The Church sets apart this particular day in February and says that it has importance. It bookends the dawn and the dusk with rituals of dust and invites us to look inward. Heart-ward. To carve out time, so that we might hear the singing of the Universe, calling us to a new beginning.
God has been in conversation since the world began. Indeed, the catalyst of creation was this conversation with God as we were spoken into existence. And ever since, God has been calling us, longing for us to return.
Today is a day to hear God’s voice. To jolt ourselves out of the ordinary and into a place where we might connect with the rhythms and patterns of the universe that is whispering our name.
That is the reason for standing in the rain and offering ashes, for sitting with visitors in the Cathedral all day, for walking around with a smudgy cross on our forehead. For coming here, now. We are deliberately stepping out of the ordinary.
Those Buddhist monks who practice Zen will tell you that you need to ask brain-bending questions to break out of the stasis of your mental routine; questions such as ‘can you hear the sound of one hand clapping?’
Jesus’ ministry was full of occasions like this. We see it with his encounter with a woman, in today’s Gospel. It is an uncomfortable episode. Particularly to 21 century ears. A group of self-righteous religious leaders dragging a woman whom they have ‘caught in the very act’ of committing adultery. We hear nothing of the man she was with. Now this group want to murder her, by stoning.
And Jesus’ response to this violent and prurient rage? He stops it in its tracks. He will not allow the toxic mixture of emotions to take on a life of their own. He halts the momentum by doing something so unexpected and so counter-intuitive that the clamour is literally silenced. In an extraordinary moment, we witness not just his words, but how he uses his body. The Gospels don’t often tell us this. They are more interested, obviously, in his teaching. But in this story, we hear both that he ‘bends down’ and he ‘straightens up’. He looks this anger and hatred and misogyny directly in the eye and then he steps out of the frame because he bends down to write in the dust.
He does this twice.
The heat, the rage, the conflict must evaporate because there is something much bigger going on here. ‘Has anyone among you not sinned, he asks? Then, by all means, cast the first stone.’
The question is so left-field, so unexpected that it drops like a stone into a deep lake and their rage is punctured, just as he knew it would be. As the implications ripple out and the silence falls, we hear again that Jesus bends down to write in the dust. He is taking his time. He is creating time. He is crafting a new beginning out of the dust.
And one by one, the accusers leave, until it becomes an encounter between Jesus and the woman, standing together.
During Lent, we are asked to repent. Metanoia. To turn – physically – towards the radiance of Christ and away from sin.
Can you imagine yourself into this story? Can you inhabit this frightened woman’s shoes? Your most private misdemeanours have been dragged into the cold light of judgement and are the subject of extreme and public hate. Whatever it is that you think makes you un-loveable. Whatever you are most ashamed of.
To be honest, we don’t need a chorus of self-righteous religious men, we are more than capable of creating those voices of judgement in our own heads. Telling us that we are not good enough, that we will never amount to anything, that we are hopelessly inadequate.
Jesus is not listening to those voices. He has bent down, close to the ground and he is writing in the dust. When he stands up, now he looks you directly in the eye. Face to face with God.
‘Has no-one condemned you?’ No one sir. ‘Then neither do I condemn you. Go …’
This is what God wants to do for us. This is why God is calling us to return with our whole heart. Because God can see the shape of the extraordinary life waiting to be lived, if we can but shake off our guilt and shame and step into the light.
When we are marked with the cross, when we are reminded of our very human nature on this ash Wednesday, let us not see it as a mark of shame, but of what God can do with dust.
Today is the start of something new.