In the In-Between

March 2, 2022 + Ash Wednesday + Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 + Pr. Michelle Sevig

Earth to Earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I have spoken these words numerous times as a pastor at the graveside of people who have died.  

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” the words we say tonight have been spoken to people for hundreds of years. Your pastors, say them over and over again to each person who comes forward on Ash Wednesday: aging adults, newborn children, teens and tweens, baby boomers and millennials. We even speak them to each other. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” 

Dust and ashes. Some find these words that remind us of our mortality grim, and the ritual we do today depressing.  But in this sacred space, we remember that these are more than just words. They are a promise that God is with us from beginning to end.  

Although we’re surrounded daily by reminders of mortality, we still also live in a culture of denial. Tonight’s ritual brings us face to face with truth. In an Ash Wednesday reflection written by Father James Liggett, he says “There is grace in truth. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,’ simply puts the truth on the table. It is an awesome, even if unwelcome, starting point for a relationship with God’s grace.”

So tonight, we remember that dust and ashes are good news. They point us toward the power and love of God—both at the beginning and at the end. They remind us that God is with us as we live between dust and dust. On this sacred day as ashes are placed on our forehead, we are called to repent and return. Turn toward the one who created and keeps us in love’s embrace. 

Tonight, begins our season of repentance. But it isn’t a repentance centered on fear--on what will happen to us if we don’t. And it doesn’t center on guilt or duty – on what we think we ought to do. Instead, repent means to turn, to change direction. In repentance, we turn away from the things which draw us from God, and turn toward that which keeps us faithfully in relationship with God. 

In these 40 days, our tradition teaches us that the classical and ancient disciplines of prayer, fasting and giving are powerful practices that help us as we hear and move toward God’s call to return. They are universally recognized ways of keeping us moving in the right direction—toward God.

And the ashes we receive tonight connect us not only to the God who made us and saves us, but they connect us more deeply to the struggle and hope we share with our siblings in the body of Christ—saints and sinners among us now, those who have gone before us and those who are yet to come.

A few years ago some friends who had visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras, bought me a gift—cocktails napkins that said “Sin. Repent. Repeat.”

If grace is found in truth, it might also be found in humorous napkins. Sin. Repent. Repeat—This is the pattern of our lives it seems, so we gather together to remember that the Holy One is with us through it all. In the truth-telling ashes of this night; in the holiness of this season; in our turning to God, who transforms our ashes into a symbol of hope… may we leave here remembering that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are more than words. They are a promise that God is with us, from beginning to end, and even now as we live in between.

In closing I’d like to share with you a poem I read every Ash Wednesday called Blessing the Dust, by author and artist Jan Richardson. 

Do you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made 

and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.

Yes, let us be marked not for sorrow or shame, but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the stuff of which the world is made. Dust to dust, from beginning to end, God is with us, loves us, forgives us as we live now in the “in between”