Dust and ashes

 “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” — Genesis 3:19, NRSV Bible
 
This year, the dust of Ash Wednesday got buried in snow. Many churches cancelled the worship service marking the beginning of Lent because the weather made it unsafe for folks to be out.
But I miss the dust. I miss the ashes.
I did not grow up with Ash Wednesday. As a Protestant child, I found it odd to see Catholics with dirty marks on their foreheads at this time of year—marks, I later learned, that were made from the burnt ashes of last year’s palm branches, mixed with vegetable oil to make them stick.
In more recent years, Ash Wednesday has become more common. There seems to be a hunger for it. My disappointment over this year’s cancellation of Ash Wednesday got me wondering why dust and ash matter so much, to me and to others.
Maybe it’s because Ash Wednesday is a rare open admission of impermanence. Everything that seems so solid, certain and unyielding in our lives will eventually disintegrate into dust. You name it—the house you grew up in, all the things you collect, the massive cottonwood in the park, the imposing brick high school, the statue on a pedestal, the institution founded centuries ago, even the conventional wisdom, as well as your own precious physical body and that of the ones you love—each of these will in time cease to exist in its present form. God alone remains unchanged.
Why would we want to admit this out loud? Why would anyone want to say to another, “you are dust and to dust you shall return”?
I have three theories. One, it’s simply honest, and honesty is refreshing in a culture that dismisses age and grief in the celebration of power and youth.
Two, “to dust you shall return” is a declaration of resistance to any evil that claims dominance. Disease, bigotry, bullying, ignorance, violence, no matter how popular—whatever plagues you or puts you down will not prevail. It, too, shall return to dust.
Three, our souls long to be reoriented to the worship of what truly lasts. No matter what else falls or fails or fragments or flakes away... God continues. The One who creates, redeems and sustains everything will never fade away.
In fact, in our tradition, dust actually gives us hope. God has made everything from dust, even the physical body of Jesus, our Lord. While he lived, Jesus embodied the compassionate, transformative nature of God. In his death and resurrection, God dramatically raised his old dust to new life. This flow of creation and re-creation turns out to be the Divine order of things. The elements of old stars—building blocks of the universe—are, by grace, being made new all the time.
Made in the image of such a God, we can create and re-create, too. We can build new houses, plant new trees, re-imagine education and society and religion, expand our ways of thinking, shift the system to be more inclusive and life-giving. We can turn the love and care we focused on our beloved one, now passed, toward others sorely in need of it. We can trust this God with our own bodies, minds and spirits. All this, too, is God working resurrection in our lives.
But first we have to admit that what came before is gone, and nothing but God lasts, and that’s why Ash Wednesday matters. We’ll offer the imposition of ashes on Wednesday, March 1, at our Lenten evening service.