Happy Ash Wednesday...

A bit of an oxymoron...wishing people happy Ash Wednesday.  After all, a liturgical holiday where you are reminded "that you are dust and to dust you will return..." doesn't exactly inspire one to joyful dancing in the streets.  Anyway, that part was yesterday on Fat Tuesday.  We humans can always get one last celebration in before we have to return to the dust.  (And I'd put money on the fact that way more people participated in the final celebration than will participate in the penitential season.)

But I digress...a habit picked up again as I am required to study for seminary classes...I can always manage to digress...

Being in a position to teach people about Ash Wednesday also puts you in a position to try and truly understand it yourself.  I know the Wikipedia definition, the one we spout if someone says, "Ash Wednesday service? What's that all about?"  We answer...well Ash Wednesday is the first day of the Lenten season which is a time that we focus on repentance of our sins.  Hmmm...what if I am not really a bad person?  After all, I came to the Ash Wednesday service and that's got to count for something.  I do my best.  And when I fall short, I know that I am , after all, human, and that God loves me, so its not a huge big deal, right?  How does living in God's grace and meditating on your sin go together in some kind of way that makes sense?

(Thank you, Karl Barth, for the insight!--and no, I never thought I'd say those words) Barth suggests that the fundamental human sin is pride and that our deepest wish and strongest motivating factor is the desire to be judge over all (which, of course, only God can do).  Even those who adamantly claim there is no God have simply placed themselves or some other god (science, money, power) in God's position.  Meditating on this idea as Ash Wednesday arrives has given me a new take on "from dust...to dust..."

God created us from the earth we inhabit.  Without this ball of dirt, we would not exist.  Don't know exactly the details of the transaction, but I know that we are part and parcel of the literal dirt that surrounds us.  It feeds us, it shelters us, it threatens us, and it absorbs us back into the cycle when our time is up.

We are not God...cannot be God...no matter how hard we try.

God created earth...God has always been...will always be...doesn't need earth to survive...will never be absorbed into God's creation. 

We are not God...cannot be God...no matter how hard we try.

Even the questions we tend to ask about Lent are an attempt to be God.  Thinking we're not such bad people...excusing our behavior on the basis of our humanity...comparing ourselves to others to decide we are better, equal, or worse than they...deciding what is "right for us" and claiming that if we are content, we will make the world a better place...all that and more is our attempt to be the judge of the world...and as such, replace "God" with "us"...

This year, "remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return" has new meaning for me.  I am at church this evening because God has called me there, not because I am better or worse or hired.  I am absorbing the image of my beginning...created by God from the carbon elements that support life on this planet...and my end as returning to the dust there before I was.

I am not God...cannot be God...no matter how hard I try.

The freedom of living in repentance today and every day is the reminder that I do not have to be the judge.  I have been judged and forgiven.  I don't have to decide how good or bad I am.  I don't have to decide how good or bad others are.  (I still will decide/judge myself and other on a daily basis...human condition...original sin thing...) but the freedom that comes with letting God be God is why I am having a very happy Ash Wednesday.  I am not the judge.  I am the human judged by God, forgiven by God, and freed from my need to be God.  I am dust and to dust I will return.  God is God, eternal, loving, and just.  Happy, Happy, Ash Wednesday!