Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Genesis 3:17-19
During the mid-sixties, when I was just starting out, the “in group” (musically speaking) was a folk duo out of Nashville who traveled the country under the name Dust and Ashes. They were good. And they were Methodist. Now, some forty years later, I don’t know if they’re still singing, still recording, or still traveling under that name. But if any day is a “dust and ashes” day, this day is a “dust and ashes” day.
We are formed from dust, says the Good Book, and we shall return to dust, once our time on earth is done. I learned that as a child. As did most of you. As to what I made of it then, I can’t rightly recall. But all of us have heard of the child who came downstairs and asked his mother whether he could believe everything he heard in Sunday school. When she asked for specifics, he told her about the “from dust we came, and to dust we shall return” claim. Leading her to answer: “Well, son, if you heard it in Sunday school, it’s got to be true.” Whereupon he responded (with no small manner of urgency): “Then you’d better come upstairs quickly. Because, from what I can tell, someone is either coming or going under my bed.”
Infantile humor aside, life is not only mortal but fragile. Last night, Kris and I pulled into our driveway about 10:30 following a five-day trip to Salt Lake City. We attended the Winter Olympics….an event alive with athleticism (with young life straining against past and present limits to skate smoother, jump higher or ski faster). As is her custom, Kris went straight to the answering machine. And after four calls from aluminum siding salesmen, we learned of a young man, age 34, who decided to end his life at the end of a rope….effectively setting his own limits.
Some choose death. Death chooses others. Sixty-five percent of the people I say a few well-chosen words over (at the close of their days) have already chosen cremation. And a growing percentage of those I inhume in the garden in front of the church. I do it all for them. I dig the hole for them. I say the prayer over them. I open the box that contains them (prying loose the hard plastic lid with the business-end of a letter opener). And then I let go of them, allowing the collective dust of their earthly life to pour from my hands into the cavity waiting to receive them. So much for the body.
And our achievements, while having a slightly longer shelf life, eventually follow suit. Four weeks ago on a Saturday, the woman I live with asked how my sermon was coming. She was not so much concerned with its quality as with its completion. In short, was I finished? And if not, would I be willing to take a break from writing? In the interest of marital harmony, I said: “Sure, why not?” So we went to an antique store in St. Clair Shores….one she’d read about earlier that morning and wanted to visit. Once there, we began our respective wanderings….mine bringing me to a rather large shelf containing no small number of Oscar-like statuettes. Each had a pedestal. And each had some printing on the pedestal. Always a name….followed by an accomplishment. One spoke of excellence in bowling. Another, excellence in golf. A third, excellence in public speaking. Still another, excellence in community volunteering. On each statuette there was a little orange dot. Each dot contained numbers. Twenty-five cents. Thirty-five cents. For the bigger statuettes, half a dollar. Never more. Strangely, I found myself wandering through the rest of the store humming a beloved old hymn.
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross
Till my trophies at last I lay down.
Bodies to dust. Achievements to dust. So, too, our enjoyments….equally dust-bound. I’ve heard half a hundred jokes about whether there are golf courses in heaven. The best of them concerns a message sent back from the “other side,” complete with good news and bad. The good news is that heaven’s links are lavish beyond belief. The bad news is that the hearer has a tee time the following Tuesday.
As to whether any of that is true, I haven’t a clue. But I can take you to another antique store (when you’re married to my wife, you learn the landscape)….this one in Naples, Florida. Where I can show you an entire room filled with golf clubs….nearly-new golf clubs….in nearly-new golf bags. The clubs were purchased by people who retired and moved to Naples, believing that they would now have “world enough and time” to play. Except they didn’t. Sobering, isn’t it? Humbling, too.
Still, there is this. It is into dust that God first breathed….and continues so to do. And it is dust that once, for thirty years and change, even housed the eternal. And it was in dust that Jesus silently wrote with his finger, while an adulterous woman’s accusers walked away (one at a time), quietly dropping the stones they had intended to throw at her. As to what Jesus wrote in the dust, who can say? But if you ask, that woman will tell you what it felt like to have her life handed back to her. It felt, for all the world, like mercy.
Ah yes, we may be dust and ashes. But this earthly stuff (this “stuff” that constitutes our nature) is infused with the divine and shot through with the holy. Meaning that, unlike the dust with which we deal, this dust…our dust….is never discardable, but is infinitely renewable, redeemable and (at the end of the day) resurrectable.
Ben Jones is the middle child of Greg and Susan Jones. One night, at the age of nine, he was waiting in bed for the story and tuck-in routine that was a ritual in that house. But when the reading was done….and when the tucking was done….he didn’t wait passively for his mother’s kissing to be done. Instead, he said: “Let me kiss you tonight.”
But he did not kiss her once. And he did not kiss her twice. He kissed her seven times….on the forehead. Three across. Four down. Puzzled, she received it. But didn’t “get” it. Until later, while talking to her husband (who, after all, is the dean of a divinity school) she realized that Ben’s kisses were offered in the form of a cross.
Where had her nine year old come up with that? As best as she could figure, it had to do with an Ash Wednesday service the family attended, which featured a cross of ashes marked on the forehead of each worshiper present. On the surface, it seemed as if Ben had the symbolism all screwed up.
Ashes? Kisses?
Ashes? Kisses?
Ashes? Kisses?
But isn’t the message of the hour….the message of the season….the message most of us need desperately to hear….that we are as kissable as we are fallible?
But what does a nine year old know?
Plenty, it would seem.
