Dust, Ashes, and Breath

Reflection by Matt King

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Those are the words we said to each other on Ash Wednesday as we began the season of Lent together. It doesn’t sound very encouraging does it? I know that Lent is meant to be a season of spiritual growth for us. A spiritual seed is meant to be planted and cultivated within us. We are allowing God to take a shovel to the solid ground of our souls after a long hard winter, till it, water it, and care for it until new growth appears. Still, we started by remembering we are dust. It sounds like an insult, doesn’t it? In reality, it is a statement that calls us back to the clearest understanding of who we actually are.

 

Remember what the Bible tells us God did with the dust of the ground in Genesis chapter 2. There it describes God’s creative work by saying that when the earth was nothing more than dust and dirt, God knelt down on the ground and formed a being out of the dust. God took the being God had formed and breathed the breath of life into its nostrils. God breathed the ruach, the breath of life, the same Hebrew word from which we understand God’s own Spirit, into humanity, and it was at that moment that the text wants to tell us we became truly ourselves, created in God’s own image, worthy of receiving God’s own Spirit.

 

Yes, we must start the process by remembering that we are dust, and that at some point our bodies will return to the dust. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We only have so much time on this earth to live and commune with God and others, and to make an impact. But we also need to remember what is contained within this dusty shell that we walk around in every day. It’s the breath of life, the Spirit of God. “We are dirt and the breath of God,” Nadia Bolz-Webber reminds us. We are dust, but we are also the image of God. As frail, and fallen, and failed as we are, we still reflect the image of God to the world. That is our true identity, and it is that understanding that can enable us to grow throughout the Lenten season.

 

Ashes are a sign of mourning and repentance. They always have been in the history of the faith. In ancient Hebrew times, if someone lost a loved one, or if someone had committed a grave sin, or if someone wanted to protest the wickedness of something that had been done to them, they put on sackcloth and ashes as a sign for everyone to see that they were in mourning, perhaps repentance. And, yes, throughout the season of Lent we will come together for times of confession in worship, something we probably don’t do enough of. We will confess our sins before God, recognizing that we have fallen short of God’s desires for us. As a sign of our confession, our repentance, and even our mortality and our inability to do something about it, for one moment on one night we wore ashes so that everyone could see how sorry we are.

 

There is one important distinction between this tradition and the other traditions of spreading ashes upon your head as an outward sign of something. In our case, on Ash Wednesday we placed the ashes on our foreheads in the sign of the cross. Even when we come in confession, in repentance, and with the determination to take this entire Lenten season to prepare ourselves to do better, we still cling to the cross. We cling to the symbol of Christ’s willingness to let God’s love overtake our sins. So we placed ashes in the sign of the cross because we know that, through God’s forgiveness and ability to bring about reconciliation, our sins are not the final word. Forgiveness and love have the final word.

 

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Part of what we must hear in those words, perhaps the most important part, is that this season is about reclaiming our understanding of who we are in Christ. It is about God’s work through Christ to reclaim us as his own. It is about remembering that we are dust, but because of the breath of life that was breathed into us, and because of the grace of Christ, our Lord, we are bits of dust that God can and will do something with. Each day we can be made more clearly into Christ’s image to be part of making God’s kingdom come, and God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

 

So as we walk through the Lenten season, we commit to practicing our faith humbly, remembering that this season is about deepening our relationship with God and dependence upon God’s work to redeem the world. As we move closer to the cross, we recognize that this season leads us to ask questions about the integrity of our faith. We recognize the movement of God within our lives and within the world. We reflect and confess the ways we have not quite measured up, and ask God for guidance how we might resolve to do better and strength to actually follow through. That makes it by nature, a contemplative and quiet season, a season of humility.

 

This season invites us to a life of genuine faith and integrity, a life that is lived for the sake of the principles we find in Jesus, not for appearance. We are invited to live a life that is deeply healthy and well balanced, not only outwardly attractive. We are invited to understand God’s call to live and practice abundance that leads to a full and meaningful life.

 

So, throughout this season, keep your eyes wide open in in gratitude of what God can and will do through you, focusing on what gives life and letting go of what takes it away from you. Perhaps if we can do that, we will live healthy and full lives that make this world a better place. If we can do that, we will remember the genuineness of our faith, and even God’s faith in us. If we can do that, we can remember the true nature of our identity: we may be dust, but we continue to breathe the breath of life. God can definitely do something with that.