Preparing for the Dawning

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

These words accompany the giving of ashes in the traditional Ash Wednesday service.  As I wrote this, we were preparing to celebrate the life of one of our members, Janet Mahlman, who died of multiple myeloma on January 2.  As one who, like you and me, came from the dust of the ground and, through her life’s experiences, became a diamond bright and shining in her brilliant compassion, humor, and courage, Janet showed all those who knew her one example of what God is capable of when life is seen in a larger context.

Far from being a “downer,” death for Christians is a reminder of the way in which this life is not all there is, but is connected with the lives of all those who have lived and served God and neighbor in the past—those who make up the “cloud of witnesses” referred to in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews—and the lives of those of us living and serving now, as well as those yet to come.

Our culture does not like to confront death, although through the Hospice movement and the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross we have come a long way in our reckoning with it.  But this month, with our Shrove Tuesday celebration on February 21, we’ll mark the end of the season of Epiphany and the beginning of Lent, a time for looking within ourselves and confronting the shortness and uncertainty of our life on earth.

Instead of being morbid or somehow scaring us into a faith-journey, confronting the finiteness of our earthly life can place our lives in a larger context and community—that of eternity and the cloud of witnesses, what the broad Christian tradition has come to call The Communion of Saints.

In the memorial service liturgy, the prayers point to the central affirmation of the Church as an “Easter People”—the hope of the resurrection, however we conceive of it and experience it in our lives.  And this is the rationale behind the season of Lent: to open ourselves to a deeper life with God and others, and in so doing, prepare for the Dawning that is Easter Day, the celebration of that resurrection.

My hope is that whatever age you are, you experience that deep journey in all its manifestations, and that the ministry and mission of this church helps you in that deepening as you prepare for the dawn!