“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
This phrase will be spoken over many today who will kneel before an officiant in certain types of churches (quite different from ours) to be smeared with ashes in the shape of a cross on their foreheads. Young and old, healthy and suffering, rich and poor, all alike will be reminded of our mortality, the inevitability of death in the time preceding Christ’s return. Why mark the start of the Easter season—a time of celebration and triumph—with such a somber memento mori? Because there is no resurrection that is not preceded by death.
Death was not God’s original design for creation. We read in Genesis 2:17 that death was a consequence of human choice, not part of the “good” and “very good” (Gen. 1:31) fabric of creation. Lured by the serpent’s lie that “You will certainly not die,” (Gen. 3:4) Eve and Adam, “who was with her,” (Gen. 3:6) openly defied the explicit command of God, an act of spiritual treason. The consequences of sin were immediate and devastating, including the promise of eventual physical death as an outward display of the spiritual death that had already occurred.
…The ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of painful labor
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow
until you return to the ground,
since you were taken from it.
For you are dust,
and you will return to dust.Genesis 3:17-19
The story of Scripture from the garden to this day is that we are still prone to spiritual treason. Faced with the reality of our inherited sin nature, we can pray no different from King David when confronted with his own deeply grievous sin: “Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). Our story is not that of generally good people who are damaged by the difficulties of life. We are sinners from birth because we are children of Adam and Eve (Rom. 5:12), and “the wages (recompense) of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Such is our helpless state unless we are spiritually born again—raised from death to life in Christ (Eph. 2:1-9).
Ash Wednesday is an annual reminder that apart from the regenerating work of Jesus, we would remain dead in our sins and trespasses, alienated from God. Apart from the keeping power of the Holy Spirit, we would return to our sins and trespasses. Despite the new life we have received in Christ, we contend with our flesh (Col. 3:5) and continually return to “The LORD—the LORD … a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin…” (Exodus 34:6-7).
On this Ash Wednesday, we return afresh to a spirit of repentance. We recognize the frailty of our flesh, our inability to keep to the things of God unless we are first kept by His Holy Spirit. Easter reminds us what it cost to put away our sins. We dare not neglect so great a salvation (Heb. 2:3), but instead pray with saints the world over this prayer of repentance:
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Collect for Ash Wednesday (Contemporary), Book of Common Prayer, 1979
Learn more about Ash Wednesday and the rest of the Easter season
Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal (Fullness of Time) by Esau McCauley (2022, IVP Formatio)
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer (2005, Oxford University Press)
