Rising from the Dust and Dirt :: Joel 2:12-19
1.
God made you out of dust and dirt. It’s easy to say something like that on Ash Wednesday. It’s easier still to see and know it after a body, like one of ours, dies and decays ... though you can get the general idea when you see roadkill decaying along our roadways. But the fact remains that all of your complex DNA, cell structure, and brain activity is a miraculous transformation of dirt. God made you out of dust and dirt. He altered the properties of dust and dirt to become soft tissue and hard bones. You are, in a most literal way, a clay figure that moves and thinks and feels.
2.
This clay structure ... all of us who have descended from The Adam who was made from a pile of Eden dust and dirt ... remains human flesh as long as God preserves it.
Without blood, without the life in the blood sustaining each cell, the body quickly returns to dust and dirt. That’s why a dead body, left to itself ... left to what nature does on its own ... deteriorates even more quickly after it dies. Within hours, rigor mortis sets in. What was soft skin and organ tissue hardens, decays, and rots. What God brought out of the earth and gave his breath of life to (Gen 2:7) returns to the earth. Because dust you are and to dust you will return (Gen 3:19).
What, then, can you be proud of? What is your self-worth when we’re all the same material as earthworms and slugs? Dust and dirt. In death, we end up in the same compost pile that they do. Dust and dirt. So a smudge of ash captures our problem pretty well. Ash Wednesday is the one day of the year when it is essential to hear this hard reality.
So hear again the prophet Joel: With fasting, with weeping, and with wailing (Joel 2:12) ... that’s how we’d all assemble here if we actually thought God was speaking those words to us, if we truly grasped the truth that we are nothing but dust and dirt. We’d look and act differently. We’d see it in each other’s faces, if we even had the courage to look up, that is. We’d scramble back into the shadows to hide. We’d realize that these coverings will never actually cover our shame and sin ... dust and dirt ... and cold, black hearts.
Ash Wednesday would be a day of ashes and new repentance, of sorrow for our sin.
Ash Wednesday would be a day of humiliation and prayer, of fasting and weeping because we’re made out of dust and dirt, and dust and dirt is our future.
Then Ash Wednesday would be a sobering whiff of divine judgment against you. It would be a day actually to rend your hearts (Joel 2:13), because even hypocrites know how to rip their garments for show ... you can always buy yourself new clothes, and everyone knows how to act sorry. But rending (or tearing) your hearts demands more!
If only you knew the real cost of your sin, the death and stink on us ... then we wouldn’t feel awkward or odd about confessing our sins. Every day would be a day to weep, fast, and mourn (v 12) for as Luther reminds us we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. We deserve to be dust and dirt.
The last time you heard the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” wasn’t just for effect. It was true! Ashes and dirt speak a terrible word. ... You are dust and dirt. So fast, weep, and mourn! Pour ashes over our heads. In this way, we can acknowledge who we are.
3.
Now with these ashes, we begin the season of Lent ... and God comes to our rescue. Unlike you and me, he always comes to our rescue. That doesn’t mean he will be fair to you or give the punishment you’ve earned. No, instead, he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in חֶ֫סֶד (v 13) ... that is, covenantal loyalty, or as so many others say, steadfast love.
His love for you is that deep. He relents over disaster. He is always faithful, even when you aren’t. He always remembers, even when we don’t. We couldn’t go to him, so he came to us ... he came to us a man ... The Man ... to die for you, so that he could rise out of dust and dirt for you. Your decaying and sinful body couldn’t last one second with God. So God performed a miracle even greater than the creation of man from the dust and dirt. God put his eternal Son in the same human body that you have ... to live for you, die for you, and rise from dust and dirt for you.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Behold, God’s beloved Son, the “God of God” who came down to be with us in dust and dirt.
Behold, the holy incarnation! In him, you have been saved!
For then the Father poured your sin over Jesus’ body. He tore his heart for you. He judged, condemned, and killed Jesus in that body ... and sent him to the dust and dirt. On the third day, he raised Jesus up from the dust and dirt. On Easter, the true Adam, the truest Man, rose out of the dust and dirt once and for all. Our Lord Jesus, with real human flesh and blood like yours, rose to give us faith, and hope, and love, the greatest of these being love ... his love ... his covenantal loyalty.
CHRIST HAS OVERCOME YOUR DIRT AND DEATH BY TAKING ON THE DIRT YOU’RE MADE OF AND THE DIRT YOU’VE DONE.
4.
In his holy death, he makes you clean, washed in blood. And not even death will hold you now, for I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body ... yours and mine, too ... and life everlasting. The blood circulating in your body right now will keep you alive for a while, but not forever. Your blood cannot keep your flesh from decaying.
But Jesus’ blood ... the blood of his covenant ... can and does preserve your skin and bones and body and soul forever. His blood gives you life forever. This is why we should long for the Lord’s Supper. His blood delivers to you the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. He is readying you now to live forever, to receive his body and blood. You need his body and blood in you, on you, and all over you. In him, you have eternal life, you are immortal in Christ.
Without his blood shed for you, you must return to the earth, to dust and dirt, to where worms live and make a feast. And without him, on the Last Day, the real final judgment, the one after all those years of “just another” Ash Wednesday, your body would be raised, but for condemnation, for a place in hell, where worms never die.
But with Jesus, by Jesus, you are worth everything and you have everything already!
So come! Call the congregation ... fill the pews. Assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants (Joel 2:16. We are gathered here for God’s holy purpose and his great divine service. Every guilty one, come! Everyone who is without excuse, come! Blow the trumpet ... consecrate a fast” (v 15). God calls for a solemn assembly (v 15). For you are worth heaven itself. Even more, you are worth the very life of God himself ... his body, his blood. This isn’t your doing. It is his. He has made you holy and immortal. You are one of his own ... not dirt and dirt. You are part of the very Body of Christ by the flesh and blood of God himself, baptized into his living and dying and rising ... fed at this altar’s cup and plate by the God who bows and serves and rescues by his Son.
5.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, today you brought only sin, dirt, and death with you. But God has come to you today with healing for your flesh and blood and body and being. He is giving you forgiveness, life, and heaven ... his very body and blood ... he is raising you from the ashes.
Behold, I am sending to you grain, and wine ... and you will be satisfied (v 19). He comes in, with, and under the bread’s grain and the cup’s wine to guard you and keep you! This is what the Sacrament of the Altar is for. It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink. It satisfies your being. It makes you whole. You can never receive it too often. It will never lose its specialness. It can’t because it is for the forgiveness of your sins, for the dust and dirt.
Your ashes, your weeping, and your mourning are but for a little while longer. But the treasure is, and will ever be, only Christ, forever.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.