When I hear the phrase, “you are dust and to dust you shall return,” I am amazed, because I know that the dust that is mentioned here is stardust. It is the remnant of supernovae that exploded billions of years ago and gave the elements that made our star, our planets, our bones, our blood, and our flesh. Those stars lived and died in the fathomless depths of deep time that I have no way to understand or grasp. The hydrogen in the water in me was forged in the Big Bang. The iron, the calcium, the carbon in me came from the supernovae. That dust is stardust. I feel connected to everything that ever was, is, or shall be.
Humility and Belonging
Humility is knowing the proper place of things. That something should not take up too much space or too little, that it finds the space that it needs to inhabit. Sometimes that is grand and vast, sometimes it is ever so small, and it can change depending on the circumstances.
When I think about how we are all connected physically through the stardust that makes up our world, our cosmos, our bodies, I feel a sweet tenderness toward the stars that gave their life. I feel a responsibility to them as my ancestors and to the world from which I arose. I am grateful for all that has transpired in time and space to conspire for me to be here now, living this life. But I know that that does not make me special. It makes me loved, just like everyone and everything else is loved.
Repentance as Return
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten season. It is a time for repentance, and over the centuries, that repentance has turned into shame and guilt. This is indeed a time for repentance, but a true and proper repentance.
Repentance, teshuvah, as it is known in Hebrew, is returning to the way. Sin is not a moral stain on our soul or a corruption that wells up within us. It is simply missing the mark. It is walking off of the path and getting lost in the wilderness. We all do that from time to time.
It is easy to get distracted by shiny things that attract us to them, and by terrible things that cause us to want to run away. And so we wander off the path. Sometimes we lose our mindfulness and we just meander one way or another until we realize we can no longer see the path beneath our feet, or that the path is over there, not where we currently are.
teshuvah, like its Greek counterpart metanoia, means that we open ourselves up, we change our mind, we turn, and we walk a different path. We move back to the path that we want to be on. That is the path that leads to love, to compassion, to justice-making, to celebration. It is built on wonder and awe and delight, creativity, and spaciousness. It is the life that gives us, as Jesus said, life more abundantly. It is the path that Jesus says where we take his burdens upon ourselves and give ours up to him, for his burdens are light and easy to bear. It is the work of the law of liberation that reminds us to love God with all of our heart, soul, and spirit, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
What the Ash Proclaims
When we mark ourselves with ashes and enter this time of repentance, we are reminding ourselves of the great love of God, who is love. From dust we came, and to dust we will return. And so it is with everything. The stars accreted from dust, and they burned so bright. The earth accreted from dust and now is filled with life abundantly.
We walk this path like John before us, to make way for the acceptable day of the Lord. We walk this path like Jesus before us, pouring ourselves out knowing that we are not actually pouring ourselves out but allowing the great river of God’s compassion to flow through us. The ashes remind us that we, like the phoenix, rise. That through the fire, the earth is renewed. Nutrients are returned to the soil so fresh growth can rise up.
It is the sign of renewal that we bear upon our soul, upon our body, reminding us of the great work that we are called to do.
Marked and Sent
The prophets speak of God sending out angels to mark those who have ears to hear and eyes to see (Ezekiel 9:4). They marked them on the forehead. Isaiah had the living coal touch his tongue. Jeremiah was called from before birth into life and life-giving ministry. Ezekiel sees the great panoply of the divine spread out before him. We are called to the same calling. We are marked with the same mark. The angels have come. The question is, will we hear them? Will we see them, and will we respond?
To don the ashes is not to go through a simple ritual in obedience to some liturgical duty. To don the ashes is to accept this call to change the world, to bring the kin-dom of God here, present among us and within us. It is to do the work that Jesus called us to do:
to feed the hungry,
to give water to the thirsty,
to visit the sick and those in prison,
to bring relief and blessing,
to call all people to the great heavenly banquet on the holy mountain.
We go forth as a people changed and changing, ever becoming renewed, focused in this Lenten season on the work of transformation, first of ourselves and then our communities and society and the world.
What needs to be changed? Where have we missed the mark? Where have we gone off the path? Now is the time to look, to search, to seek, and to find, and to turn around and to walk back to the path, to get on the way toward that great and shining path to the world to come.
We leave not cowered by shame or guilt or fear, but standing tall and alert, mindful of what is around us. If we are not mindful, if we are not looking at the path, if we are not looking where we are in the path, if we are not engaging with the world around us and with what is happening, we will miss the power of this season.
The Lie the Ash Breaks
The ash breaks the lie of sin and death. It points out to us that we are not inferior to others, but we are all equal in our sojourn through this world. From ash we came, to ash we will return. From stardust we came, and to stardust we will return.
We are interconnected and interwoven in ways that many in the past refused to see because it challenged their power and their wealth and caused fear in them that they were not as special as they wanted to be. The ash reminds us that we are all one people. One people with the rest of humanity and with the rest of nature, with the worlds that flow through the galaxy and the stars they orbit around. One with all that is, was, and ever shall be in this galaxy, in this life, in this cosmos.
Amen.