Remember that you are dust...

One of my earliest memories from my childhood is a bit choppy, since I was probably somewhere around 4 years old at the time. I remember that I’d been playing at the park near my home in the innocent, happy way that kids do.  When I got home my mom broke some terrible news: my goldfish had died.  I ran and saw it floating upside down in its small goldfish bowl.  To this day I can still feel those 4 year old emotions.  I loved that fish!  I can vividly remember watching my dad taking a shovel to the earth under the lilac tree.  We put the fish in a small cardboard box, placed it in the ground, and covered it with the dry earth.  I’d had my first experience of death.  Were I to go to that lilac tree today I probably wouldn’t find a trace of that little fish.  Ashes to ashes…dust to dust.

I’ve experienced a lot more death in the years following that fish.  Time after time I’ve stood at gravesides, watching caskets get lowered into the ground…or vault…or urn.  Sometimes it was family: my mother Edee Reuss, my grandfather Jim Bantz, my grandpa and grandma Dave & Esther Meier, my grandpa George Reuss.  Sometimes it’s been members of congregations I’ve served: Marianne Morton, 10 year old Lichahan Kennell, Roaland White, Max Cliff.  These beloved people would not live on earth forever.  While gravestones mark many of their final resting places, the bodies that we buried slowly decompose.  Ashes to ashes…dust to dust.

Welcome to Ash Wednesday, the day when God’s people all over the world receive a blunt message, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”  Tonight we will gather at Peace to receive the mark of dust on our foreheads.  God created us from dust (as he did with Adam in Genesis, chapter 2).  When we die we will return to the dust (no matter how much embalming we receive).

Ash Wednesday is no mere morbid fascination with death!  It comes as a reality check in our lives.  We often try to pretend that death will ever come to us…we act like we will live on this earth forever.  We won’t.  We are dust…and we will return to the dust.  We can live a healthy lifestyle…we can eat the right foods…we can be good people…we can love our neighbors…we can worship every Sunday…and we will still die. 

Ash Wednesday reminds us of our utter dependence on God.  That fish that I buried cannot rise from the grave on its own.  My mother and grandparents cannot rise from their graves on their own.  Life beyond death is God’s work, not ours.  Ash Wednesday begins the long walk with Jesus as he heads to the cross and the tomb. 

I cannot save myself.  This body that I know and love will die and return to the dust.  My only hope is in the God who comes to raise the dust to life once again.  Death could not hold Jesus.  Death will not hold me.  I can do nothing to earn that salvation.  It comes as a free gift from the God who created and claimed me.  I need not fear death because Jesus has conquered it!

Remember that you are dust…and to dust you will return.