Monday, February 8, 2016
VIDEO
By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to
the ground from which you were made. For
you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19(NLT)
Two days from now is Ash Wednesday. All over the land people will flock to
churches to have ministers take dirt mixed with oil from their Pyxis box and smear
it on their foreheads. Some ministers will
even take up a place on the street to impose ashes.
It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that we were made from the
stuff, and someday we’re going back to it.
Remember that you are
dust…
Ashes were an ancient symbol of our
humanity. In Genesis, we read that God
formed human beings out of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew word translated dust, is occasionally translated ashes elsewhere.
When Abraham felt the need to
acknowledge the difference between him, a human being, and the infinite God, he
referred to himself as dust and ashes. “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the
Lord,” he said, “I who am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27).
…and
to dust you shall return
Our humanity also calls to mind our mortality.
After expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the first human beings are told
by God, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19 NRSV).
We know the day is coming for each of us
when we will return to dust.
We wear black as a sign of mourning. Ancient people wore ashes. For example, a priest named Modecai puts on
sackcloth and ashes to grieve the many deaths he sees coming from an order King
Ahasuerus gives to kill all Jewish people (Esther 4:1-3). The prophet Jeremiah later calls the people of
God to “roll in ashes” as a way of mourning the coming devastation from an
opposing army (Jeremiah 6:26).
Receiving the imposition of ashes is a powerful way to confront our
humanity and mortality. They remind us
that we are not God, but God’s good creation. In them we recognize that our bodies will not
last forever, and come face-to-face with the reality of our eventual death.
Repent…
Ashes also signify our sorrow for the mistakes we have made. People in ancient times wore sackcloth and
ashes as a way of expressing their repentance of their sins.
When Jonah reluctantly preached to the people of Nineveh after the giant
fish spit him up on the beach, the King and his people put on sackcloth and sat
in ashes. God saw this act of repentance
and spared the people (Jonah 3:1-10).
In the New Testament Jesus mentions this practice. Warning the cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida
Jesus said, “if the miracles done among you had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would have changed their hearts and lives and put on funeral clothes and
ashes a long time ago.” (Matthew 11:21 CEB).
When
we participate in the service of ashes, we confront our sin. We recognize our inability to live up to all
God has created us to be, and our need to be forgiven. No matter how often we go to church, how far
we have come in our spiritual journeys, how accomplished we may feel, each of
us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).[2]
For You Today
The container holding ashes is called a Pyxis. Pyxis is a small and faint constellation in
the southern sky. Abbreviated from Pyxis
Nautica, its name is Latin for a mariner's compass. In Greek the word literally means “box”.[3]
The ashes are our life’s compass-points contained in a box,
reminding us of that from which we’ve come and that to which we are going.
[1] Title images: By Sidney Hall - United States Library
of Congress's Prints and Photographs, via Wikimedia
Commons and By U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class
Brian May [Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons
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