February 18, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
From the Ashes and the Stars
Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Rev. Loren McGrail
Holmdel Community United Church of Christ
February 14, 2024
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
From Blessing in the Dust by Jan L. Richardson
Good evening, Dear Ones, I am going to speak to you this evening about dirt, ashes, stardust, treasures, and love. This will not be an ordered Message easily untied because the truth is this is one woven cloth, and all are inter-related, and each has truths to share.
“God said in the garden. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The words were not meant as shame for Adam and Eve but as a reminder their finitude. On Ash Wednesday we are marked on our foreheads with a reminder that we too are mortal. Our ashes are made from the burnt palms from Palm Sunday; the same ones we were waving and singing Hosanna with. ossanna wi
We cannot escape our common decay or mortality, Dear Ones, but there are other ways to read this story. It also means we are born of the earth and to the earth we will return. Let me share these words from Rev. M. Jade who articulates these thoughts so beautifully:
we come from the earth,
and to the earth we will return.
A place, holy and dark,
where divinity knits the web of life,
queering beginnings and endings and beginnings.
more of a sacred integration
than a divine abduction,
this is a gradual evolution,
moving with respect for the way a life lingers.
eventually and with time,
destruction is made fodder for seeds.
Death, a nutrient for life.
decay, a slow unfolding of future’s potential.
it’s not without its complications –
this claim of eternal composting –
for one thing,
it smells wretched.
but it is honest.
and we need more of that.
and anyway, behold the gardens,
and ponder ocean floors.
consider the harvests on which we feast
and the verdant tables set before wild things.
to be born again like that.
Isn’t that god?
isn’t that redemption?
isn’t that a miracle?
isn’t that enough?
And then Dear Ones, there is the idea that we are made of stardust and to stardust we return. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse explains it this way:
What we do know, and what we can assert without further hesitation, is that the universe had a beginning.
The universe continues to evolve.
And yes, every one of our body’s atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago.
We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out – and we have only just begun.
Dear Ones, I implore you this Lenten Season to explore the ways you feel the cosmos inside of you---what it means to be made of star-stuff. For example, how are you a way for the universe to know and express itself?
Our scripture this evening reminds us to store our treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes for where our treasure is so will be our heart. Dear Ones, I invite you to imagine a less binary perspective and imagine that your enfleshed and temporal self that is made of earth, dust, and stardust has a heart that beats and is treasured by God, our creator. Let us treasure this heart to heart connection today. We have been knitted in love to Be Love. This, Dear Ones, is our most prized treasure.
In a few minutes you will come forward and be smeared with black palm dust. Here is your blessing by Jan L. Richardson:
Blessing the Dust
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.