Peace Community Church

Dust

Joel 2:1-2
Isaiah 58:1
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
Glenn Loafmann
Tuesday after the First Sunday in Lent 23 February 2010
OACM Lenten Luncheon Series:
“From Ashes to Glory” – Week One

Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19)

I grew up in churches that did not observe Lent – skipped right to Easter, more or less year round.

To us, religion was about three things:

- Sin: sinful human nature, including my nature, and the sinful condition of the world

- Death: we’re mortal; deal with it

- and Easter. Easter was about how Jesus overcame Sin and Death.

That was it. Everything else was decoration.

So we didn’t observe Lent. We observed others observing Lent – Catholics, Methodists, and some other “high church” types (I grew up in towns where Methodists were “high church). What we knew about Lent, we knew from them, at a bit of a distance.

And, I confess, we rather scoffed at it. “Works righteousness,” we sniffed.

We didn’t notice that one of the Lenten lessonsis Psalm 1:1, “Happy are those who do not . . . sit in the seat of scoffers.” (nrsv) We didn’t follow the lectionary, either.

As time went by I quit scoffing so much at the practices of others, and when I became a minister, I was even called to serve churches that did observe Lent, which meant I had to lead Ash Wednesday services.

The liturgy we used had north European Calvinist origins.

That mumble you hear in the background is the Spirit of Oberlin College saying, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (cf. John 1:46), but out of Northern Europe came a liturgy of spare, no-nonsense words without ornaments – and so on Ash Wednesdays for many years, I rubbed my thumb in the ashes I had made from the previous year’s Palm Sunday leaves, and pressed it on the forehead of each worshiper who appeared, and with the sign of the Cross put the message of my Baptist roots into the stern tones of that liturgy: Dust you are; and to dust you shall return.

­I never was struck by what I was doing until my son was one of the people in the line. Then I observed Lent.

The unornamented heart of Lent – the path “From Ashes to Glory” – repeats Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem – turns us to the cross to face sin and mortality at home.

Lenten symbols are markers to hold our attention on our moral and mortal limits. Joel sounded the trumpet in Zion; … the inhabitants of the (home)land trembled…” (Joel 2:1) Our challenge for Lent is not somebody else’s sin – not Egypt’s sin or Babylon’s, not Washington’s sin, either, nor Wall Street’s sin. Our penance in Lent is not for the sins of bankers or drug companies or oil conglomerates, not for the sins of Republicans or Democrats or George Bush or Barack Obama.

In last Sunday’s gospel lesson Jesus went into the wilderness with the devil and the wild beasts (Luke 4:1-13, Mark 1:13) He did not send Dick Cheney into the desert; he did not tell Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck to get their spiritual act together. He did not organize a study group to find better ways to distribute loaves and fishes. Lent is not about what somebody else ought to do, or how we can more effectively make them do it.

The “ashes” are for ourselves – we mourn our condition, our sin and mortality, not someone else’s.

Lent is not a time for righteous pronouncements. I once heard a denominational leader offer a prayer of “confession” asking forgiveness for “our” warmongering, and “our” complicity in militarism.

This was a guy who had made a career out of opposing war! He had burned his draft card before that was fashionable, trained hundreds of people in non-violent resistance to war, and he was leading an anti-war service of worship! His confession was ludicrous: he was confessing somebody else’s sin. By “our” he meant “their.”

Lent is about facing – admitting, at least to ourselves – our own sin – our own death. We turn our faces to the cross, take our souls into the wilderness. Lent is about being with our own beasts, not naming someone else’s beast – Militarism and consumerism and racism are demons – sins of our world – but don’t hide behind those demons to avoid facing your own. I need to face my beasts, and you need to face yours. Forty-six weeks we can work on the sins of the world; six weeks in Lent we need to work out our own salvation “with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12)

Being mortal means the sins of the world will outlast us. Evading that limit is the sin of pride. We are not God. We are not big enough or durable enough to change the world in our lifetime, or make it over in our image. What we can do in six weeks is offer ourselves for change.

Getting from ashes to glory begins with setting the world aside – not just its seductions and distractions, but its needs and cries and hunger as well – set the whole world aside, go into the wilderness and contemplate your moral limitations, and the limits of your time; face the realities of sin and death in your life. The “poor you have with you always” (Mark 14:7) – they’ll be waiting when you come back from the desert.

My son was maybe ten on the first Ash Wednesday I put my thumb on his forehead and made the sign of the cross and said, “Derick, dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” To this day, the Imposition of Ashes is his favorite service.

Like God, he appreciates honesty.

Amen.

Benediction: Now go out into the troubling peace of God, and find the good word written in the dust you are.

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