Ash Wednesday 2012
Ash Wednesday is good news – in some ways it is the service
in the Church’s year which I think is the most hopeful of all. I know it might
not seem like it on the surface. It’s
not a cheerful occasion, to be sure. We are reminded in no uncertain terms in
our readings and in our prayers of the darkest realities of human life – our
vulnerability and fallibility, the sheer scale and complexity of the mess we
can get ourselves, each other and our world into, and how hard it is to get
ourselves out of those messes on our own. We are reminded of our own mortality too. “Dust
you are and to dust you shall return” are the traditional words that accompany
the imposition of ashes.
So why is it good news?
It is good news because when we accept those truths we
discover that there are a whole lot of other truths which come with them.
When I accept the truth that I have done wrong, I can also
discover the truth of God’s reaction to my sin – not condemnation and abandonment, but love
and forgiveness and healing. There’s no way to know that while I am still
pretending to be perfect and hoping no one will spot what I am hiding.
When I accept the truth that I don’t know it all and can’t do
it all, I can discover the truth that, actually, I never needed to. I don’t
need to be superhuman. I don’t need to be God. Someone else has that covered.
And when I accept the truth that I am dust, and will come in
the end to dust, I can discover that I am part of the earth, part of creation.
That is good news, because, when we look at the Bible we discover that this
creation of his is God’s delight. He declared it to be good, he loved it so
much that he sent his son to be part of it, alongside us in our vulnerability
and frailty, to suffer and to die with
us. I may be dust, but I am
beloved dust, dust that God breathed his own life into.
This week we have all been reminded in the starkest way of
the fragility of life as we have heard of Malcolm Fox’s sudden and unexpected
death. When such a thing happens it tends to make us all feel a bit more
insecure than usual, if we are honest. We like to feel powerful and in control
– immortal and above the vagaries of disease and injury - but the truth is that
we aren’t. Ash Wednesday reminds us, though, that in our powerlessness, in our
weakness, even in death, we are held by the hands of God in absolute and
ultimate safety. Yes, we are dust, with all its limitations, but we are beloved
dust and that is truly liberating.
Amen
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