"Remember This: Keep Your Fork"

Pastor Nagle
02/08/2005

“Remember This: Keep Your Fork” Genesis 3:16-21 Ash Wednesday February 9, 2005
It’s the perfect biblical text for someone who is only weeks away from retirement. Dust you were, and to dust you shall return. For anyone who thinks more highly of himself than he ought to think, it seems an appropriate put-down, something similar to that picture of putting your hand in a bucket of water, and removing it, only to find that you left no impression at all. Not that I’m begging anyone to say that I have left an impression, but I view the chance to preach during this Lenten season as a time of summing up. A chance to remind people what ought to be primary in life. A checklist of things to remember. And tonight’s text is a good one: remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Pondering those words, I dare say you could push yourself into a fairly dark mood. Indeed, some of you at best only endure the seeming morbidity of Lent while you wait for the joy of Easter. In your mind, there’s entirely too much made of the dust in the text and the ash on your forehead. More than one person equates our dusty text with the bumper sticker words that say life stinks, and then you die. But I’m not at all sure that’s accurate. Certainly, it’s not helpful.
It is true that Adam and Eve heard God’s dusty punishment given to them because of their disobedience in the Garden. You’ll have to figure out for yourself what that disobedience was. Apples and trees and serpents and blame aside, my own understanding is that Adam and Eve got too big for their fig leaves. Quite forgetting that they were created, they liked to think of themselves as being in charge. Understandably miffed, God reminded them of their humble beginning and put their existence into perspective. And here is one way to speak of it all: that it’s not all about you.
Granted, when you were born, your grandmother showed off ten million pictures of you. And everyone applauded at your first correct use of the toilet. And your parents spent thousands of dollars to get your teeth fixed and the congregation stood when you walked down the aisle and you got a bonus for the excellent work that got you written up in the company newspaper and your hole in one was congratulated by your friends. But that kind of self-praise isn’t God’s doing. In fact, all that praise worked against what God had in mind. Did you ever know someone who, quite used to being the star of the show, burned out when the spotlight was turned off? Did you ever know someone who sought counseling, certain that love received was love undeserved? Did you ever know someone quite insufferable because she never stopped talking about herself? Remember this: that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. But that that’s not bad. For, if God once made you and me from dust, can he not do it all again?
Which puts a whole new construction on this Lenten theme. Not that we emphasize our poor and pitiful life. But that we see the chance to put our poor and pitiful life behind us, in the full expectation that God will reshape us and bring us new life. Right? I mean, he formed us once. Can he not reform us? And, in the light of Easter still six weeks away, is that not his promise—that he will give us new life? That’s the good news promise of the church. That’s what we always ought to be saying to the depressed and the grieving, to the young and the unsure, to the rejected and the unfulfilled. That though life surely seems like dust, it’s when it’s dustiest that good stuff can and will happen. The only thing standing in the way is our insistence that our old life has been so wonderful, so successful, so pleasing to us and the entire world that we have no intention of giving it up. And that, instead of hurrying on to our second dust, we fight to maintain how our first dust has been.
Not that our fight to maintain the status quo will put God off. If we think we’re strong enough and able enough to have things our own way, we’re not much different than Adam and Eve. But the promise of God comes even if we block the way. Our blockage may keep us from accepting the promise, but the assurance is there. And always has been. So that we look at Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden and hear that God didn’t exterminate them, but kept them alive in the world. Things weren’t exactly as they had been, but at least things were. There will always be consequences, but there will always be life. And when Adam and Eve’s son Cain killed their son Abel, God was rightly angry and punished the murderer. But remember that the mark God put on Cain wasn’t a punishment, but a reminder to all who would see him that this Cain, this violent and awful Cain, was still claimed by and cared for by God. That God wasn’t finished with his creation. That God is never finished with his creation. Dust you are. Dust you will always be. And dust is the stuff from which God makes things. And that can make every new day exciting—to see what God will make of it. Even when what has led up to second dust has been awful, to see what God will come up with next. It’s like the lady with the fork.
Thanks to you, when I open my email every day I get all the latest sermon illustrations to show off in new ways what it is we should remember about God and his people. Some of them are new to me; I haven’t seen them before. Some of them I have seen so many times that they seem like old friends. I hesitate to estimate how many of you have emailed me about the woman who insisted that when she died, when she lay in her coffin, she wanted a fork placed in her hand. Dumbfounded, both the funeral director and her pastor asked why. And she said, At suppertime, when all had been served and most had been eaten, when the dishes were being cleared, it was always a treat to hear the words, Keep your fork. For that meant more was coming. Something I wanted. Something I needed. Something that would please me. I was to keep my fork because we weren’t done yet. So the woman said, When I die, I want you to put a fork in my hand as a testimony to everybody around me that I know, that I firmly believe, that we’re not done yet. That something good is yet to come. Which is just what I’ve been saying, That though you return to dust, you shouldn’t be all that upset about it, because God makes things from dust, and you’re next on his creation list. The only thing that isn’t known is exactly what use he’ll make of you next.
So that we can take some time in this season of Lent to examine, to prioritize, to see what has been good and what can be given up. To see what points us to creative God and what blocks us from his gift. Even to change our attitude from piling up everything in this life, knowing that the best may be to come. To be open to God at every step of the way to see what use he will make of us. Not even waiting until our death or our retirement or our next relocation or our high school graduation, but to know that God is always recreating, reshaping, repointing, reclaiming, redirecting our dusty selves into something finer. Oh, we claim to be perfectly happy with what we’ve got and how we are. But is that because we don’t know what will be? The person who ate a tomato for the first time took a risk, but is there something ahead, just beyond your sight, that will delight you? And if not that experience on that day, to expect something the next day or the one after that. I have no timetable for when God will re-shape you, but I do know that God walks with us through it all.
In my last weeks before retirement, forgive me for thinking that I have to come up with some sort of death-bed wisdom for all my children to recall. It could smack of dramatics and sentimentalism and one last chance to enlighten before my poor flame goes out. But I’ve been asked to take what I believe and what I have proclaimed and make it short and clear. So this is something to remember—that God walks with us through every day of our existence. Known by us or not, it is so. Pleased by that or not, it is so. He walks with us, always moving us on to something new. Something new. Something scary. Something new. Something unimagined. Something new. Something uncomfortable. Something new. Something delightful. And it all happens best and fastest when you place yourself in his hand and admit that creation isn’t up to you. When you see that, as first-life was a gift, so new life will be a gift too. When we refuse to see dust to dust as something morbid, but as something promising. And when we keep our fork close by us, as testimony to it all.
Dust we are and to dust we shall return. Lucky us.