On Wednesday we received ash crosses on our foreheads. We use ash to mark the beginning of Lent, because our ancestors used to sit in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of repentance. Ashes are all that’s left when the fire has burned out. The ash we use on Ash Wednesday is what is left of the palm fronds we spread on the ground and waved with joy when we welcomed Jesus and his reign to the city. That bonfire of joy burned out fast, and it’s humbling to remember how short-lived our commitment to follow Jesus can be.
We let ourselves be marked with an ash cross, because the cross reminds us how, to his death, Jesus embraced us and God in love and faithfulness, with words of forgiveness on his lips. We remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We remember that we are creatures of God, made in the image of God, made for communion with God, mortal, yet forever alive in the love that calls all things into being.
Ashes and dust remind us that we are earthlings. Our story begins with God who formed the human being, adam in Hebrew, from the dust of the ground, adamah, and breathed into the earthling’s nostrils the breath of life. We belong to God and we belong to the ground from which God has made us. We belong to creation and to the Creator, and we seek to live in ways that honor our belongingness.
God planted a garden in Eden, took the human being and put them in it to work it and keep it. In English, there’s another word that reminds us of our beginnings and our belonging. The word humble comes from the same latin root as humus, meaning soil. With ashes on our foreheads, we humbly remember our belongingness. With our hands in the dirt, and our bare feet touching the soil, we humbly remember our belongingness. When we forget our belongingness, the opposites of humble emerge: we become arrogant, haughty, imperious, pretentious.
In the garden, God said to the earthling, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Our story begins with life in a flourishing garden and with a commandment, given to us humans who are to work and keep this marvel of lush life.
But there’s another voice in the garden, the serpent, more crafty than any other wild animal that God had made. The serpent doesn’t say much, only asks a question, “Did God say, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” It’s not what God said, but the serpent continues to sow seeds of suspicion and distrust, saying, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God did not tell the whole truth, the voice suggests, and the relationship between the humans and God begins to unravel. We’re meant to be gardeners in Eden, but we wonder if perhaps the other voice has a point … and we eat. When questioned by God, the man blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent, and the serpent is silent. Guilt and fear, shame and blame have entered the scene, and jealousy, hatred, and violence soon follow. We look around, and nothing, it seems, is the way it’s supposed to be. Long ago, Isaiah connected the dots for us, reminding us of our belongingness:
The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.[1]
Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be, our belongingness to God and creation and to each other is fractured—and that arrogant little man with dreams of empire who invades a neighboring country from north and south and east, shelling its cities and killing its citizens, making it a crime to call his war a war—that pretentious, violent little man, ruling over a house of greed and lies, he is dangerous, yes, but he’s just a little man lost in dreams of greatness.
The story of the earthling in the garden invites us to consider that the initial and most consequential crack in our fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God. And with that, we’re also invited to consider that the wholeness of life we all long for begins with the healing of that rift. It begins with our learning to trust in God who is merciful and kind. Many have been tempted to see the little tsar from St. Petersburg as the personification of evil, and that to rid the world of evil, he must be eliminated. But haughty little men with dreams of greatness will continue to rise. So we must strengthen what connects us. We must nurture what helps us cooperate. We must learn to humbly listen to each other and take each other’s needs as seriously as we take our own. We must remember our belongingness.
Our faith teaches us to say, “We have sinned. We have not trusted you. Guilt and fear have built their walls around us, and shame has locked the door. Forgive us. Set us free. Take us home.” We learn to say, “I have sinned.” We learn to trust God’s word, “You are forgiven.” And we begin once again to live out our belonging.
When Jesus was baptized, a voice came from heaven, “You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And right there, Luke has inserted a long genealogy going back all the way not just to David or Abraham, but beyond, generation after generation, to “Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” This genealogy is Luke’s way of telling us that Jesus is one of us, an earthling, and that the gospel of Jesus, the beloved son of God, is for all the children of Adam and Eve, for all God’s beloved sons and daughters.
In the next scene, Jesus, his hair still wet from his baptism in the Jordan, is led by the Spirit in the wilderness. Jesus is alone, and he is not. He is filled with the Spirit. He knows who he is; the voice he heard by the river didn’t mumble. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” He enters the wilderness in order to find out how to be Jesus, how to be true to the One who called him Beloved.
He enters the wilderness for forty days of walking during the cool hours of the morning and late evening, just he and the spirit-companion and the occasional animal he would encounter while getting a drink from a hidden spring. Forty days of sleeping in caves when the sun was high. Forty nights of praying under a blanket of stars, just he and his questions and worries and the spirit-companion. Until the hunger pangs come upon him with ferocious need. That’s when he hears that other voice—a friendly voice, concerned, almost caring. “Why are you doing this to yourself? You are the Son of God, why are you sitting on your hands?” This is not the river voice. Who then is this? “How about one small miracle for yourself?” the voice whispers. “Come on, help yourself to some bread. Nobody’s watching. It’s just you and me. Touch that stone and turn it into bread, and eat.” Jesus doesn’t, and he says, “It is written, a human being does not live by bread alone.” Jesus is famished, weak, and vulnerable, but he refuses to act in self-serving ways.
Suddenly he has a vision, seeing in an instant all the kingdoms of the world, east and west, north and south, great and small, rich and poor, the ones with just rulers and the others with self-serving tyrants. And he hears that voice again, the power whisperer. “Come on, take it. I can give it to anyone I please. Worship me, and it will all be yours. You’ll be in charge. Think of all the good you could do as ruler of the world. You could end hunger, injustice, and wars with a snap of your finger.” But Jesus continues to be led by the Spirit, not the power whisperer, and he responds, “It is written, worship the Lord your God, and serve God only.”
Suddenly Jesus finds himself in Jerusalem, way up on top of the temple, and there’s that voice again. “You are the son of God, are you not? Show them. Show Jerusalem and the world who you are. Just throw yourself down. It is written, isn’t it, ‘God will command the holy angels concerning you to protect you… On their hands they will bear you up so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone…’ Come on, jump and let them see you glide down on angels’ wings.” But Jesus says no. He won’t serve his own interests first, he won’t take advantage of any opportunity to rise to the top by any means in order to do good, and we won’t manipulate people with publicity stunts. Instead, he chooses to love God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind; and his neighbor as himself.[2] He chooses to honor his belongingness to God and to us and to all creation.
The initial and most consequential crack in our fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God, and in Jesus’ life of faithfulness the rift has been healed. The final clash of God’s reign and the empire of the whispering tempter happened on the cross. Again Jesus heard the voice suggesting that he use his power for himself. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one,” some scoffed. Others said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And one kept deriding him, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”[3]
He didn’t save himself. He did not call on armies of angels. He did not use God for his own ends. He trusted in the faithfulness of God, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” And raising him from the dead, God vindicated him, saying yes to his teachings, his friendship with sinners, and his subversive eating habits.
The story of Jesus is the story of humanity and God, the retelling and healing of our story that begins in Eden. Jesus heard the whispers of the other voice, but he didn’t allow it to sow its seeds of suspicion and distrust. In boundless love, he humbly lived out our belongingness to God, to each other, and to the earth. And he lives so we may find life in fullness through him.
[1] Isaiah 24:4-5
[2] See Lk 10:27
[3] Luke 23:35,37,39