Audio sermon here: https://www.warbletonchurch.org.uk/sermons-talks/?sermon_id=340
Genesis 2:4-7, 15-17; 3:17-end (pages 4-6)
Hebrews 2:10-end (page 1202)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I’m afraid this probably won’t be the most jolly sermon you’ve ever heard!
I’m sorry about that, but there it is.
If there is a time for a certain amount of doom and gloom, I suppose it’s Ash Wednesday evening.
Come back on Easter Sunday for lots of rejoicing!
This evening I want to mention to you something which is almost unmentionable in our day and age, and that’s death.
I’ve been provoked to this social faux pas by the words traditionally used in the imposition of ashes:
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
What a happy uplifting thought!
But, I think, an important one.
One which might help to put us in our place:
A good dose of humility might be an excellent way to begin Lent.
Yes, you and I are basically, from a biblical point of view, walking dust:
We are mud, yes, animated by the Spirit or breath of God himself, but mud never the less:
We are created stuff – matter.
And that matters.
We are not God.
We are not the Uncreated Creator.
None of us is self-made.
We are dust.
Yes, wonderfully, dust loved and given life by Almighty God:
Dusty glorious children of God and heirs of immortality in Christ, but still dust.
And to dust we shall return.
We are all going to die!
In Victorian times, one did not speak of the facts of life.
But today sex is everywhere and we do not speak of the fact of death.
Death is much more medicalised and sanitized and hidden away than it once was.
How many of us have even seen a dead body?
Understandably we don’t like to think about death, but it will come to us all.
The Ash Wednesday Liturgy and the Bible think that we ought to remember that we are dust and that to dust we shall return.
Along with taxes, death is the only real certainty in life.
Death is the ultimate statistic.
One in one people die.
The death rate is 100%.
That’s why the sinister undertaker could sign all his letters, “Yours eventually!”
In Medieval times, they realised that it was important to us to remember that we are all going to die.
Paintings sometimes included a memento mori – a reminder of death.
There is the great person pictured in all their splendour and pomp.
Normally it’s a rather flattering likeness: their best self, looking full of life.
They’re paying for the painting, after all.
But there on their desk there might be a skull.
Remember your mortality, it says.
This’ll be you, O Great One, in a few short years.
At your funeral, the Vicar may well read Psalm 103 at your graveside:
“As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
15 The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
18 with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.”
Of course, we will all admit that theoretically in the abstract we know that people die.
But am I willing to take a long hard look at the fact that I myself and going to die?
And that even as your youthful and energetic Rector, I may have more years behind me than before me.
What difference would it make if we were to live each day in the light of our deaths?
I invite you to dare to meditate on mortality – and on your own mortality in particular.
In the light of our coming deaths, maybe there are some things that would matter rather less.
And some things that would matter rather more.
After all, life is short and eternity is long.
It is appointed to all human beings to die once and after that to face the judgement.
We will all stand before the judgement seat of Christ.
So what would the Bible say about death?
From a biblical point of view, death is an enemy, an intruder.
Death is not God’s original intention for humanity.
It is the penalty of sin.
God warned our first parents, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
Satan’s great lie was that there would be no judgement, no death.
Did God really say that? (Genesis 3:1)
“You will not surely die!” (Genesis 3:4)
“Perhaps God’s word wasn’t true!”
“Maybe there’s some way you can cheat death”
And people have been dreaming of immortality and eternal youth ever since.
But no matter what face cream you use, or what diet you adopt, or how faithful you are at the gym, it is only a matter of time.
As the Burial Service in The Book of Common Prayer has it:
“Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.
He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
In the midst of life we are in death”
In the instant of that first rebellion, Adam and Eve died spiritually.
Before, all had been love and joy.
But now all was guilt and shame.
They had once loved to walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day, but now they ran and hid and they blamed one another.
Their relationships with God, and with one another, and with the whole created order were broken.
Their work would become toil and sweat, and the ground would produce thorns and thistles.
And eventually they would die physically.
Death is the parting of body and soul.
The breath of life, the Spirit, returns to God who gave it.
And our bodies sleep in the earth.
As children of Adam we are born to die.
Before our time comes, we would do well to have made our peace with God.
There is nothing that matters more than that.
It is a preacher’s cliché that you could go out of here today and be knocked over by a bus.
I know it’s unlikely in a rural area because of the reduction of bus services, but never the less, the point still stands.
Human life is wonderful and glorious.
But it’s so very fragile.
Even the young and fit aren’t guaranteed even the next breath.
The Psalmist would have us pray: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Each breathe, each heart beat is a gift of God’s grace, but we would be foolish to presume on tomorrow.
The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
We are not promised length of days.
Adam and Eve’s sin led to their deaths.
But it was also followed by the death of an animal.
God killed an animal to provide animal skins for them to cover their nakedness and take away their shame.
He didn’t have to do that!
There was judgement but judgement was accompanied by mercy.
And similarly, God has covered our sins by the death of Jesus:
All who trust in Jesus are clothed with his perfect righteousness.
The Rock of Ages will indeed hide all our sin and protect us from the storm of God’s wrath.
Jesus took on our mortality that he might take our immorality upon himself.
On the sinless one, every sin of his people was laid.
The Ever-Living Son of God took on frail flesh and blood that he might die in our place that we might live.
Jesus has defeated the last enemy, death, so that for us, death is nothing to fear.
For the Christian, death is the sleep of the body – and who’s afraid of a nap?
The ogre Death is tamed.
He has become a servant who merely ushers us into the nearer presence of Jesus.
Through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, Death has lost his sting.
His ancient power is broken.
The Christian can laugh at the supposed tyranny of death.
The first Easter was the death of death in the death of Christ.
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Yes, we must all die, but we know that after Good Friday comes Easter Sunday.
This story ends not with a tomb but with the bursting forth of the Lord of Life!
Of course death could not hold Him!
Yes, one day, death; but in the morning, Resurrection!
This Lent, God calls us to die to sin and live for righteousness.
Jesus bids us die to self and live for him.
He is no fool who gives up the supposed life he cannot keep to gain the eternal life he cannot lose.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ.
In the death of Christ, may you know life to the full which will last for ever.
Because of Christ, this dust will be transformed and glorified.
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are….
2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears[a] we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
(1 John 3:1ff)
And so to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit be all honour and glory and power, now and to all eternity. Amen.
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