Ash Wednesday Sermon ‘Baptized Dust’

Delivered to Pittsburgh Theological Serminary, March 3, 2000

by Teresa Lockhart Stricklen

Hard words: Remember you are but dust and to dust you shall return. As pastors it's hard to impose ashes on parishioners' foreheads, hard to say to people you love: remember you are but dust. After all, we know the people on whose foreheads we trace the cross are so much more than ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We remember marking some of the same people with the baptismal seal of the cross, so it’s hard to say the words, “Remember you are dust.” After awhile, it's as though you begin to see all the precious gold lives of parishioners melt into a snaking line of corpses that just keep coming toward you. You can envision the bodies of these people you love being lowered into the ground, a handful of dirt tossed on their coffin, with the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” So it’s hard to impose ashes with the harsh, hard words.

But let's step back a moment. Let's explore the thought that human beings are but dust. Mere mortals are but dust.

Visit the Egyptian room at the British museum where ancient sarcophagi line the walls, standing like colorful saints in golden glory all around the room. And where will the crowd of people be? In a corner of the room, huddled around a small, square plexiglass case where you can see how ordinary Egyptians were buried. There in a 3’ x 3’ box you see the burial of an Egyptian slave just thrown into the ground. And there he is in fetal position, skeletal gape of mouth, bones disintegrating into dust. It’s a sobering sight that makes everyone pause for long periods of silence before the awful truth: We can dress death up in colorful coverings of gold, but in the end we are a fleshy bag of bones that will disintegrate into dust.

A med student named Monsuk sits on a bar stool listening to the old song "Dust in the Wind" playing on the juke box. Monsuk's staring into his beer with a fellow student, Richard who's on the same hospital rotation. Monsuk and Richard had lost their first patient that day — a young girl with meningitis no one caught in time. So now Monsuk and Richard sit at the bar, consoling one another with silent drink, listening to a jukebox croon, “All we are is dust in the wind.” Finally, Monsuk blurts out, "Tell me Richard, is it true what the song says?" Is all we are just dust in the wind?”

Is it true? Yes. All us humans will end up being so much dust mingling in the earth, a handful of dust blowing in the wind. Just … dust.

But wait! That's not all of the story, is it? We may be dust, but we are baptized dust. We have been baptized, and that has made all the difference.

We are the people of the God whose life cannot be contained by death. The world may try to mark us for death like so many corpses sent to mass graves in Rwanda, Bosnia, Central America, but we know that though the forces of death intend evil toward life, God has anointed this (show forehead with its ashen cross on it) cross of death so that now it's a mark of life through which we have been born anew into God's Kingdom. The same cross of ashes to ashes is the same cross that seals our baptismal promises in the wind of God’s Spirit.

Through the torturous death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, the Kingdom of God's water broke so that even now we know God is in labor to birth the new creation where justice rolls down like mighty waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream in the desert.

The world may mark us for death, but we have been baptized by Christ’s Kingdom waters of new life. We are a people of new life, eternal life, a life death cannot stop. We have been baptized.

So in hope, we immerse ourselves in the Lenten disciplines of humbly groveling in the dust of our sin without shame, without fear. Instead, in baptismal hope, we offer up the dusty remains of our days to God's new life being born among us in ways of love and justice. So this Lenten season we will bathe ourselves in the lifegiving word of life, remembering our baptism when the world tries to kill our hope.

For we know that even though we may be dust, that's not all we are. We know that offered to the baptismal waters of God's new Kingdom life being born among us, the ashes from the worst human tragedies imaginable can become fertilizer for the desert that will blossom when baptized with God's Kingdom rain/reign.

We may be dust, but we're baptized dust, and that has made all the difference.

So you may ask, “Is it true? Are we but dust in the wind?” Yes and no. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, yes, but sprinkled with the waters of baptism, hardly. In the waters of Christ’s baptism, our lives become wet clay spinning in the wind of the Spirit singing with joy as God works to shape the new creation. So as we turn now to face the stark horrors of the cross during this Lenten season, let us remember our baptism. In Christ Jesus, death does not have the last word. Songs of Easter praise do.