A reflection prepared by Revd Jonathan Evens for Choral Eucharist on Ash Wednesday (2 March 2022) at St Martin-in-the-Fields
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.
Remember you are dust. In the Genesis creation stories we read of God forming human beings from the dust of the ground and breathing life into us, so we become living creatures. In the imagery of these stories, we come from the dust of the earth and then are tasked with tilling the earth and keeping it until we return to the ground, for we are dust and to dust we shall return.
My father’s career went from being a sociology lecturer and community work pioneer at Oxford to becoming a landscape gardener in Somerset. His story was an early example of escape to the country and getting back to the soil. One thing he particularly appreciated about the change was a deeper sense of being immersed in the cycle of the seasons, the circle of life.
We will shortly be marked with the sign of the cross in ash on our foreheads as those words, Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return, turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ, are said. The dust forming the cross on our foreheads, is not only a sign of mortality and penitence but is also a reminder of our origins and our purpose. We come from the earth and are on earth to tend and keep it. When we live in the artificial environment and frenetic busyness of cities, it can be easy for us to forget that reality and lose a sense of being one with nature. We won’t all be able to make a similar mid-life change to that of my father, but could each seek in Lent new ways to connect more closely with the earth and the natural cycle of life.
Jesus taught that his life would be like a grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies. He would be like a single grain until he died and was buried in the ground to germinate and bear much fruit – the first-fruits of all who will be resurrected by God. Through his life, death and resurrection he entered into the natural cycle of death and new life calling us to follow him into resurrection life where we are with God, with ourselves, with others and with creation.
By forming the sign of the cross on our foreheads and by being made from burnt palm crosses, the ash or dust is a reminder to us of Christ’s identification with us in our mortality and also of our identification with him in his resurrection.
The season of Lent mirrors the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness – a place of dust – in which he spent time with God and with himself deepening his sense of who he was in God to the extent that, when tested, he could speak with authority about God’s purposes and intentions before then beginning his active ministry. In that active ministry, Jesus regularly used times of returning to the soil for contemplation, such as the moments in today’s Gospel story when he wrote in the dust. That was a time in which to find the words and actions that would open new possibilities of encounter with God for those who were constrained by their circumstances.
Lent is a time for us to do something similar by being more fully with God, ourselves, each other and creation more deeply and intentionally in order that we learn to live God’s future now more deeply. Our future is one of being with and enjoying God, ourselves, each other and creation ever more deeply for ever. We prepare for that future by anticipating it in the here and now. Doing so, is what Lent is for.
I, therefore, want to wish you a holy Lent in which you find ways to deepen your being with God, yourself, others and creation as Jesus did during his time in the wilderness. Often on
Ash Wednesday you are encouraged by the preacher to take up or lay down certain activities. I simply want to remind you today of the core purpose for Lent and encourage you to find your own ways to reach that goal of being with God, yourselves, each other and creation. You may wish to take those four aspects of Being With and use them to explore how this Lent, you can deepen your ways of Being With in each of aspect of life. My prayer is that the sign of the cross marked on your forehead in the dust of ash will be both a sign of your commitment to reaching that goal and an inspiration to you as we begin.
Remember you are dust formed from the dust of creation for Being With and that to the dust of creation you will return in preparation for eternal Being With, so turn away from the sin of being out of relationship and in isolation and be faithful to Christ by being with Christ in the body of Christ. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.
