'Ashes to Ashes'

‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Genesis 3:19

Most scholars now agree that the texts found in Genesis began to be written down sometime in the 10th century BCE and were based on oral and written traditions. It is this verse that the words of the Book of Alternative Services, ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return’, harken back to in the imposition of ashes during the Ash Wednesday service.

This is a change in liturgy from the understanding shown in the words of the Book of Common Prayer which says in the same service: ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life.’

Three years ago we attended an Ash Wednesday Service where the words had morphed one more time. That time what was said during the imposition of ashes was ‘Remember that you are stardust and to stardust you shall return’ moving into the worldview of scientists in the 21st century. And as this picture shows, the traditional ashes were mixed with 'stardust'.

Astrophysicist Karel Schrijver, a senior fellow at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, and his wife, Iris Schrijver, professor of pathology at Stanford University, explain in their book, ‘Living With the Stars: How the Human Body Is Connected to the Life Cycles of the Earth, the Planets, and the Stars’ how everything in us originated in cosmic explosions billions of years ago, how our bodies are in a constant state of decay and regeneration, that everything we are and everything in the universe and on Earth originated from stardust, and it continually floats through us even today. It directly connects us to the universe, rebuilding our bodies over and again over our lifetimes. - Simon Worrhall, National Geographic, January, 2015.

~Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life.
~Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return
~Remember that you are stardust and to stardust you shall return

These three all express the beliefs of a different world view All three call us to remember that life on this earth is impermanent and fleeting. All three, hopefully, cause us to pause however briefly and ponder how we are using it. It doesn’t really matter which resonates with you. What does matter is that it makes you stop and consider where you are and where you’re going.

All three are a valid understanding of that particular world view and as such all three are ‘right’, as long as that worldview is accepted. The problem occurs when the church tries to impose one worldview on the individual instead of acknowledging that truth comes in many forms, and encouraging many different expressions of it.

As I am becoming more and more aware, the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’ of what you believe really don’t matter. It is the conclusions you reach that influence how you live out those understandings that do.

Perhaps this Lent is a good time for you to ponder just what worldview you hold and what defines your place in it.

Comments

This, too ...

‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.’ -Hebrews 11:8 Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, says this, too, will pass . Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Official of Health for Toronto, says this, too, will pass . Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada, says this, too, will pass . But will it really??? Some days this feels like an unending struggle with just one tiny step forward and not just two, but more like a dozen steps back. Of course I’m talking about COVID-19 with all its associated variants. We might even be forgiven for rewriting that well known quote from Ecclesiastes to read…. For everything there is a season,…but just not for this ! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest, might well have been talking about COVID when he penned the lines below: We should like to skip The ...

Challenging Faith

“All giving constitutes a challenge to faith because there is no guarantee of a return.” When I heard this statement as part of a sermon on Rogation Sunday, my ears pricked up and my mind started to spin. The rest of the sermon had things to say as well, but this sentence is still the one that has stuck with me. It made, and is still making me think! For those of us who identify ourselves with the church, whenever we hear the word ‘givings’ our minds go immediately to what we put on the offering plate each Sunday and for that we expect, but are not guaranteed, that the church will be there for us when we need it; for weddings, baptisms, funerals and other rites of passage. However what intrigues me about this quotation is that first word. “ ALL giving constitutes a challenge …” And how true it is! Each time we ‘give’ something away and it doesn’t have the expected return, it is upsetting and we have all had that experience. I remember many years ago s...

"Property of Jesus"

Have you seen people wearing shirts that say "Property of Jesus" Perhaps you have seen them for sale in a Christian book store? Have you stopped to consider just what that motto says about the wearer, or more importantly just what it might say about you? 'Property' in a business dictionary, is defined as: " Quality or thing owned or possessed . In Law: Article, item, or thing owned with the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment,... " So if we are the property of another, then they have complete control over us. We are in fact their slave . According to the dictionary, a slave is " someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay ; a person who is strongly influenced and controlled " I wonder if the persons wearing these shirts ever consider what they are actually proclaiming? If in fact they are the 'Property of Jesus', does that not mean that they have no choic...

But that's NOT what I meant!

35 years ago now, when I was going to university, I remember having my essays read by someone who I trusted both for their knowledge of English grammar and for the subject matter. I can also remember saying on more than one occasion when looking over their suggestions for changes, ‘But that’s NOT what I meant!’ Somehow I felt that the validity of my ideas was being challenged. I had long ago forgotten about these exchanges, but they came to the forefront of my thoughts again this past week. Thinking about them from a distance, I now believe that my editor wasn’t deliberately changing my thoughts but rather was just putting what they perceived as the meaning I was trying to make into better grammar. At the time, however I saw it as an attempt to actually change the meaning. And how often this happens to us in our daily lives. Someone reads this blog and really likes it because it said …. and I have to go back to the written word to look at it again because I don’t remember hav...

Faces

“Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can’t love what we won’t experience.” ~Nancy Mairs Years ago the women’s group at the church that I was attending was talking about the arrival in the neighbourhood of a home for abused women. As various ideas were put forward as to how we might react to this, a couple of the ladies were very forthright in their disagreement. After all, they said, these women had asked for it! Despite this, the evening ended with a decision being made to start a clothing centre for these women who would arrive at the shelter with little besides the clothes on their backs. Being good Christian woman, both of these ladies signed up to take a shift or two a month. Imaging my surprise when a few months later one of them came up to me after church to tell me the ‘those’ women were just like everybody else! Now a story from a little closer to home. We spent three weeks in Cape Town, Sou...

Hope springs eternal....

The season of Advent starts this coming Sunday, the beginning of the church year. I have decided to do something a little different and so for the next 4 weeks, I will be reflecting about a different verse in a well-known Advent hymn. Each Sunday in Advent, a candle in the advent wreath is lit in our homes and during our worship services. The lighting of the candle is usually accompanied by readings and/or singing. Here is the first verse of " A Candle is Burning ", with words by Sandra Dean and sung to the familiar tune of "Away in a Manger" . " A candle is burning, a flame warm and bright, A candle of HOPE in November's dark night While angels sing blessings from heaven's starry sky, Our hearts we prepare now for Jesus is nigh " Or as Desmond Tutu said, "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." As the days in the northern hemisphere grow darker with the shortest day of the year o...

An Allegory

Once upon a time there was a knight and his lady, who lived contently for many years in a southern kingdom. As they aged however, their manor became too big for them and so they decided to relocate in a northern kingdom where smaller quarters were available. They left their friends of many years with a sad good-bye and set off for new adventures. They settled quite happily in their new abode, and joined in all the activities and merry-making until one day, they had to drop out of some of the activities because of their declining years. No one came to ask them why they were no longer taking part. Instead the rest of the folk in that kingdom ignored them and it became very lonely for the knight and his lady The king suggested that they might be happier is a neighbouring kingdom and so they moved a short distance and set up house one more time. This time though things went well for many years. Then the king died. The heir apparent had many different ideas about what ...

Another Road

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they [the Magi] left for their own country by another road.” Matthew 2:12 NRSV Just the other day I was out with a friend. As we were leaving to go home we decided ‘go by another road’ and the comment was made about how biblical that was. But as I heard the preacher’s opening to their sermon this past week, suddenly I had a very different understanding of just what those words meant in the context of the story of the magi. One might say I had an epiphany! We don’t know anything about who wrote the gospels or even when or why the gospels were written. We can surmise that the authors were writing down these stories in an attempt to pass on the transformative effect the life and teachings of Jesus had had on their lives and perhaps the lives of others around them. So I have come to understand the two birth narratives to be an attempt to rewrite his birth showing this importance. As angels sang, he was revered by t...

Our Voices

‘ We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.’ -Malala Yousafzai What difference can one person [or one voice] make? That is a question I hear repeated over and over. We feel so helpless, so powerless in the face of whatever tragedy has befallen, whatever need there is. I know. I’ve been there nightly watching the human suffering on the TV news as I’ve seen the women and children huddling in the rubble hoping to escape from the next blast, the appalling conditions on our own reservations where again the children are doing without the necessities of life. ‘How can this be?”, I ask myself and feel even more hopeless. With all the focus on the Syrian refugee crisis in the news recently, my mind has gone back some 37 years to 1978 when I was part of a group that sponsored a boat family. In fact over the next 6 or 7 years that same group sponsored 27 people, at four different times, coming from Vietnam and South America. I clearly recall at ...

The Reason for the Season

We are now in Advent, the church's season of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus and Christmas is approaching. Each year at this time my inbox gathers various & sundry emails about those terrible people who don't say Merry Christmas, who want to call it a holiday tree and not a Christmas tree, who want to take the Christ out of Christmas! Instead of worrying about what the other thinks and does, it behooves us to look at just what each of us is celebrating, personally. If we are honest with ourselves, I think we just might be surprised! As I listen to the Christmas/seasonal songs on the media and in the malls, I find myself asking myself the question: Just how many different things are we celebrating on December 25? Because I do think there is more than one celebration, probably more than two or three for most of us. Oh yes, we may say we are celebrating Christmas, because it is the birth of Jesus but is that really all….. or is it even one of th...

NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Search This Blog