As a pastor, I have the unique and beautiful privilege to be in the business of blessing. I get to bless babies at baptism, bless children at communion, bless congregations for service at the end of worship, bless men and women who are drawing near to death.

As a pastor, I also have the peculiar duty, once a year, to look into the faces of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and to speak words that seem very far from blessing: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

These words of mortality are not reserved only for the adults and aged among us. I speak these very same words to old and young alike. This year, for the first time, I will speak these words as I stare into the sweet face of my own three month old son, and I know that I will feel my heart sink into my stomach as I, for that brief moment, must acknowledge that his life is as fleeting as mine and yours.

It is a hard truth to swallow, that from the moment of our birth, we have already begun our return journey toward the God who created us.

In the season of Lent, we focus on repentance, on turning around, on reorienting ourselves toward God. Lent is the season of returning. Returning to the foot of the cross, returning from the wilderness back to the heart of God. Tonight is our call to mortality, our call to dustiness, our reminder that we have wandered, our reminder that without Christ and the cross, we would be nothing but empty dust, blown about by the wind and scattered, far from the arms of our loving God who longs to embrace us.

As I look around this place, I think about all of the dust that clings to our common life together, a symbol of the earth from which we were created and to which we shall return. I think about the dust of death, as we weekly remember in our prayers those who have lost loved ones. I think about the dust of mortality, as many among us face chronic and terminal illnesses. I think about the dust of fear and uncertainty, as members and friends struggle to find jobs or to make ends meet. I think about the dust of despair, as many in our midst face the gaps in their lives where dreams seem lost and prayers seem unanswered.

Ash Wednesday gives us permission to linger in this dusty space for a bit. Tonight, we let ourselves touch, however briefly, the vulnerable parts of our souls, the parts of our hearts that are keenly sensitive to the temporary nature of this life. Ash Wednesday and Lent give us space to to embrace our dustiness. Embrace the parts of us that fear and doubt and struggle. Embrace the parts of us that feel pain. Embrace all the parts of us that long for redemption.

“Remember that you are dust,” we hear, “and to dust you shall return.”

These are words of mortality, but they are also words of redemption.

For in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, God formed us out of dust and breathed into us his spirit of life. And when we return to the dust of the earth at the end of our days, we will return to the one who created us and called us good; beloved.

For at our baptisms, the sign of the cross was made on our foreheads, sealing us as God’s claimed and adopted children. The cross was marked with oil, anointing us as if we were kings and queens.

The cross of ashes that we bear tonight is a dusty version of that baptismal cross. It is God’s promise of life that is revealed more clearly with each passing day, with every speck of dust that we kick up along our life journey. It is a symbol of life rising from the ashes; a sign of God’s promises rising to bless us.

“We are treated as dying,” Paul writes in tonight’s Epistle, “and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

Tonight is the beginning, my friends, of our long return journey to the cross. It is the beginning of a journey where we will encounter Jesus in many ways and many places: in the wilderness, in water and in spirit, in living water poured out for all, in new sight, in death and in life, in the pain of the cross, in the glory of resurrection. Just as surely as the oil and the dust cling to our brows, reminding us of the promise of life, so does Jesus cling near to our hearts, our living promise that God is the one calling us back, waiting at the end of our long life’s journey, arms open, feast prepared, anxious for each of us to return home.

So, my friends, “even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”