Remember You Are Dust
Posted by stpauls on March 29, 2009 under Sermons | 
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[Alex Wilson delivered this sermon at St. Paul's on March 29, 2009.]
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Dust, my body is full of dust; one day my bones will be no more, my flesh will be no more, the features that make me who I am will someday be reduced to dust. What a hard contradiction to live with. Biblically I know we came from the same dust God made Adam and Eve, but physically I came from my parents, neither of whom are dusty in their composition. Yet within this very dust of eternity that defines who we are, we are all knit together as a human family, a family that often tries everything it can to help us avoid our eventual end. With the introspective nature of Lent, we find ourselves working even harder to live into the contradictions that are life, the sense of pride, the sense of betrayal, the lying, the whatever it is that weighs down our hearts and forces us to feel distant from God. We take up something, we give up something, we deny who we are, we celebrate what we become, in Lent we walk hand in hand with the living contradictions that are not only our lives but our world, trying to find meaning and hope in the midst of chaos and desolation. Every moment we walk this earth, we live into the most onerous contradiction we know- our death. Every moment, every second we are dying. With every breath that fills our lungs, and every thought that leaves our minds we are dying. Yet even as we watch those we love and care about pass into the loving arms of God, we get up every morning and move about our days like we will live a million years. We take health food supplements, cultivate plants and drugs, diets and products to help prolong our lives, and yet the inevitable comes- we all pass into the eternal light that is the Father’s house. At times, it is after a long and love-filled life; for some it comes in the blink of an eye, but for all those left, it makes no sense. It contradicts what society tells us about life: if we try hard enough we can cheat death.
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
The world around us reminds us daily of our ultimate reality. The childish, selfish and ultimately useless gangland wars happening on our streets – killing someone to save you temporarily from being the next victim. Crazed despots who eat lavish birthday cakes and drink a birthday toasts to their own inabilities cloaked as triumphs, while the people of the country suffer under the plight of soaring hyperinflation and the lack of the basic human rights: water, bread, shelter. Countries who elect the first black man as president, yet take away the right of another to marry who God predestined them to. Financial institutions so warped with greed that millions of people all over the world are losing their homes and savings every day. Our own city spending billions of dollars to host an international sporting event, rather than allow our brothers and sisters who call our streets and alleys home the basic dignity of affordable shelter and access to the help they need and desire. Our world lives into the contradictions that we create for ourselves. In our own ways, we try and justify how we related to this earthly island we call home. And that is not a bad thing. Contradiction marks our lives and can be a good thing to allow us to see the other with an objective point of view. The point is we need to be open to allow the other point to become clear, and far too often, we as individuals and as a society are unable to see just how clouded we have become.
Christ gives us clear direction this morning on how to avoid that clouded unknown. At the moment when he knew his death was coming, he lives into it- but admits his apprehension. He knows what is happening must happen, and he gives it over to the Father. We witness him say to his father- ok listen dad, I will do this I will not run away, I would rather be doing a million other things right now but I trust you- I know you love me and I trust you.
I know you love me and I trust you.
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return
I often wonder what keeps me from saying what Jesus said to his father. None of our lives are much different from his- we try with all our might to live into who we are created to be, to be happy and to love as God has loved us. But still I look for the moments that Lent affords me to enact the great “reset,” whereby the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday act as a great start over. Yet, I can’t help think that not every part of ourselves dies in the great “reset.” I am too proud to let it all go, we often say; it’s a totally human reaction. We allow ourselves to set up walls of expectations, needs, wants, demands, and social stigmas that govern our lives. We allow ourselves to be so driven at times by the pressures of the outside world that we allow our egos to take over and dictate how we will live in relation to others. We allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the contradictions that our ego’s cloak as life pressures. It’s what’s expected of us; it’s how we are taught to interact with the world. And it hurts to let that go.
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Our egos are powerful machines that can captivate the imagination and mind of even the most in-touch person – it’s natural. Yet within each of our journeys, we are called to be much more than what we are willing to settle for. It is within our daily practice of death and rebirth that we must learn to allow our egos to die, our personal walls to collapse and the redemptive seeds of Christ’s death and resurrection to enter into our souls and germinate into the new life promised and fulfilled at the intersection of two pieces of wood. To truly allow ourselves to be given over to the liberating death of the self that protects us from the harms and trials of this world, we have to trust in the power of someone other than ourselves, to rest in the breach between known and unknown, to dance with passion in the light at the edge of our own dark nights.
How do we rest in such a breach? How do we ethically and realistically live into the demands of today’s Gospel in a way that nurtures and sustains us?
I do not have the definitive answers; however, I find a great landscape of hope within our monastic traditions. Monastic communities have often got the short shake in life, being hugely underestimated in their usefulness and practicality. Monastic life hurts, is hard and can be seen as a cloistered world of self-indulgence and perpetually selfish introspection. However, when we look more closely into these communities, we see the great gifts of the sprit illumined and multiplying, casting the seeds of the gospel to the ends of the earth. Within the microcosm of monastic life, we are given a tender womb in which to gestate our faith, our lives and our deaths.
In Chapter 48 of the rule of St John the evangelist, we see how monastics take death head on. In their quest for a holy death, they live what they say: that is “the gospel proclaims that Christ has transformed death by his cross and resurrection and that through our baptism we have already passed through death with him and have been incorporated into his risen body. But we grasp this mystery only by faith, accepting the inner struggle between doubt and confidence in Christ’s promise of eternal life…”
We are asked this morning to live life within the scope of our own deaths, and to live that journey unashamed.
“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Markus [Dünzkofer] made a very clear observation for me early on in Lent at a Wednesday night Eucharist. He alluded to the fact that we often spend our whole lives running towards Easter when really we are not yet ready for that Easter morning- but that doesn’t mean it remains out of reach. The greatest questions for me are “Where is our Good Friday?” “Where is the moment of ultimate death to ourselves so that we can authentically scream ‘Alleluia’ with Christ from the Tomb at Easter?”
I believe we are living in it right now.
Listen.
Do you hear it?
Listen.
I would like us to try something a little different this morning. Where you are sitting, I invite you, as you are able to make yourself comfortable. Place your feet firmly on the ground, and sit as straight as is comfortable. Quieten your minds, concentrate on your breathing, keep your senses on your body.
Draw your attention to the soles of your feet, notice how they feel in your shoes against the hard floor.
Notice how your ankle feels as you pass by it up your calf to your hips.
Notice how the waist of your clothing feels against the small of your back;
how the pew supports your back, gives it form;
how your shoulders drop down with the weight of your arms.
Notice all the thoughts that are in your mind. Slowly name them silently as they come to the forefront… and watch them disappear from sight. Your mind becomes empty and receptive.
Notice how you can feel the slightest movement of air over your face.
Focus on your chest, feel the life coming into you with every breath, and leaving with every breath. Live into and listen to your breath.
Listen.
Listen to the words, emotions, and feelings being spoken at the cradle of God – your soul. Find them, name them. Rest in them.
Listen.
What do you feel?
What do you see?
What does it say to you?
Dwell there for a moment in the safety of God’s embrace and listen.
Slowly with your eyes closed, I invite you, as you are ready to come back to St Paul’s.
Slowly notice the space around you:
the hard wood of the bench;
the sense of the person next to you in the pew.
As you are ready, focusing on your breath – open your eyes.
Did you listen? What did you hear? I bet you heard God. I bet you heard God in the clearest possible way. But don’t be afraid, or too hard on yourself if you didn’t hear anything, or didn’t think it could possibly be God speaking. God is there, God is still and silently waiting for us in the depths of our souls and it can take some time before we allow ourselves to hear her. What we just heard or saw or experienced is what I call the pregnant silence, the ultimate contradiction of Lent. Lent can often be when we feel the most alone, the most afraid, the most vulnerable; but it is the moment that leads us to our ultimate joy. Within this pregnant silence that is a mystery so great that it stirs within us an audible silence and wonder, God is with us, but we make ourselves unable to hear her. We know something is going on, but we are unsure what. It is within these moments that we must allow ourselves to die to the outside world as we just did, so that we can hear the new life being born within the silence of our hearts. This is the good news we hear this morning. God is never far from us, even in the depths of our own humanity. She is with us, in us, next to us, holding us, healing us, guiding us. All we have to do is stop, listen and allow the wonders that are the graces of God working in our lives a space to impregnate our minds, and hearts and souls, preparing the way for our own Good Fridays. As we approach the edge of another Easter, we are invited to kneel in the pregnant silence and allow the voice of God to speak and triumph over the desolation of our egos and social fabric. Living through the contradiction of being known as people of Ashes, we are given the road map to the glory our own Easter resurrections- but we’re not quite ready yet. It is through that glory that we must make our conversion from this world to the world of God so that we can finally experience the freedom we find in our ultimate contradiction: our own deaths to ourselves, and rebirth to God.