“I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment’s gone. All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity. Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.” [Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, 1978]
As a Christian I don’t share the hollow despair of “Dust in the Wind,” yet I am moved by its profound statement of what life without Christ is like. “Dust in the Wind” doesn’t proclaim the Christian gospel, but it does sum up the bad news that prepares us to hear the good news of what God has done in Christ. Apart from Jesus, “all we are is dust in the wind.”
On Ash Wednesday we remember that we are dust [Psalm 103:14]. Of course we also remember that we are far more than merely dust. But Ash Wednesday gives us a chance to focus on our “dustiness,” if you will. It’s a day to remember the bad news of who we are apart from Christ so that we can appeciate the great news of Good Friday and Easter.
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a forty-day season of preparation for Holy Week and Easter. For centuries Christians have had ashes placed on their foreheads in the shape of a cross. The ashes remind us of our mortality and the Cross of salvation.
Some church members complain that Ash Wednesday service is “a real downer.” To be sure it is not joyous in the way most worship services are. Yet Ash Wednesday is our recognition that apart from God we are indeed “dust in the wind.” Yet into this dust God breathed, not only the breath of earthly life, but also the breath of his Spirit. Thus Ash Wednesday’s vivid reminder of our mortality leads us, not to despair, but to hope. It points not to defeat, but to the coming victory of Easter. Ash Wednesday is the beginning, not the end.
The ashes that are used are prepared by burning the palm leaves kept from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebrations and mixing them with olive oil as a fixative. As the first day of Lent, it comes the day after Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, the last day of the Carnival season. The word “Carnival” is in fact derived from Latin carne vale: “farewell, meat”.
Sermon title: Are we just going through the motions?
Leave a Reply