Homily at Mass, Ash Wednesday, 9 March 2011

In a short moment, we will have the imposition of ashes, which is accompanied by the words:

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

These words are not accidental, and were not made up recently by the people who write services.  They consist of two quotations from scripture. The first is from Genesis 3:19. After the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, God says to Adam:

By the sweat of your face

   you shall eat bread

until you return to the ground,

   for out of it you were taken;

you are dust,

   and to dust you shall return.

The second, slightly paraphrased, quotation is from Mark 1:14-15:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

In the simple words and action of the imposition of ash are contained the tragedy and the hope of the whole human story.

First, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. That is of course a reminder of death, a memento mori, that we should always live with eternity in mind, knowing that this life is transient. But those words also speak to us of our creation. God has created us out of the dust of the earth, which he called into being out of nothing. We are created in love, created with a purpose. God has created us in his image, the image of the Holy Trinity, to live life in all its fullness, in his creation which he made entirely good.

But sin has marred that creation, has damaged God’s image in us. Human disobedience and sin prevents us from living as God wants us to. We turn away from communion with God and one another, preferring our selfish interests, our rivalrous desires, the violent exaltation of the ego. Death has become for us not an aspect of the goodness of creation but a tyranny of fear and subjugation, the murderous mechanism that drives the whole human race into a cycle of cynicism and despair.

But God would not allow that his creation should fail.  When, in his providence, the fullness of time had come, he sent his Son into the world to put right what had gone wrong. This was foreshadowed in the Old Testament Rite of Atonement, when the priest emerged from the Holy of Holies to enact God entering his creation to bring healing and restoration.

And now Jesus has come, as our true High Priest, to make atonement for us once and for all. God in Jesus has reconciled the world to himself. And we receive that restoration which he has worked for us by repenting and believing in the good news, by turning away from our sins and being faithful to the Gospel.

And yet there is more. Jesus joins up the whole broken human story and brings out of the ruin of the fall something greater than what was lost. For God has now united himself with our human nature. The Body of Jesus, like our bodies, was made from the dust of the earth, and was returned to the earth on the evening of Good Friday. And yet, because of the incarnation, that human Body is also the Body of God. Here at the beginning of Lent we look forward to those tremendous mysteries of Holy Week and Easter. Jesus’ new commandment of love. The institution of the Eucharist, the Body of Christ given for us in a wholly new way. And the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ.

For that Body, formed from the dust of the earth, was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, and lives now in the Church and in the Eucharist. The dust of the earth, our human nature, united with God, has been taken into the life of God for all eternity. And that is our destiny, too, united with Christ. That is the glorious completion of the entire human story signified in these short words:

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.