Ash Wednesday – 17 February 2010

One of the easiest things to do in life is to offend someone and one of the easiest ways to offend someone is to invite them to church, particularly to an Ash Wednesday service.  This service is perhaps one of the most culturally offensive services of the church predominantly for this phrase,  Memento, homo, quia pluvis es, et in pulverem reverteris or “Remember, O man, that dust thou are, and to dust thou shalt return.”  This phrase is offensive to the culturally sensitive for two reasons.  First, a modern translation of this phrase could be, “Listen you dirt bag, you are helplessly mortal and your death awaits.”  Everyone takes offensive at being called a dirt bag, almost everyone takes offensive at being called a mortal and nearly everyone takes offensive when you tell them their death is immanent.  Second, this phrase is noticeably masculine, “Remember, O man…” and culturally sensitive people do not like exclusive gender specific words even when those words have a generic meaning.  Modern translations, trying to be inoffensive and inclusive, translate the generic masculine word “man” with the 2^nd person personal pronoun “you.”  In their haste to be culturally sensitive, however, these modern translations fail to see at least three levels of radical and extraordinary inclusivity in the word “man.” 

First, this word implies our radical inclusivity in history, particularly in the history of sin.  The words, “Remember, O man, from dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return” are from Genesis 3:19.  These words are spoken by God to Adam after Adam sinned.  The name Adam, by the way, means “man” in Hebrew.  This simple word “man” brings us back in time to the origins of sin, when Adam chose to rebel against God’s love and brought death and decay upon himself.  We, as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, have inherited this sin from Adam.  This inheritance is not just hereditary; it is also our choice.  Someone has rightly said, “It is not so much that we fell with Adam into sin, as that we jumped into it with our eyes wide open and a cheery wave to the crowd.  We have chosen to return to the dust.”[1]  Thus the first radical (and dare I say offensive) inclusivity found in the word “man” is that we are all sinners; each and every one of us is a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve who has deliberately chosen to sin.  A quick aside, now you know why people of gotten rid of the word “man” in this liturgy, not because the word “man” is sexist, but because it says everyone is, in the words of David Mills, “[an] egotistical, preening, pathetic little fool.”[2]

Second, the word “man” implies a radically inclusive community, a community made up of individuals someone has described as “unoriginal, uninteresting, derivative, unimaginative bore[s].”[3]  Sin destroys personality by striping individuality from people leaving them a static lump of flesh unnoticeable in the massive mob of humanity.  Sin creates an inclusive community of conformist sinners.  As David Mills said, “So, in your sins, you are not even the unique individual you think yourself. You are not special. You are average, mediocre, run of the mill.”[4]  The community of sin implied by the generic masculine word “man” is the world’s first inclusive community, a community we all are born into, a community that someone has described as “a herd society, a race of anxious, timid, conformist ‘sheep’…a [community] of utter banality.”[5]  Thus, the second radical inclusivity implied by the word “man” is the inclusive community of sin which we are not just born into, but chose to remain in. 

The first two levels of radical inclusivity implied by the word “man” do not provide the joyful glee we have come to expect from inclusivity.  St. Paul adequately summarizes these two levels in I Corinthians, “by man came death…in Adam all die.”  However, we are not left to wallow in our own dust and ashes for St. Paul continues, “by man came also the resurrection…in Christ shall all be made alive.”  The third implication of the word “man” points us toward the man Jesus Christ.  As David Mills rightly said, “To be a descendent of Adam is also, and more importantly, to be a man or woman for whom the Son of God became man, died, and rose again…Remember, O Son of Adam, that you are not only a son of Adam but that you are also a child of the Father through adoption. You are dust, yes, but you are redeemed dust that God will reassemble.” Mills continues, “[Thus] the ashes mark a cross upon your forehead, a sign not only of the cost of your sins but also of your redemption from your sins.”[6]   Just as sin is radically inclusive, forming a community in which we all live, making our death immanent and the disintegration of our bodies into dust inevitable, so the redemption of found through the cross of Jesus Christ is inclusive being freely given to all who put their trust in him by giving him their lives.   So Remember, O man, from dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.  Remember the sins from which you were redeemed, remember the community of sinners in which you live, and remember to always turn your eyes upon Jesus who has taken our sins upon himself, becoming our propitiation and who has promised to remake the dust of our dead bodies into eternal, perfect bodies.  Dust we certainly are, but through grace the dust of man when mixed with the blood of Jesus Christ will become the molding clay of God! 

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Robert Pippen, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 22. Quoted by Colin Gunton, The One, the Three, and the Many (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pgs. 13 and 39.

[6] David Mills,  

Page last updated 12:21am, February 24, 2010