Abstract
These words at the heart of Ash Wednesday (22 February) begin the season of Lent. The 40 days build up to Good Friday and Easter Day echo the 40 days when Jesus was in the wilderness. The message of both sets of 40 days is fundamentally identical. Both reveal something of the nature of God, challenge us to think of our own mortality, our dust. I will never forget a devout friend in St Columba’s Hospice quietly blethering about his imminent dust and showing me a "get well soon" card he had received. My own dust forces me to reflect on my own mortality, and then, as humankind probes ever deeper into the origin of the universe this concept of dust becomes mind-blowing. I find it almost incredible that NASA can launch a space probe called Stardust in 1999 which then circles the sun twice, heads off to near Jupiter, nestles in behind comet Wild 2, literally hoovers up some cosmic dust, heads back to earth, lands in a desert near Salt Lake City in January 2006, less than 5 miles from the spot scientists predicted it would land 7 years previously, with its precious cargo of cosmic dust. Comets I think are made of particles left over from the creation of the solar system. A sobering thought that you, me, our world, our universe is dust.
Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness were clearly a time of questioning. Baptised by John in the Jordan, anointed as the Son in whom the Father is well pleased, he patently had some kind of prophetic call, but what did this mean? He too must have felt the crowds clamouring for some kind of certainty, some kind of sign, to prove categorically the authenticity of his sonship. This time of wrestling took place in the desert. Jesus in effect is re-making the journey of the Israelites, this time 40 days rather than 40 years, and Jesus uses 3 sayings taken from that story in the desert. “Use your power for your own ends,” the Devil taunts; “command these stones to turn into bread”, “ throw yourself from the parapet of the temple, have the power and the glory of all the kingdoms of the earth,” the Devil tempts. The rejection of the Devil’s temptations reveals the rejection of a way of simply satisfying the physical need for food rather than feeding us with the living bread, of seeking personal power and glory rather than God’s will, of seducing the people by miracle and wonder, rather than letting them glimpse the way of God in the helplessness of the child in the manger or the outcast on the cross.
The sombre tones of Lent make me stop and think about Jesus in the wilderness. The story of the temptations rebuff any notion of God compelling our obedience and homage in exchange for bread; rather they reveal a father seeking his children’s loving response. Our own dust, our universe’s dust, can be looked in the eye, not submerged in a "get well soon" mentality. We are dust that always has the Christ with us, dust destined for glory, destined for the God who in an act of self-giving love brought the universe into being, who in love seeks our response to that love, and who welcomes us and all creation home when our mortal dust is no more.