath from God, then it helps to set our priorities and purposes in life. Caring for our mother earth and its creatures then becomes part of our core identity – part of the stewardship of creation entrusted to us by God. Forgetting our origins and our purpose is another way of talking about what sin is.

In this season of Lent at St. John United – particularly during our Thursday evening services – we are going to affirm our identity not only as the baptized, washed clean people of God, but also has the people of the earth whom God created. We will give thanks for the wonders of creation – the water, land, air, trees, and other species. We will ask for forgiveness for the ways we have forgotten our identity and purpose as earth people and earth tenders. We will turn to Jesus who shows us the way to turn back toward God and to the Spirit for strength and guidance.