Vigeon Post

ASH WEDNESDAY
ST FRANCIS RADFORD 2006

ASHES

Long before modern science was able to analyse matter; to describe what are the raw materials the universe is made of, the imagination of the writer of Genesis hit another target.  God, he said, made man out of the dust of the earth.
So tonight we say "remember that Dust you are and to dust you must return"
Today, if you ask a scientist what you are made of he will tell you that over ninety percent of you is water and nearly all the rest of you is carbon apart from traces of things like potassium and zinc and other trace minerals. And what is ash but carbon ?
So Genesis was spot on.  Little boys are not made of puppy dogs tails nor are little girls made of sugar and spice and all things nice. We are all made of ash; and when we die the body you and I were will return to ash and melt back into that mass of carbon which is mother earth.
When I used to do Ash Wednesday in my church school, I used to get them to think like this.
I would show them a painting; we  would agree that it is made of paper and colour powder and oil.  And that if we set it alight it would end up as ashes.
But we don't do that with a painting because it is far more valuable than paper and powder and oil. Because someone has made it into a pattern which we can recognise and which is trying to tell us something about what goes on in the painters heart and mind.
I would then ask them if they thought if I got a bucket and mixed up carbon and water and other chemicals I would get a human being; and they agreed with me that no - all I would guess would be a horrid mess.
What makes me me is not only the raw material; but the wonder with which it is organised and shaped.  St Paul says somewhere - you are all God's work of art. You are God's poem, you are God's music; you are God's painting. And that is to my mind the most helpful way of thinking about who we are. I am sure god is a great scientist and a great engineer but the wonder of it all is that the end product of all those billions of years since earth took form as a fiery mass of chemicals is that it has created something as wonderful as you and me.
An engineer friend many years ago asked to be prepared for confirmation; having been brought up a Welsh Baptist. We had lots of interesting conversations together but the thing I remember him saying is
"As an engineer myself I cannot imagine God could create such a wonderful thing as a human being and yet be finished with it in seventy years"
Nowadays it is not unknown for a scientist to tell us that we are all made of star dust. The basic stuff of the whole universe is our own chemical composition.  We need to be ever recapturing the simple wonder of that fact. We don't make ourselves  - as the scripture puts it God makes us out of the dust and we become a living being, a living and a thinking and a feeling and a wondering and a calculating and a greedy and a loving being.
To go back to my school ritual; we used to ash all the children in the school but we used a different formula. We would say "Remember this is what you are made of - don't waste it"
I think that is a good way to think on Ash Wednesday. What is the point of Lent of abstinence of discipline of self denial except to be reminded of the wonder that is me and how profligate I am with the gifts that God has given me.
Today tells me two vital things about myself - one is that I am wonderful and the other is that I am nothing. The secret of a good life, it seems to me, is that we learn to live with both truths at the same time; even though they seem to contradict one another. But of course it is far more pleasant  to think I am the bees knees than it is to think I am just carbon. Which is why we are called to concentrate on the carbon today ! For the truth is that if God is the artist who creates me out of raw material; then that raw material can be very stubborn. Within us is that thing we call I or psychologists call ego. The bit of us who wants to do it my way not God's way; the bit of me which knows better than God what is good for me; the bit of me which distorts my god given soul and spoils my life because there is a rebel at the heart of my being.
For a few weeks therefore I am called to learn afresh to say no to myself. Not because I am terribly wicked but because I am ash; and that what that ash may become depends on what |I make of it; depends on me not spoiling it ; depends on my co-operation with that vision that my creator had of me when he made me a living soul.
The old motto about Lent used to be
Remember the Cross is an I crossed out.  
Its rather old fashioned for modern tastes but there is a truth there which will take us to Easter and to the true joy.