We Are Butt Dust (Ash Wednesday; Genesis 2:4-8; February 14, 2018)

We Are Butt Dust

Ash Wednesday
Genesis 2:4-8
February 14, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

A picture has been making the rounds on Facebook this week among preachers, an example of what happens when you rely on spellcheck for proof reading. It features the cover of an Ash Wednesday worship bulletin with a large cross drawn with ashes and a caption that said: "Remember that you are but dust and into dust you shall return." Well, that was what it was supposed to have said. In fact an extra "t" had found its way into the word "but" and, just like that, the caption was transformed into "Remember that you are butt dust and into dust you shall return."

My colleagues have divided into two camps. In the first are those who are trying to figure out how to work that into a sermon for Ash Wednesday. In the second are those who wish they had the courage--or perhaps it's the lack of discretion--to work it into a sermon. Me? I'm retiring at the end of June, so I'm short on discretion. Work a reference to "butt dust" into a sermon? Here, hold my beer!

I have no idea what butt dust is, but it sure doesn't sound good. "We are butt dust." This is not a very optimistic view of people, is it? Somehow, though, one way of thinking holds that the less well we think of ourselves the better, especially at the beginning of Lent. We imagine at least that the tradition invites us to wallow in miserable-wormism. We are butt dust and unworthy of God's love. Maybe, if we wallow miserably enough, God will love us anyway.

Of course that sets the bar pretty low. After all, what can anyone expect of butt dust? Will it accept the freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? Probably not. After all, it's butt dust. Will it be open to loving neighbors, to serving the widow, the orphan, and the migrant worker? Probably not. After all, they're only butt dust, too.

But butt dust isn't the only kind of dust. There are other kinds. You can see another kind if you go outside this evening after it's fully dark. It will be better if you can leave even a little city like Decorah and find a dark place, like our yard, for example. In the southern sky you will see the constellation Orion. Three stars in a short line are Orion's belt. His sword hangs down from the belt and about half-way down the belt is the fuzzy object that the Charles Messier cataloged in the late 1700's as M42. To the naked eye it's a star, but even a pair of binoculars reveals it to be a cloud, a nebula. A small telescope will be able to pick out four massive newborn stars, mere infants no more than a million years old. They illuminate the cloud that is composed of stray atoms left over from some ancient supernova, an explosion of a large star. These stray atoms are being attracted to each other and they are forming as many as a thousand stars. M42 is a star womb. As these stars form, some of them will have planets. Perhaps one of those planets will have an iron core and an atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. Perhaps one day millions of years from now there will be life, and, who knows, perhaps even a world teeming with life, changing and evolving toward self-conscious intelligence.

Out of such a cloud our sun was formed. So was our world, ourselves, and everything that shares this earth with us. Joni Mitchell was right: we are stardust. Even butt dust is star dust. That sort of dust might call for something more ambitious from us. Stardust might be a suitable vessel for God's dream. With stardust anything is possible.

After all, it was in the garden that God took some stardust and shaped it into a human being and breathed into it and it became a living being. And out of stardust God called forth the plants. And out of stardust God fashioned the animals. God even made those little inedible heart-shaped messages that say things like: Luv U, Kiss Me, Hugs, Be Mine, and all the rest. Stardust, all of it.

So we come as lovers and fools to Ash Wednesday and to the dusty ashes left over when all the life has been consumed from the palms when the palms have given all the love they have to give. For centuries we Christians have had this ashy dust applied to our foreheads to signify what?

That we are mortal? Yeah, we kind of knew that already. That we are sinful, fallen, flawed? Again, no real surprise. That we are butt dust? Well, we might not have put it that way exactly, but again, this is not news. The ashes signify all these things, I suppose. But the dust says something more. Even if it is butt dust and even if that is what we are, butt dust is also stardust. It is the stardust of creation, waiting in the garden that is not yet a garden, waiting for the fingers of God to come, to stir it, to knead it, to shape it, and then, at last, to breathe into it. We bring the stardust. God brings breath. A living being is the result of this impossible and inevitable synergy. God's dream become flesh. God's flesh dreaming. Born, we are reborn. Created, we are recreated by God's recreation. We are a nebula at play, still a little fuzzy around the edges, perhaps, but with the fire of stars at our center. We are butt dust. We are stardust.

We are butt dust returning to dust. We are stardust waiting to be created.

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