Return to Dust

“Good” People

How many of you have ever heard or said “why do bad things happen to good people?” Or when you hear about a tragedy you think about how sad it is that innocent people were hurt? I used to teach religion for a class of 8th graders and those kinds of questions would come up. In one class, we were looking at part of the Old Testament where God punished someone for reaching out to to steady the Ark of the Covenant, to keep it from falling over. Naturally some of them asked, why did God put that man to death? He was innocent!

And the answer is the same, to their questions and to the question of “why do bad things happen to good people?” It demands a shift in our perspective. Because there’s a problem with that question. Specifically, there are no good people, not by God’s standards anyway. Each of us sitting here, every person who has every walked this earth, and every person who will come after us have sinned and Romans tells us that the wages of sin is death. That means that each and every one of us deserve death. Instead of asking “why do bad things happen to good people” we are pushed to ask “why hasn’t God punished us all yet?” The question isn’t why God lets bad things happen, the question becomes why God has spared us all this far.

Consequences

Adam and Eve understood this. When the serpent challenges Eve on God’s commands, she knows that “God said, ‘you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”

But they were more afraid of missing out on the knowledge that the serpent promised than they were afraid of the consequences.

They had a deep desire to justify themselves, to know for themselves what was good and evil, to experience evil more than they had a deep desire for God, more than the loved living how He designed them to.

They failed to trust in God when He said that they were good, to trust that God’s instructions were in their best interests, trusting more in the serpent’s whispers and in their ability to choose right.

Adam and Eve, standing there under the tree, wanted so badly to be like God, wanted so badly to know what evil was, wanted so badly to take control into their own hands - they ate the fruit, ignoring the consequences.

And their fears, their desires, their distrust of God have afflicted every person since they walked the earth. We all have a fear of things that aren’t God, we all have a desire to justify ourselves, to put our trust in places other than in God, we all want to take control into our own hands. And the original sin we’ve inherited from Adam and Eve, the original sin we’re born into, along with every sin that we’ve committed since - any one of them are enough to condemn us, and our tallies are a lot higher than one.

For out of the ground we were taken, for we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Life to Dust

But Genesis 2 tells us something incredible. God stood on the earth that He created and He reached into the dust. He carefully shaped two legs that could walk beside Him, He carved the pathways into a heart that could experience His love, He formed a stomach that He could fill with good things, He built arms that could handle all of the tasks of the world, He molded a face that could display love and kindness, and He constructed a brain that could experience His gifts. He stood up straight and looked at the man He had formed out of the dust, wiped His hands together, and breathed into the clay figure. Dust and dirt became flesh and bone, life and spirit. The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. God condemned Adam and Eve to death as a result of their sin, but God is a God that can overcome death. Out of dust and ashes, God creates life.

Adam was condemned to return to dust, but He walked with a God who could bring life even to dust.

Remind Us of Our Savior

Adam and Eve were cursed as a result of their sin, and that’s a curse that all creation has carried ever since. But even in the curse, God points to a promise. He says that a Son of Eve will bruise the head of the serpent. Adam and Eve returned to dust, with a promise that Jesus would come one day and return them to life.

And that promise applies to each and every one of us to. We inherited this curse from Adam and Eve, our sin condemns us to die, but in Christ we are promised new life. As we step into this Lenten season, we put the ashes on our foreheads and enter this time of penitence. And so frequently, the words that accompany the cross are these “for from dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” But let me remind you tonight, God made Adam out of dust, and He can breath life into dry bones. So instead, as we accept these crosses on our foreheads, hear these words. The ashes remind us of our sin, but the cross reminds us of our savior.