Remember You are Dust…
Lent has arrived. Today we put ashes on our foreheads and look a little silly all day, as we begin a journey of forty (plus) days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. During this time we remember who we are, who we are called to be, and most important, Who God is.
Some years ago I chanced upon a book—and an author—which, among many other things, helped me to look at the workings of God during Lent in a way I hadn’t before.
Nadia Bolz-Weber is the former pastor of the Lutheran “House for all Sinners and Saints” congregation in Denver. A heavily-tattooed and pierced former stand-up comic and recovering addict with the vocabulary of a sailor on leave, Bolz-Weber is not, to put it mildly, most people’s image of a person of the cloth. At least she wasn’t mine.
Until I looked past the surface.
Reading her book, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, made me think that she’s someone whose brain I’d like to pick, even if, very clearly, our theologies differ in important ways. Among the many thought-provoking insights she shares in her book is her reflection on Ash Wednesday. She’s a better writer than I am, so I think her reflection deserves to be shared in full:
If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptisms at one end and our funerals at the other—and we don’t know the distance between the two—then Ash Wednesday is a time when the fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptisms in the past and our funerals in the future meet.
The water and words from our baptisms and the earth and words from our funerals have come from the past and the future to meet in the present…And in that meeting we are reminded of the promises of God and that we are God’s: that there is no sin—no darkness—no grave that God will not come to find us in and love us back to life.
That deserves to be read again.
The connection between Lent and baptism is as old as…well…Lent and baptism. In addition to fasting, in the first centuries of the Faith, catechumens prepared, often for years, to be received into the Church. Lent served as a period of intense reflection on their lives and faith in anticipation of being welcomed into the Faith and being made the adopted daughters and sons of God. But it was also a time—before private, frequent confession became the norm—for penitents, after their baptisms, to join with the catechumens and undergo the “scrutinies” where they reflected on their wrongdoings so they could better repent and do penance for their serious sins. Indeed the sacrament of penance was called a “second baptism” by the early Church Fathers for this reason.
Because, no sin, no darkness was so great that God would not find them and love them back into life.
Ours is a Faith that recognizes not only the reality of sin and death, but also of redemption. On Ash Wednesday we put on ashes and begin to don our personal sackcloths—our Lenten sacrifices—which we will “wear” for the forty-plus days ahead of us. We remember that we are dust and it will be dust to which we will return. But we also know that it is in dust that new life begins.
For while Scripture tells us that God created humanity from dust (Gen 2:7), it also tells us that Jesus used dust and His saliva to heal the man born blind (Jn 9:6), giving him a new lease on life.
“Water” and earth come together to heal.
But if God reaches through sin and darkness to love us back to life, Bolz-Weber reminds us that He also reaches into the grave. “Oh death, where is your victory,” St Paul mockingly asked, “Oh death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). Ash Wednesday begins a period of preparation which culminates on Easter with the celebration of Jesus’s conclusive victory over sin and death.
Even during Lent, we remain people of the Resurrection. The Catholic Church is the “Church of Second Chances.” Death gives way to new life, sin gives way to forgiveness. We benefit from second chances made possible by the unconditional love of God, and available to us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and our practice of prayer, fasting, and giving alms.
We’ll be addressing those practices individually in the weeks ahead, but in the meantime let us remember we are dust.
But let us also remember God that works amazing things in that medium.
A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.