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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. (Amen.)
Whether or not we received the optional Imposition of Ashes earlier, we repeatedly heard the imposition formula, based on a verse from Genesis, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19; confer Ecclesiastes 3:20). And, though we said it earlier only once, we note well the Psalm verse by which we confessed that the Lord “remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14b). For the next little while, let us center our thoughts on both our and the Lord’s “Remembering that we are dust”.
After humankind’s fall into sin, the Lord God told the man who had sinned that the man was dust and that to dust the man would return (Genesis 3:19). Presumably the man knew, as the Lord God certainly knew, that the Lord God had formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7). The man’s descendants remembered that they were dust and, mindful of their fallen mortality, even referred to themselves as “dust and ashes” (for example, Genesis 18:27), not that they were made of or would return to burnt material but with ashes in some sense as a symbol of unworthiness (Schmidt, 101). And, those descendants thus came to use dust and ashes as their outer signs of their inner repentance (for example, Job 42:6). Their remembering that they were dust was not only their being aware that they were dust but also their acting accordingly by repenting, just as God’s remembering that we are dust is not only His being aware that we are dust but also His acting accordingly by delivering us from our fallen mortality.
God leads us as individuals to repent, and repentance is in some ways an individual and private thing, though there are also corporate and public aspects to repentance. For example, in tonight’s Old Testament Reading (Joel 2:12-19), the Lord through the prophet Joel calls for a holy fast and assembly of repentance for the leaders and all of the people, including the children, even nursing infants. Similarly, in tonight’s Epistle Reading (2 Corinthians 5.20b-6:10), Paul and his colleagues call all of the Corinthians—and all of us—to be reconciled to God, something that in many ways they were and we are passive in, with God’s ambassadors’ proclaiming to us His law and His Gospel, by which law and Gospel, God reconciles people to Himself. And, in the so‑called “Sermon on the Mount”, from which tonight’s Gospel Reading is excerpted (Matthew 6:1‑6, 16-21), the Lord Jesus assumes that His followers at times will practice their righteousness by giving to the needy, praying, and fasting—no doubt both privately and publicly, as the Church came to do with ashes on Ash Wednesday—but the Lord Jesus tells us not to give, pray, and fast primarily in order to be seen by other people, hypocritically, as if to gain the other people’s approval instead of our Heavenly Father’s approval. In the case of fasting, Jesus says, that means not using so much dust or so many ashes so as to disfigure our faces beyond recognition, which disfiguring beyond recognition the one smudged sign of the cross upon your forehead hardly does, just as the one smudged sign of the cross upon your forehead hardly gains us the approval of other people in society at large, if those other people in society at large even know what the one smudged sign of the cross upon your forehead means.
We are neither commanded nor forbidden but are free to use or not to use the imposition of ashes in order to help us remember that we are dust and that to dust we will return (confer Job 30:19). Sometimes we might seem to need help remembering that we are dust and that to dust we will return. Sometimes we might seem to forget that we are dust: wrongly thinking that we can do whatever we want because we are indestructible, wrongly thinking that we ourselves can extend our lives simply by diet and exercise, wrongly thinking that we are in control of when we get sick based on what preventative measures we might take to avoid sickness, or wrongly thinking that we do not ultimately depend on God to preserve our lives. Sometimes we might seem to forget that we will return to dust: wrongly thinking that we did not inherit original sin, do not commit actual sins, or deserve temporal death and eternal punishment on account of our sin; or wrongly thinking that embalming, a sealed casket, and a thick enough vault will prevent our rotting and decaying in the grave; or wrongly thinking that cremating a Christian’s dead body into ash is the best way to treat it. And, sometimes we might seem to forget that we will not be decomposed dust or even burnt ash forever: wrongly thinking that there is no bodily resurrection of the dead, or wrongly thinking that in some way unbelievers’ torment is not eternal.
We sin in these and in countless other ways because we are sinful by nature. Our corruption certainly is more than one smudged sign of the cross upon our foreheads that we can easily wash off our skin, and yet, by what at first glance might seem to be little more than a washing off of our skin, God deals with our original sin and all of our actual sins. Through Holy Baptism—as well as through the reading and preaching of God’s Word, that Word with touch in Holy Absolution, and that Word with bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar—God delivers us repentant believers from our fallen mortality by grace for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ.
Such salvation is not a “reward” that we earn. Our receiving ashes is not an act of worship that by itself earns us righteousness before God, nor does our receiving ashes by itself reconcile us to God. But, our receiving ashes can help us remember our dependance on God Who first formed the man of dust from the ground and Who also alone can rescue us from our fallen mortality by forgiving our sins. Our omniscient God of course remembers that we are dust, but, more importantly, He also pays attention to that fact and acts accordingly. God the Father sent His Son into our human flesh to die on the cross in order for all human flesh to be redeemed objectively, and God the Father sends the Holy Spirit to lead us to repent and believe so that our individual human flesh is redeemed subjectively. Earlier in the Psalm that was excerpted as our “Gradual” (Psalm 103:8-14), the Divinely-inspired David blessed the Lord Who forgives all iniquity, Who redeems life from the pit, and Who crowns with steadfast love and mercy (Psalm 103:3-4). Similarly, in the Old Testament Reading, Joel describes the Lord as gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. But, in our case, there is no question whether the Lord will turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him. As we heard in the Epistle Reading, for our sake, God made Christ, Who knew no sin, to be sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. God not only appeals for us to be reconciled, but God also effects that reconciliation—both appealing and effecting through His ministers’ preaching the Gospel and their administering the Sacraments.
Sacramental forms of the Gospel should not surprise us. Psalm 51 that we prayed earlier (Psalm 51:1-19) referred to being washed thoroughly from iniquity and cleansed from sin, purged with hyssop to be cleaned and washed to be whiter than snow (Psalm 51:2, 7). Branches of hyssop often were used to sprinkle the purifying water of the Old Testament, which water included ashes of a sacrificial offering (Numbers 19:1-22), and which water pointed forward to the washing of water with the Word in Holy Baptism (Ephesians 5:26), where we first received the sign of the Holy Cross upon our forehead to mark us as one redeemed by Christ the Crucified. Just verses before tonight’s Epistle Reading, Paul writes to the Corinthians that, as we are in Christ, we are a new creation, the old has passed away, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). And, in the Psalm after the Psalm from which our “Gradual” was excerpted, the Psalmist speaks of how, when the Lord takes away our breath, we return to our dust, but when He sends forth His Spirit, we are, as it were, re-created (Psalm 104:29-30). Similarly, on the evening of the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, He breathed on His disciples and gave them the Holy Spirit either to forgive sins in individual Holy Absolution, or, if necessary to withhold forgiveness, either clearing or barring the way to the Sacrament of the Altar. And, for the Sacrament of the Altar, the Small Catechism reminds us, fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training, but those are truly worthy and well-prepared to receive Christ’s Body and Blood who have faith in His Words: “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins” (Small Catechism VI:10).
Re-created by God through His ministers’ preaching the Gospel and their administering the Sacraments, we live in His forgiveness of sins, and so in the peace and joy that that forgiveness brings. We repent of our sin—with or without external indicators such as fasting with dust and ashes, sackcloth, and the like—and we trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. And, we do good works in keeping with our callings in life, recognizing our dependence on God to preserve our lives and fasting by giving of the abundance that God has given us in order to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and clothe the naked (Isaiah 58:5‑7; confer Matthew 25:35-36). Unless the Lord first comes again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, our bodies will return to dust, but we commit them to the ground or to another resting place—dust to dust—in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will change our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him to subdue all things to Himself (Lutheran Service Book: Agenda, 130; confer 1 Corinthians 15:42-49). God the Father, Who created our bodies, God the Son, Who by His blood redeemed our bodies, God the Holy Spirit, Who by Holy Baptism sanctifies our bodies to be His temple, is able to keep our remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh (LSB:Agenda, 130).
For a little while, we have centered our thoughts on both our and the Lord’s “Remembering that we are dust”. Whether or not we received the optional Imposition of Ashes earlier, we remember that we are dust and will return to dust, and we note well that God not only remembers that we are dust but also acts accordingly. In short, as our Ash Wednesday banners say, we repent in dust and ashes, and the Lord sends forth His Spirit to recreate us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +