Beloved Dust
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh for Ash Wednesday (C), March 2, 2022.
Isaiah 58:1-12
Death is embarrassing. It’s impolite, really. It offends our cultural sensibilities. I am reminded of this reality every Ash Wednesday when I leave church and am confronted with the inevitable strange looks and inquiries about the smudge on my forehead by strangers on the street or coworkers in the office, especially in a culture where outward displays of faith are increasingly uncommon. When pried about the meaning of this curious mark, I’ll confess that my go-to response is usually to mutter something about it being Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent, the season leading up to Easter, rather than taking the time to explain the simple theological truth that these ashes are a reminder of our death; a sign that this life does indeed one day end. The thought of being honest with others about this fact makes me squirm a little inside. It feels like oversharing. “Good morning Paddy, how is your day going?” “Quite well, thank you, by the way I’m going to die. Not now probably, but eventually.”
The truth of Ash Wednesday, which is the truth of our deaths, is all the more sensitive considering that ‘Covidtide’ has felt like a prolonged Lent for many of us and so it seems a little unfair that we should have to be reminded yet again of the frailty of our human life and be called upon to observe a yet another season of “penitence and fasting” (BCP 265). So why, in the midst of all of this, should we take this day and this season seriously and consider it a gift rather than yet another burden in an already burdensome time? I’ll try to make the case for you, and it has something to do with the life-affirming freedom that paradoxically comes to us when we deal honestly with death and suffering.
Today we receive the ashes of last year’s palm fronds on our foreheads with the sobering words: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. These words are centuries old wisdom repeated by generations and generations of Christians just like us, who are now themselves dust. What we receive today is a memento mori – a reminder of our mortality. In our culture where death is at best treated as a solemn inevitability and at worst an awkward subject, not to be discussed in polite company, let’s not let the gravity of this reminder of death be lost to us. Let’s not fall victim to the hubris of denying life’s fleetingness. But at the same time let’s not forget that if there is one thing that our Christian faith teaches us, it’s that death is not the end. That when the cosmic scales are balanced, it’s love that conquers sin and death, and therefore we need not regard death as foe and final threat. Or in Paul’s words famously quoted John Chrysostom in his Easter homily: “O death, where is thy sting? O hell, where is thy victory?” Paul and John could say this because they had seen how new life follows death and the old must die to make room for new life.
Creation itself teaches us this. Seasonally, Lent is situated between the cold barren months of winter and ends in spring when new life abounds. Through the outward and visible Lent helps us contemplate the inward and spiritual truths of our own vitality and ephemerality. It’s a lesson our Christian forebears, who were less sheltered from the truth of our transience, understood perhaps better than we do now. There is a famous medieval allegorical image called the danse macabre – the dance of death – in which laborer and nobleman, priest and pauper, bishop and maiden walk hand in hand with a personification of death. They understood that death was a natural companion to life, not its antithesis. And I think they were on to something. It’s radically counterintuitive but through the process of accepting that despite what we tell ourselves, our lives are in God’s hands, not our own, we become liberated from the life-smothering illusions of immortality and are free to live and love more fully. Free to claim the true life in service of love for the flourishing of all. That’s the strange beauty of Ash Wednesday – that a reminder of our death is a reminder that we ought not cling to life so stubbornly at the cost of life itself. Dr. King knew this, Archbishop Romero knew this, Pastor Bonhoeffer knew this, and I believe Jesus wants us to know this as well.
And that is why we participate in the age old Lenten disciplines of fasting, prayer, and penance described in the scripture readings. If we had any questions about what purpose our Lenten disciplines serve, the lectionary readings clarify them for us. Matthew warns against “practicing [our] piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Matt 6:1) and the fiery prophet Isaiah reminds us that our practices are not about our “own interest on the fast day,” they are about “loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, sharing bread with the hungry, and clothing the naked” (Isa. 58:6-7). That is to say that we do not to eschew worldly comfort during Lent out of a puritanical sense of our depravity or to engage in self-serving self-improvement projects, but we give things up or take things on to follow Jesus’ path into the desert. A path that prepares us for ministry, death, and new life by helping us to turn away from the ways we miss the mark of love by reflecting on the over-abundance that keeps us estranged from God and neighbor. Isaiah also reminds us that Lent is inherently a communal affair and the individual practices we choose to take up must also be directed at resisting the corporate nature of sin and injustice that harms the body of Christ, of which we are all a part.
So what does this communal rather than personal understanding of the sacrifice of “penitence and fasting” tell us about what our Lenten practices might be directed towards? For myself, I need to be reminded that the Lent of the poor is an ongoing Lent, not restricted to the customary forty days. The Lenten sacrifice of the poor is their labor, their bodies, and their wellbeing under unjust social conditions. Their Lenten sacrifice is not a heroic sacrifice but a sacrifice of necessity under economic systems that fall short of meeting the needs of the many despite the gross abundance of resource it produces. It’s the fast food worker who puts herself at risk to support her immunocompromised mother, it’s the nurse who works twelve hour shifts but has to skip her own doses of insulin because she cannot afford it, it’s the migrant worker whose hands held the apples in my grocery basket.
Their sacrifice takes place so that I, if I choose, may continue to be insulated from sacrifice. So God let my sacrifice this Lent be like the sacrifice of your Son Christ Jesus, let it be an offering that lifts up the plight of your beloved and dusty poor. For as Isaiah reminds us, “if you remove the yoke from among you… if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday… Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”
If there are two things I hope we would all remember this Lent it’s that first, we are incredibly beloved dust that is destined from birth for temporary death and eternal life, and that today’s remembrance of the impermanence of our earthly life is what paradoxically can liberate us from the fear of permanent death. And second, that our dusty lives are not lived alone. We are all connected by a web of divine love and common toil, and the purpose of our repentance and spiritual discipline this season is to shed bonds of injustice and strengthen the bonds of love.
Following Jesus’ during Lent reminds us that worldly comfort and even life itself are worth risking for love. And so in a culture that values a comfortable life at all costs and stubborn strength over honest fragility, I invite you to greet the questions and perplexed looks you receive today at your ash-smudged faces, not with shame or with pride, but by inviting others to take up death’s hand and set out with you on the path of life, which is the path of love. It may end up costing you just what you needed to lose. Amen.