The Dust of God’s Dream

February 14, 2018
Ash Wednesday
Mark 1:9–13
Brookside Community Church

Mark 1:9–13 (NRSV)

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Lent: Hearing God’s Voice

“And there were great struggles, magnificent strategies, and soaring feelings, all within a blind world.”
— Brian Swimme, Director, Center for the Story of the Universe

There is no doubt about it, Jesus was hearing voices! A voice spoke from heaven, a Spirit “drove him out into the wilderness,” and he was tempted by Satan.

Many of us might balk at that kind of talk today, but we all hear voices whether we admit it or not. I’m interested in this evening, not with whether we hear voices, but with who we are and what God’s voice sounds like.

Who are you?

The first question then is: Who are you?

Think for a minute about the labels people use to describe themselves or others. If you were to introduce yourself to me, what would you say? I would probably begin something like this. I’m Michael, and I’m the pastor at Brookside Community Church. I’m a father. I’m a husband. I live in New Jersey. (Most people eventually want to hear me tell them I’m from Kentucky so they can make sense of my souther accent.)

I want to challenge you this Lent to ask a different question: How do these roles compete for your time and attention? Are there roles you play that distract keep you from being who you truly are, who God calls you to be?

Well, my friend Jonathan Martin points to this story about Jesus in the Gospel and makes the claim that the real difference between Jesus and the rest of us, is that Jesus heard the voice of God call him “the beloved,” and he really believed it. Unlike the rest of us, Jesus lived every moment of his life convinced of his identity.

Hearing God’s Voice

Well tonight is an interesting place to talk about the voices we hear and how they speak to us about who we are. It’s Valentine’s Day, when we are all trying to come up with creative ways of telling our loved ones that they are our beloved, and hoping that we sound believable. It is also Ash Wednesday, where many of the faithful attend services where they put ashes on their faces with liturgy that says, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Wow! Is that what the voice of God sounds like?

This can really mess with your head, especially if you’re a pastor that really gets deep into the liturgy and asks what things mean. Can you imagine what a Valentines date looks like with me and my wife? “Hey honey, remember you are dust…but I love you anyway.”

Well, I think the trick is to see that Jesus went into the wilderness so that he could get clarity about the voices challenging him to see himself as something that he was not, and to solidify deep with in him the truth of the identity he received from the voice of God at his baptism. “You are my beloved!”

Ok. So which is it. Are we merely dust, or are we God’s beloved? This is why so many people give up trying to hear the voice of God.

The Boy and the Old Green Coat

To make sense of it, I want to bring in a story I tell quite often during Lent. I’m sure you’ve heard me tell it, but it’s worth repeating.

A mother was boxing up clothes to throw out one day while her son watched, when she began to fold up an old green coat. Her son’s eyes got real big, he got real excited, and he asked if he could take the old green coat. He took it to his room and didn’t come out for several days.

When he finally came out, he had something in his hands unexpected. The boy’s name was Jim Henson, and what was once a green coat had now become what we all know as Kermit the Frog.

(Read more about Jim Henson and the story of Kermit at the blog of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.)

The Story of Creation

So, you might be thinking, what does this have to do with ashes? With remembering that we are dust?

Well, I think that all has to do with how we read the story of Creation. Let me try and retell it for you.

God said, “Let there be light!” And then God said, “Look at that! Now that’s cool!”

God said, “Let’s move this stardust around. Let’s move this water and dirt, here and there… Oh yeah! That’s good.”

Then God said, “Let there be life! Bacteria begins to move. Plants begin to grow…”

And then God said, “Hey wait! Are you seeing this?”

Every year I quote the same story because when I first heard it it really transformed the way I saw the world.

The cosmologist Brian Swimme puts it this way:

[Let’s imagine Earth] in an earlier time, some six hundred million years ago, when the seas were rich with life, and the continents, after eons as storm-swept granite, now grew mossy and green…And around this time, the eye comes into Earth’s life. Up until then life had developed, even over billions of years, without eyesight. We contemporary humans identify so strongly with our visual elements of consciousness that we have some initial difficulty conceiving of a time when life proceeded without eyes at all, but so it did. And there were great struggles, magnificent strategies, and soaring feelings, all within a blind world. And nowhere was there a vision of waterfalls, nowhere the experience of the blue sky, or the desert colors awakening in their first rain. (Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, vii)

I think of the gospels as attempts at the remodeling of our eyes and ears so that we can see and hear the sacredness of the world around us.

God said, “You are my beloved! And I am very pleased!”

This is how we honor our Creator, by honoring the creative energy that turns a worn out green coat into Kermit.

It is not that we are merely dust.

It is that all of this — all we see around us — is sacred stardust.

We are not merely ashes. And it is not that we can trade our ashes for beauty (Isaiah 61:3).

We are the burning embers from the fire of life, glowing with heat that emanates from an instant eons ago when an explosive force of love gave birth to all of existence.

We are dust, but we are divine. We are ashes, but we are the apple of God’s eye. We are earth, but we are endless, immeasurable, infinite.

Never forget the limitless beauty of the fact that we exist.

When seen for the miracle we are, acknowledging that we are dust gives us the freedom to begin again, to imagine what we can be, to live without fear that we will not measure up. For even though we are “merely” dust, we are the dust of the dream of God.

— Amen