Dust

 

I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  Matthew 11:29

 

On this day, ashes are placed on your forehead.  Words are spoken over you, “From dust you are, to dust you shall return.”  As a death-denying culture, we don’t want to think about our death and demise.  We don’t want to consider the fact of our frail, fragile, finite lives will one day cease.  We will live forever with cold plunges and Keto diets and whatever else the market sells us to promise us our best life now. 

 

The church doesn’t do that.  “From dust you are, to dust you shall return.”  You, me, and we were crafted from the soil and stardust of creation.  We are earthlings, dust-beings, connecting the soil to our souls to the soil beneath our feet.  Up from the ground God raises a people again and again ~ connecting us in creative ways (see yesterday’s meditation about the yoke).  And one day, we return to the good earth that has nourished us so that we might nourish others.  We return to that which has supported us, so that we might support those who trudge this earth after. 

 

When Jesus says he is humble, the word is humility or humus or earth.  When theologian Steve Cuss invites us to be “human-size,” it reminds me that I don’t have to have it all figured out.  I won’t ever have it all figured out.  I don’t need an opinion on everything that is neatly arranged and artistically presented.  I, like the earth, am in process/evolving/exploring.  The earth has billions of organisms living in a teaspoon of soil.   The earth is constantly shifting and stirring, changing right before our eyes.

 

The word, gentle reminds me that I can either hurt and harm or help and heal.  Jesus’ yoke doesn’t demand and decree, like Caesar, but invites us to be infused with another realm.  God’s realm, that we pray for every Sunday and sing about in the Lord’s Prayer during Lent, calls us to reorient our hearts and lives to the One who is gentle and humble.  If this is the center and core of Jesus’ teaching, if this is the yoke we are called to take up with Christ helping and holding us, how might that shape you in the coming days?  May that question bless you as we move deeper into these forty days letting Christ be at the heart of all we seek to be, do, and live in these days.  Amen.