As the psalmist reminds us, life is fleeting: “Our days are like the grass; we flourish
like a flower of the field; when the wind goes over it, it is gone, and its
place shall know it no more.”[2] We are mortal, and we do well to remember
that this is so. God remembers that we
are dust, but we too easily forget. We
try to make ourselves invulnerable, and so close ourselves off from this
precious life and the love that gives it enduring meaning. In trying to forget that we die, we forget to
truly live as well.
“But” and this is a big “but,” “the merciful goodness of
the Lord endures for ever on those who fear him, and his righteousness on
children’s children; on those who keep his covenant and remember his
commandments and do them.”[3] We are mortal, but death is not a threat
because we participate in God’s goodness forever – however hard that may be for
us to grasp or imagine. We can begin to
enjoy that goodness by observing the covenant, attending to our relationship
with God, here and now. We don’t have
to wait until we die.
Returning to the dust is not a threat. It is a promise. As Carl Sagan once observed, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the
calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were
made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” The
dust to which we return, signified by the ashes we receive today, is a reminder
of our deep connection to everything that is.
The dust to which we return, in which we are made, is stardust. We
think of “returning to the dust” as the threat of death. But maybe it is the promise of reunion, of
homecoming, of realizing that we are at home in the universe. God’s goodness rests upon us forever and we
can live in the joy of that realization today.
But
we forget that we are stardust. God’s
doesn’t, but we do. We experience
ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, sometimes even
estranged. It is this sense of estrangement that the
Bible speaks of as sin. It is an
ontological condition, not a moral failing. Sin is the condition of being separate from
the world – “more than,” or “less than,” maybe, but not “part of.” It is when we lose our sense of participation
in the whole of life as an integral part of creation that we are in bondage to
sin. This is the necessary precondition
for “sins” – the moral failings that arise when we see ourselves as unrelated
to the rest of the world.
The
many “sins” that we will confess tonight are really expressions of the
condition of sin, the result of our forgetting that we are stardust. We are only capable of exploiting people
whom we see as fundamentally separate from us.
We can only be indifferent to injustice and cruelty when its victims are
“those people,” not included in our sense of “we.” It is only when we become alienated from the
fundamental elements of life that sustain our existence that we become capable
of wasting and polluting the planet.
When
we forget that we are dust, we treat others like “dirt.”
Lent
is an invitation to remember that we are stardust, to renew our sense of deep
connection with the whole of reality; to rediscover the goodness of God and our
participation in that goodness. It is an
invitation to become whole again.
I
don’t know how we came to frame this invitation as being about
renunciation. “What are you giving up
for Lent?” That is the question we tend
to ask. Anthony De Mello tells a story
that helps to reframe this question:
There
was once an ascetic who lived a celibate life and made it his life's mission to
fight against sex in himself and others. In due course, he died. And his
disciple, who could not stand the shock, died a little after him. When the
disciple reached the other world he couldn't believe what he saw: there was his
beloved Master with the most extraordinarily beautiful woman seated on his lap!
His
sense of shock faded when it occurred to him that his Master was being rewarded
for his sexual abstinence on earth. He went up to him and said, "Beloved
Master, now I know that God is just, for you are being rewarded in heaven for
your austerities on earth."
The
Master seemed annoyed. "Idiot!" he said, "This isn't heaven and
I'm not being rewarded - she's being punished."
De Mello offers the
following commentary on this story: “When
the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten; when the belt fits, the waist is
forgotten; when all things are in harmony, the ego is forgotten. Of what use,
then, are your austerities?”[4]
Renunciation
only binds us more tightly to what we are trying to avoid. Cultivate insight,
understanding, detachment, and compassion instead, and whatever needs to be let
go will drop away of its own dead weight. You will not need to "give it
up." You will not even notice "it" anymore.
The
question is not “What are you giving up for Lent?” but rather “What helps you
to remember that you are dust?” This is
the point of our covenant with God, the end for which keeping the commandments
is simply a means: living in harmony with the rest of the world, secure in our
identity as part of the whole. Lent is
not about giving things up, but about looking deeply at the fears and desires
that shape our life, becoming willing to let go those things that obstruct the
energy of love. It isn’t about
renunciation or repression, but about integration.
The
Master in De Mello’s parable tried to repress his sexual energy rather than
integrating it into the whole of his life.
It became split off, and ultimately came to dominate his perception of
reality, such that death was a threat and eternity a punishment. He forgot that he is dust, and that sexuality
was just another dimension of life that needs to be given its proper place. It became something that separated him from
others, rather than connecting him to others and to the generative energy of
the cosmos.
It
seems to me that this gets to the heart of Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel
lesson.[5] We can use spiritual practices to separate us
from others, to divide us into good and bad, and to cut us off from the energy
of divine love: that is practicing our
piety to be seen by others. Our reward
is a big ego, a reputation for holiness that sets us apart. Yet, these same practices of prayer, fasting,
and generosity can be a means of remembering that we are dust, fostering that
connection which is true holiness – realizing our identity as part of the whole
of God’s creation. Our reward then is heavenly
treasure: participation in the goodness of God that lasts forever, and that can
be experienced today, here and now.
What
helps you to remember that you are stardust?
What deepens your connection to God and to other people and to the
creation that sustains our common life?
Lent is a time to engage these questions anew. Not because returning to dust is a threat, but
because it holds the promise of homecoming and wholeness: the treasure that is our heart’s deepest
desire.
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