Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

A few days ago, there was an editorial piece in the Washington Post by Minneapolis doctor Craig Bowron. Reflecting on end of life care in America, he argues that people are becoming more and more separated from death as an every day occurrence, and are less and less likely to see it as the natural conclusion to being alive.

Not today.

Today, we “remember that we are dust, and to dust we will return.”

Today, we gather together on Ash Wednesday. Today, we begin Lent, not with a tree and presents, as we begin the season of Christmas. Or with the color red and speaking in tongues, as we remember with Pentecost. No, when we begin Lent, it is with ashes, with dust, and death. We begin Lent by coming as far down from the mountaintop as possible. We begin in the dust. We begin, actually, with a proclamation of our very humanness.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Being human, being alive, means that we are mortal. We are not deities, we are not all-good, everlasting, perfectly wonderful beings. We are sinners, we are dust. We need Lent as a time to repent, as a time to call out to God, to cry out for forgiveness, and salvation.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But, just as we are reminded of our deep humanity, we are reminded of something else, as well.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ. Who was also human. Truly God and truly human. If we are dust, Christ meets us in the dust. God meets us in our very brokenness, walks among us, gets dusty, too. And not only this, but Christ meets us on the cross. Christ meets us at the very pinnacle of our mortality, in death on a cross.

It is this sign we wear today. Not only one of dust and ash and death, but one of savior, one of God meeting us, loving us, in the most unlikely of place. This is a sign not of death: the end, but death: which is overcome by Christ and leads to salvation.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

We are dust, but then again, so was Christ.

Amen.