On the Edge of Ashes

By Chris Braudaway-Bauman

You are dust, and to dust you shall return. Genesis 3:19

We are made of stardust, the scientists say – the carbon in our muscles, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood. Every oxygen atom in our lungs was created inside a star before Earth was formed. When ancient stars burned out and exploded, the elements were scattered across interstellar space. When this enriched detritus coalesced in clouds, new stars were born, including our Sun. As heavier elements condensed, planets and moons came into being, including our own Earth. Life emerged from the ashes of eight-billion-year-old deaths.

Tomorrow, as we gather for worship on the edge of the Lent, we will mix ashes with oil. We will light candles and say a prayer of confession. We will tell the truth about our lives. As charred crosses get traced on our foreheads, we will recite the ancient words: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

On Ash Wednesday, we remember death, especially our own mortality. We acknowledge our limits. We proclaim the truth that one day each one of us will return to the dust from which we were formed. The severity of that acknowledgement, the dying and deaths we see all around us these days, lay us bare. We watch while what we have built is being disregarded and dismissed. We see destructive forces at work. We taste the ashes in our mouths.

And yet, these ashes also serve as a testimony to what survives. What we know and love may be reduced to rubble for a time, but it will not disappear. The elements that made us – they abide. The love that formed us cannot be destroyed.

We will remember that our God, who knows what to do with dust, may yet find a way for something new to coalesce from our detritus. The season of Lent invites us to ask where this love will lead us and what it will create in and through us.

The story of our faith reminds us that by God’s ingenuity even in places where there is dying and death, there is also the potential for new life to come into being. As we move from Ash Wednesday through Lent to Holy Week and Easter, may we open ourselves to pay attention for whatever new thing God may bring out of the old.

Prayer: Holy Creator, may we live what the ashes signify – your tender love for us from the very beginning and your everlasting embrace of our mortal flesh. In life, in death, in the life beyond death, we give thanks that we belong to you. Amen.