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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.
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