Interesting Sermon

It hasn’t been often in my 37 years as an Episcopal priest that I’ve had the opportunity to sit on the congregation’s side of the pulpit to hear a sermon. But today was an exception. It was an Ash Wednesday sermon in which the preacher meditated on ashes/dust. When the ashes are placed on the worshipper’s forehead, these words are said: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”

On the one hand, that’s a pretty harsh reminder about our ultimate physical destiny. We’re going back into the ground and returning to the basic elements from whence we came. But on the other hand, it is an affirmation that we are dust that God fashioned and gave breath to. We human beings are pretty special. We come from the same basic ingredients (dust) as all other things and creatures in the universe. But we’re special dust.

And I take it to mean when all else is said and done, that every human person is special. This may not be what today’s preacher was getting at, but it’s what I took from the homiletical experience. And that’s a good reminder as I ponder the world with my cynical eye and am tempted to discount some dust as not worthy.