from ashes to Glory

It is, of course, true, as Rom. 3:23 says, that all men are in the position that they all inevitably come short of the glory of God, and the reason is because they have all sinned, and face to face with the glory of God must confess that they have come short because they are closed to it, and that they are closed to it because they have closed themselves to it and resisted it. But the other side is even truer, and the first truth can be rightly understood only as we look back at this other side. And the other side is that in Jesus Christ sinful, blind and disobedient man has as such been so encircled by the light of God’s glory that he can and must see it and he will lack nothing in Jesus Christ. (CD II.1, pp. 645)

Today is Ash Wednesday, where, with a simple thumb motion, someone will remind us of the most obvious sign of our sinfulness and our creatureliness. That we are from dust and will return to dust, that we will die, is the most indelible mark of our humanity, the starkest and most unavoidable reality signaling the chasm between who we are and who God is. And yet, at the other end of the season, we have Good Friday and Easter.

During Lent, we situate ourselves temporally between these two “sides” that Barth speaks of in the passage quoted above. We enter in remembering proleptically our death. We end up recalling Christ’s death, where God in his assumed humanity submits to death only to destroy it from the inside out and leave a mark on humanity more indelible, more real and true, than that of death. On Good Friday we will learn to see our own destiny of dust and ashes properly within the context of God’s assumption of dust and ashes, and on Easter we will even more fully see the other side: that in Christ we, though frail and blind, have been encircled by the potent light of God’s glory, and that the grave isn’t the end of the story, but, in Christ, a new beginning.

But, for now, remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

Advertisement