Remember you are dust...

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. These are the words spoken in our Ash Wednesday worship as the sign of the cross is made with ashes from last year’s palms. It also marks the beginning of the season of Lent which lasts 40 days, not counting Sundays. The season is modeled after the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness tempted by the devil. Lent is a time of repentance and recognition of our own humanity and our mortality.

As I prepare for my first Ash Wednesday worship as a pastor, I’m reminded of the Ash Wednesday worship of my internship year. The imposition of ashes was truly a holy moment and I felt God’s presence as I made the sign of the cross on each forehead and proclaimed “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

But I also have a confession to make about that Ash Wednesday worship, well two confessions actually. First, my supervisor was off on medical leave and the interim pastor had total confidence in me to prepare the ashes for the service. Although we had gone over preparing the ashes in my seminary worship practicum class, we didn’t get an exact recipe for the correct amount of ash and oil. My first batch of ashes looked like a goopy muddy mess. It was not even fit for mud pies let alone something that could be placed on a worshiper’s forehead. Luckily, there were enough ashes for the experienced interim pastor to help me prepare a more successful 2^nd batch.

The other confession I have to make is that as people came to the communion rail to receive the impositions of ashes, I was totally caught off guard by a dad holding his precious infant daughter. I placed my hand on the baby’s forehead and I looked at my ash-filled thumb, and in that very second, all the theology I learned in seminary went right out the window. Was I really going to put this dirty ash on a beautiful innocent precious child and declare, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return? I confess, I didn’t do it. I did not put ashes on the baby’s forehead but instead gave some sort of general blessing about being God’s child.

Then just two days later, I left the office to make a hospital visit that soon turned into three visits at three different hospitals. As I traveled between hospitals and prayed with the patients, it was clear to me how really fragile life is, all of life, babies and older adults, animals and plants. We are God’s creation but we’re not God. The stark truth of Ash Wednesday rang through my head, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

I later watched a video with a pastor who has ALS. In the video he said, “I think humans have this capacity to think they’ll live forever—you ain’t living forever!” Then he goes on to say, “So what can I do with the limited time I have to make a difference.” That, I think, is the question. Or to put it into Lutheran terms, how am I going to respond to the grace, the free gift of life, that God has already given? May your Lent be one of reflection, repentance and remembrance of your baptism and of what God has done through God’s son, Jesus.