by Pastor Michael Salemink
I’m the type of guy that needs to label every screw.
If I take something apart, it quickly overwhelms me.
I literally failed the three-dimensional mental manipulation portion of my high school IQ instrument.
My children have to help me find the car in the Walmart parking lot because I just forget.
So replacing or repairing with screwdrivers and pliers means I have to inventory each piece.
Otherwise I’ll end up with handfuls of extra parts that testify to my failure.
So goes the human condition.
Since the beginning we’ve gotten caught in the predicament of disconnecting and disassembling.
The Ancient Serpent specializes in pointing out the parts and pieces.
Focus on the fruit’s appearance, its taste, its function.
Forget the tree. Forget about its purpose. Forget the command.
Forget the other plants. Forget the other animals. Forget all the promises.
Forget about the garden. Forget the God who gave it.
Break it down to a bite-sized chunk you can overcome and control.
Worst of all, we tend to do that with each other.
How can I use him? How can I use her?
How can I control this interaction? How can I exploit this moment to my advantage?
Forget that she’s a person. Forget he has a purpose.
Forget about relationship. Forget about vocation.
Forget community. Forget eternity.
Forget the will of the Almighty Maker. Forget the Word of the Heavenly Father.
It makes even abortion or assisted suicide attractive.
And, ironically, it tricks even pro-life people into comparing, competing, complaining, and criticizing abortion advocates and euthanasia enthusiasts.
This one, she doesn’t amount to as much as us.
That one, he measures as lesser.
Cut the menacing circumstances down to a size we can manage.
Reduce him, reduce her, reduce it to a function.
We can handle scraps ourselves.
From fragments we can construct tiny kingdoms big enough for only one monarch named me.
But sin never travels alone.
One particle soon becomes a pile.
Just when we think we’re gonna sprinkle a little magic powder for ourselves,
we’ve whipped up a stinging, suffocating, isolating, blinding sandstorm.
Without the Savior to do the sorting, it buries us.
You see, we’re each just a collection of specks.
Like burned-up, dried-out chaff that the slightest breeze blows on and scatters,
which neither you nor I nor all of us can keep together or put back together.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
And are not two sparrows, a pair of itty-bitty birds, peddled for a penny?
Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
Before your sins and mine ever dispersed us to the four winds,
He attached tags to our every tidbit.
He sent His own Son, His very self, microscopic-sized into Mary’s womb.
Almighty got incarnate, Word became flesh and labeled us from the first cell to the final one.
Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
He knows where the parts and pieces go.
He knows how to make us whole.
His body bears the marks that testify to His success.
He has taken tools in hand and on foot and even across the shoulders,
sharpened iron, hardened wood, and weathered straps.
And the workshop’s already empty, the grave itself vacated,
because fabrication is finished.
Call this forgiveness, unconditional acceptance, atonement, resurrection,
relief and peace and joy and hope.
Assembly is well underway, and Jesus has marked you,
yes, even you and me,
each one for a place in the magnificent contraption.
His touch, His taking hold of our flesh, of our flecks, it makes us magnetic.
Now those eyes we have for splinters and shavings,
He has enlisted them to gather, not to use but to include.
So we speak truth: Remember that you are dust.
And we show love: The Great One has humbled Himself to number your hairs.
Let this Ash Wednesday proclaim unto us each again
that as the grains of wheat, once scattered on the hill, were gathered into one to become our bread,
so may all His people, from all the ends of earth, and no matter how little or how brittle,
be gathered into one in the God become man.
Amen.