In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
When the woman [God made as a partner] saw that the tree [of the knowledge of good and evil] was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
And to the man [God] said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 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.”
1 Corinthians 15:12-22
2Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ — whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. 21For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.
John 11:17-27
17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him." 23Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." 24Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." 25Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" 27She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
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This upcoming Sunday marks week fifty.
Week fifty of our experience of pandemic.
Week fifty of marking time in masks, social distancing, and Zoom meetings.
We began our pandemic time during Lent last year, and as we begin Lent again this year, in many ways it feels like it’s been Lent the whole of these fifty weeks.
Because Lent is a season of wilderness, and a season of recognizing our vulnerability. It’s a season of waiting for resurrection.
We’ve been waiting fifty weeks so far to emerge on the other side of this wilderness.
We’ve faced our vulnerability every single day.
Every day, we track case counts. Every day, we make conscious decisions about the safest time to go grocery shopping. Every day, we loop a mask over our ears before heading into a coffee shop on our way to work…or maybe we’re working from home. Every day, we question whether our sore throat is just allergies or something more. Every day, we wonder when it is that we will go back to normal. Because every day, we are keenly aware that life is not normal.
Every day, pandemic has forced us to look our mortality square in the eye. Not because we want to. Simply because it is our reality these days.
Well.
If we’re being truthful…Mortality isn’t just our reality these days.
It is our reality every day of our human existence.
But for most of us, mortality is something that, up until a year ago, we had the luxury of ignoring, of holding at arms’ length. We could think about it when convenient, compartmentalize it, sometimes even forget about it.
Not all of us, of course. Plenty of us have lived with chronic or terminal illness, or carry the daily grief of burying a spouse or sibling or child. There are certainly those among us who live with ongoing heavy reminders of mortality.
But for many of us, we’ve been able to look away from death, to lock it away and only deal with it occasionally, as necessary.
And so for many of us, Ash Wednesday is usually a day where we check in with our mortality. A special day that we set aside to remind us of what we try so hard to forget: that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
But this year is different.
This year, we don’t need an extra worship service to remind us of how fragile life is.
We’re well aware of it.
We know that we are dust.
What we need to remember today is that we not just dust.
Yes, we are mortal, fragile, we will wither and fade like flowers of the field.
But that isn’t the whole story.
God dug into the dirt, grasped handfuls of dust, and from the earth, created us. God fashioned us and molded us, shaped us in the image of the divine. Out of the dust, God created something beautiful.
And then.
Then, God breathed. God filled our fragile lives with the breath of the Spirit. God gave us the gift of breath; the gift of life.
We are dust and we are breath.
We are death and we are life.
Jesus meets Martha in her deepest grief after her brother’s death. She sees the dust. Jesus sees it, too. He will, himself, weep with grief over this death. He doesn’t deny the dust. But neither does he forget the breath.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” he says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”
There is death, he says. And there is life.
We are both.
On this unusual Ash Wednesday, we will mark ourselves with the cross, not merely to remember our mortality, but also to remember our resurrection.
Because we are marked and we are claimed and we are not only mortal bodies, either in this life or beyond it.
We are filled with the breath of God and promised the breath of new life.
We are animated and enlivened, each day, by the wind of the Spirit.
We open our eyes each morning to new sunrises and new opportunities to carry ourselves through the world with love and with hope.
We take deep breaths and inhale the gift of life, a gift made more precious by its fragility.
Tomorrow, everything will still be dust. You will rifle through a stack of masks on the counter to find a clean one. You will wash your cracked hands yet again after returning home from running errands. You will curse every Zoom meeting remaining on your calendar.
My hope for you and my prayer is that, even while everything is still dust around us, that you can also remember that you have the breath of the divine within you. That this world is not just death, but that it is also life and wind and beauty. That everything might be temporary, but God is eternal.
Death has come into the world, but so also has life.
Remember that you are dust.
Remember that you are breath.
Remember that God is your creator,
your sustainer,
and your everlasting life.
Amen.