Today, as a part of beginning this Lenten season, I
took a picture. Each day in Lent, I will be taking a picture that coincides
with a word from Scripture during the Lenten season and then contemplate where
that picture takes you in connection with the story of Scripture and our lives.
Everyday taking a picture and posting it to #lent2015. Appropriately enough,
today’s prompt was “dust” and as you might imagine most of the pictures I saw
posted to Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram were of the ashes we’re wearing
tonight. I decided to take a picture that was not the expected. I could just
take a picture of the dust of the ashes, but I was looking for something more
connected to me than that. Something that spoke of our daily existence and what
it comes down to. I ended up instead, taking a picture of dryer lint.
And you know, if you stop and think about it, dryer
lint tells a story- it not only tells what you were wearing and using, but
where we have been. It tells of our living, reacting and responding. Look
closely enough and it tells our struggles and failures, frustrations and
heartaches. And it tells our joys and hopes and dreams pursued.
And especially with children, that dust came complete
with the occasional partial Kleenex, candy wrapper, loose change or ticket stub
interspersed. Each representing the sadnesses, celebrations, losses and
triumphs of a life.
Perhaps that little label “Clean after each cycle”
reminds us that dustiness is our reality but God longs for us to start anew.
Dustiness is what we all share.
Young and old, at the end of the day, what is left,
is our dust, and frankly, scientifically, we also carry the dust of others. And
if you’ve ever gone to the laundromat, and had the dryer someone else forgot to
clean, you know the moment- having to clean up someone else’s dust. It’s hard
enough dealing with our own. In any event, at the end of the day, the week, a
life, what we see is what we leave- dust.
Today we are reminded of our dust.
And as we look around the world, we see it on a
larger scale- the giant swirls of trash in the ocean, those piles now sometimes
given names, which breaks my heart; the belching of factories taking life up
and downstream and people can’t breathe from all the dust; and the unquenchable
thirst for violence reducing people and places to dust in ways the prophet Joel
couldn’t even fathom. As we ponder how on earth we can possibly overcome these
forces that seem to inevitably point to destruction, what we see is our
limitation, and our frailty.
Today we are reminded we are but dust. The ashes more
vividly remind us of our dust, our ashness.
Years ago, as we took our children to church for Ash
Wednesday , it was the day most feared. And it all started when Catherine was
very young. We carried her forward for ashes as a preschooler, at an age just
old enough to be aware. Our pastor at the time had a booming voice and a
particularly large thumb. There was our girl, confronted by this seemingly
enormous black thumb approaching her, too close, and the voice thundered
“Remember you are dust. And to dust you shall return!”
And perhaps in the truest response to such a
pronouncement, she responded perhaps as we all might, or might want to. In a
high pitched lament, she cried out, “Noooooooo!” And burst into tears. While at
first we laugh, if we stop and think about it, perhaps she expressed what if we
allowed ourselves to think it, was our response.
If we allow ourselves to think it, we can see our
mortality. Today we are reminded we will be dust. Today we are reminded of our
dust.
And that is for me the thing about Ash Wednesday-
that cross we bear breaks into our world and tells us what we try not to hear,
or contemplate. It breaks in and speaks intimately, too close.
Yet, as soon as we say return to the Lord, we are already
feeling that “too close.” And amidst the ashes of our lives are, as Walter
Brueggeman writes, “burdened with the tasks of the day, (and) we are already
halfway home, halfway back to committees and memos, halfway back to calls and
appointments, halfway on to next Sunday, halfway back, halfway frazzled, half
expectant, half turned toward you, half rather not.”
Please don’t make us confront our ashness. The
consequences of our living, the limitations of our control and our frailty. How
totally opposite that cross is to our world which attempts to minimize and
sanitize, or to dominate and isolate any experience of what real life and death
involve. We would rather insulate ourselves.
We’d rather not hear the prophet pleading-consider your
ashes, and consider how far you’ve strayed. We’d just as soon not look at how
many layers insulate us from reality. That black thumb my daughter feared, you
see, truly represented our reality. And while we have over the years made
receiving ashes a once a year act-saying “we got ashes.” There is the truth-
we’ve always got ashes.
Brueggeman writes in his poem “Marked by Ashes”
“All our Wednesdays are marked by ashes- we begin
this day with that taste of ash in our mouth; of failed hope and broken
promises, of forgotten children and frightened women, we ourselves are ashes to
ashes, dust to dust; we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on
our tongues.”
And what is the response to this? Today at Bible
study we talked about someone’s experience in worship on Ash Wednesday of a
garment being torn- rending a garment is no small act. And act of mourning, or
of contrition. The ripping open of what seems to be woven and fused together.
And comparing that to our hearts. As God, our God calls to us to rend, to break
open our hearts and return. Break through those layers of ash and insulation so
we not only see the reality of our ashes, we see the reality of our Lord,
It’s not too late- come back to me. Fast from your
ashness-from the ashes we bear each day. The ones we bring to this place each
week. To come and experience changed hearts.
Come back to the God who is YOUR God. Who is not just
saying, but begging, pleading, longing. God’s heart is torn by our absence. God
longs to restore us and take our ashes. And make us new.
Richard Lischer writes, “it is only in Jesus that (our
ashes) are gathered together in the shape of a cross. Time and time again we
bring them to him, and then return to our mortal lives with something far
better.”
The God who formed us out of chaos and ashes, gives
us new form in Christ. Out of these ashes.
As Marcia Shultz writes, there is promise in the ashes
“No! I thought.
No black cross
Not on my forehead
No revealing mark
Of failure
Of grief
Of death
No.
But yes,
Take up your cross
Be marked
Perishable
Fragile
Blessedly alive
Human.
God’s best work
Marked as acceptable
Wounded
Broken
Acceptable to God
Not by my will
But Christ alone
Bearing the Cross
Wearing the Cross
In hope
The sign of the promise
Humanity lived
Fulfilled
Redeemed
By Christ alone.
This is the journey we enter and we pray to our God
who promises that dustiness may be our reality but not our destiny.
