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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
You are dust! The bulletin cover says it; you heard it repeatedly during the Imposition of Ashes; and it was only used in those places because the Lord God Himself first said it in Holy Scripture. In the beginning the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7). And, God created the woman from the man’s flesh as a helper fit for the man (Genesis 2:18)—remember well that she was not created for other women. God created man in His own image: in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27)—and, just for the record, that means each individual person was created male or female, not both, or neither, or given the option to choose what to be. That the Lord God created the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and essentially created all subsequent people from that man means that humankind is completely dependent on God for life. The Lord God’s grace gives humanity its humility and dignity, and, as His “fashioned artwork” of clay, we owe our praise to the Potter (Allen, TWOT 687). In the Small Catechism’s explanation of the First Article of the Apostolic Creed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther has us confess that God does everything “only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me”, and “For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him”, concluding, “This is most certainly true.”
You are dust, and to dust you will return! The bulletin cover says it; you heard it repeatedly during the Imposition of Ashes; and it was only used in those places because the Lord God Himself first said it in Holy Scripture. After the man and the woman sinned, the Lord God told the man he would return to the ground for from it he was taken, restating it with those exact words, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). As the man’s, Adam’s, descendants, all people carry the corruption of Adam’s original sin and the curse it wrought. In that regard, our religion does not matter, nor does whether or not we believe at all. Unless the Lord first comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead, all people’s bodies will die as a result of that original sin—and the countless actual sins of thought, word, and deed that that original sin leads us to commit. No amount of nutrition and exercise ultimately can prevent that death, and no amount of embalming and entombing can prevent the decay that follows death. As the usual Committal rite says, sometimes illustrated with sand, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Most of us seldom have to see that decay, but, the people of the Bible, with their practice of placing bodies on benches in caves, would see firsthand that decay into dust at the next burial (Wächter, TDOT XI:264). That decay into dust in the grave even leads to the Bible’s using “dust” as a term for the grave that all people deserve on account of both their sinful nature and their actual sin.
You are dust, and to dust you will return, but that is not the end of the story! The psalm verses that we used earlier tonight, essentially as the “Gradual” between the Old Testament and Epistle, reminded us that the Lord knows our frame and remembers that we are dust, so, as a father shows (or should show!) compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him (Psalm 103:13-14), and we should think chiefly of the compassion God showed in sending His Son into human flesh to die on the cross for the sins of the whole world. The very next psalm refers to our returning to dust when the Lord takes away our breath, but it also says that when the Lord sends forth His Spirit, we are created, and He renews the face of the ground, or “earth” (Psalm 104:29-30). The Lord sends His Spirit to both to call and enable us to turn in sorrow from our sinful nature and all our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sinful nature and all our sin for the sake of Jesus Christ, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. Pilgrim’s usual Ash Wednesday banner says, “We repent in dust and ashes”, and its companion banner for the other side is planned to say “the Spirit recreates and renews us”. The Spirit transforms us now and keeps us for the transformation of eternal life. The Spirit recreates and renews us as God forgives our sins through His Word and Sacraments.
The Bible’s Hebrew words for the loose, dry earth that we call “dust” and the result of burning that we call “ashes” sound very much the same and are even thought to come from the same root word. In the Bible, dust and ashes are often paired with each other, sometimes even used parallel to each other, and may even have been mixed with each other (see Allen, TWOT 687; Wächter, TDOT XI:260) as they were used as symbols of human worthlessness and insignificance, distress and sorrow, grief and mourning, and, more to our point tonight, humiliation and contrition. And, although not usually regarded as means of grace, dust and ashes can help us remember the means of grace by which the Spirit recreates and renews us.
For example, both Hebrew words are used by the book of Numbers chapter 19 to refer to the ashes of a sacrificial red heifer that were part of the water of cleansing that God prescribed (see especially v.17 and vv.9, 10, respectively). I alluded to that water of cleansing in my newspaper column last Saturday, and we took a quick look at Numbers 19 in Adult Bible Class last Sunday (if you missed them, both are available online). That Old Testament water of cleansing points us forward to the water of Holy Baptism, which God uses to recreate and renew us in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17; Titus 5:3-7). And, as baptized and individually absolved children of God in Christ Jesus, we, in the Sacrament of the Altar, eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ that were given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins, and so also for our life and salvation.
As we heard in tonight’s Epistle Reading (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10), God made Christ, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that, in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. St. Paul’s Divinely‑inspired call for us to be reconciled to God—something that God actively does, in which we are passive and can only prevent—is ultimately no different from God’s call in tonight’s Old Testament Reading (Joel 2:12-19) for us to return to Him with fasting, weeping, and mourning; to consecrate a fast, to call a solemn assembly, to gather even the children and nursing infants—sinners all, in need of the forgiveness God offers. Yet, more important than any external signs of repentance—whether rending garments, wearing sackcloth, sitting on the ground, or even applying dust and ashes to our faces or foreheads—is the actual internal repentance, the rending of the contrite heart. We use dust and ashes not hypocritically, as condemned in tonight’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21), but primarily as a reminder for ourselves, though they also can be a part of our witness to others. We repent in dust and ashes, but the Lord raises up the poor from the dust; He lifts the needy from the ash heap (1 Samuel 2:8; Psalm 113:7). You are dust, and to dust you will return, “But the Spirit recreates and renews you”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +