"Remember you are dust"

Dear WRC,

Last week we launched our way into another Lenten journey. I grew up in a church that marked Ash Wednesday as the beginning of Lent, but didn’t actually impose any ashes. I have since come to deeply treasure physical practices like the imposition of ashes. Anything that gets our faith and worship beyond our heads and into our hands and feet and embodied existence is such a gift. Jesus left us two key practices as signs and seals of his covenant grace—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—but there are plenty of other lesser practices like ashes that also become visible and enacted pictures of otherwise internal or invisible realities.

Several years ago, this power of this practice was hammered home during an Ash Wednesday service in our sanctuary. We came to the part of the service when the congregation is invited forward to receive ashes. The line formed. One by one you bowed your heads to receive this reminder of your mortality, and I declared over you the same well-worn words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return

It is a powerful thing to speak this over someone. I do not lightly remind you of your impending demise. I don’t want to think about it any more than you do.

 I noticed a new family in the church had joined the line. They had joined WRC that year and had brought their newborn daughter Jessica to the waters of baptism to be joined into the family of God. As they now waited patiently in line, they held Jess in their arms with all the delight and caution of first-time parents. They made it to the front of the line. Erica bowed her head and received her cross. Mike followed suit. Then something happened that I didn’t expect. Mike didn’t step aside and let the next person come forward. He stood there with his baby in his arms looking at me expectantly. It took me a moment to realize that he expected me to mark Jessica with those same ashes, to speak over her those same words.

 Everything in me recoiled. Do you have that same gut response? This child was a symbol of joy and life, even in this fragile state—especially in this fragile state! We were struggling to have kids at the time. I knew the improbability of life and the absolute darkness of death. Here was a tangible symbol of the triumph of life amidst all the obstacles. Here was a child with so much life ahead of her, God-willing. How could I mark her with a symbol of her death? How could I announce confidently that she too would die one day and return to the dust from which she’d come? 

 Inside I screamed at Mike, “DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS!” I didn’t want to say those words. I didn’t want to speak that truth. I wanted to deny it and hide from it and pretend it wasn’t so. Mike didn’t hear me, he just kept looking at me. He was insisting that I tell the truth, insisting that I remember the hope that we profess, trust the power of the ashen cross that accompanies those words. He held Jess out to me.

 I couldn’t delay any longer. I didn’t know what else to do. I recited the words: “Jessica, remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” and I sealed her with the cross of Jesus her savior.

 Not an Ash Wednesday has passed when I haven’t thought about that moment and about the remarkable joy, peace, and freedom that are available only on the other side of those ashes.

In Christ,

Pastor Andy