Last night Christians around the world commemorated the beginning of the season of Lent. For most of us that meant the receiving of ashes upon our foreheads in a rough shape of a cross. It’s quite a humbling experience both to receive and give the ashes.
For some the ashes are a reminder of our mortality. Consider the words we hear when we receive the ashes: “Remember that ‘you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’” These words recite God’s proclamation to Adam the origins of make up; literally dust because the term adam in the Hebrew refers to the earth, the ground from which God made humankind (Gen 3:19). Thus, the emphasis isn’t invalid. However, I think just to take these words in this context might leave us just a bit preoccupied with our dread of death… The words did for me for years. I mean if we really wanted to emphasize that point anymore, the church ought to add the opening chapter of Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” (Ecc 1)
I am so bold though to offer a new understanding. What if the reminder of our humanity, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” is to emphasize our delicate place within creation? What if we thought of these words as an encouragement to consider that the unique place we have in creation stems from our balanced place within creation. We are both made from the earth and possess the breath of the divine within us! (Genesis 2:7, both. In fact the half-verse marker in the Hebrew doesn’t occur until the part where it emphasizes that “man became a living being”!)
What if we heard the words from Ash Wednesday as an invitation to continue our participation with the work that God is doing in the world? The work of ordering (Gen 1-2); the work of displaying a way of grace and life instead of sacrifice (Gen 22; Exo 20-23); and the work of sharing the message of a God so willing to have a relationship with creation that God would die in the most inhumane ways so that we might be connected to our creator even beyond the grave because through him sin and death were really the ones who died (see the NT).
How much more does that other interpretation become a means of seeing just how important we are in what God is doing in the world. Each of us is so unique in creation that we each have only so much time to do the work God invites us into! So, this Lenten season, maybe consider those ashes as highlighting just as important our role within creation is. We like the dust upon our forehead can quickly fade away. But our reminder of whose we are and the work to be done doesn’t have to pass so quickly!
