FOR HE KNOWS WHEREOF WE ARE MADE

Public domain.

“As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our sins from us…
For he himself knows whereof we are made;
he remembers that we are but dust.”
(Psalm 103:12, 14)

I’ll never forget the moment of realization I had in a hospital room one day, early in my ministry. I was visiting a woman who’d been suffering for years with various health problems. She’d been in and out of the hospital over and over for the last few months. She was sick, and she was tired. And after a few minutes of introductions and small talk, our conversation sputtered out as she avoided my eyes. After a minute or so of silence, she looked at me with despair in her eyes, and said, “I just don’t know why God would do this to me. I thought I was a good person my whole life. I always tried to do the right thing, and I thought I had. I guess I was wrong.” I suddenly realized why she wasn’t so happy to have a minister in her room. She believed that God was punishing her for something, but she had no idea why, and in that moment, I was the sign and symbol of her pain. It broke my heart to hear that it was her faith, the very thing that could have helped alleviate her pain, which made it worse instead.

I don’t know where along the way through life she’d learned this idea. Maybe she was taught as a child, by teachers or parents trying to get her to behave, that if she followed the rules, God would reward her in this life, and if she broke them, she’d be punished. Maybe she attended a church where preachers told her that mortality was Adam and Eve’s punishment for their primordial sin, or where they hammered home Paul’s statement that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Maybe it was just her own anxiety in the face of suffering, the need to have control, the need for things to make sense; the hope that if we can simply be good enough, nothing bad will ever happen to us. More likely, it was a whole series of experiences. It takes a lifetime to learn these kinds of ideas, and they live deep in our souls. We can’t just get past them, no matter what our conscious minds may say.

You might think at first that our Ash Wednesday service could be part of the problem. On Ash Wednesday, after all, our liturgy combines the two themes of sin and death, of repentance and mortality. Its two special features are the imposition of ashes and the Litany of Penitence. With one breath, we remind one another that we are dust, and to dust we shall return; with the next, we confess that even for creatures made of mud, our lives are pretty messy, and we acknowledge the many ways in which each one of us falls short. And I can certainly understand how someone might think that there’s a causal connection here;: that if “the wages of sin is death,” then it’s my individual failings that explain my own suffering.

And yet I can’t help but notice that in our Scripture readings for Ash Wednesday, things seem to work the other way around. Perhaps in part this is because we’re living in a very different world. The ancients assumed that misfortune was the result of divine punishment, from one god or another, for sins known or unknown or simply because the gods were cruel. The prophet Joel acknowledges that the “day of the Lord” is “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Joel 2:1–2). But he doesn’t end there. Joel’s ultimate message is not that the people have sinned, or that God will punish them, but that God will forgive them, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” It’s never too late, Joel says; “even now” you can return, and God will embrace you as God’s own (2:12–13). 

Fast forward a few hundred years, and when Paul talks about sin and suffering, it couldn’t be further from what my parishioner learned long ago. Like her, Paul has suffered. He lists off his “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments” and more, a litany of misfortune (2 Cor. 5:4–5). But Paul doesn’t think these are acts of divine punishment or signs of hidden wrongdoing. His suffering is the proof that he’s doing something right. If suffering in this life were a measurement of God’s love, then Paul’s is a world turned upside down, in which “we are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see!—we are alive.” (2 Cor. 8–9) Paul is left with nothing, and yet, by the grace of God, he finds himself possessing everything.

But for me, the moment that finally makes sense of this connection between sin and death, repentance and mortality, comes in the psalm. “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy,” the psalmist says, echoing Joel, “slow to anger and of great kindness… He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.” So far, so good. We can always use a reminder, especially on Ash Wednesday, that God’s capacity for grace and mercy are far greater than our capacity for sin. But then this: “As a father cares for his children, so does the Lord care for those who fear him. For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.” (Psalm 103:13–14) And it’s that “for” that gets me.

God is full of compassion and mercy. God does not deal out a punishment that fits our crimes. God has removed our sins from us, God cares for us like little children, for God knows whereof we are made; God remembers that we are dust. It’s not that we are mortal and fragile, sick and suffering because God is punishing us. We are mortal, and we are fragile; we get sick and we suffer. And God sees us, and God loves us, and as far as the east is from the west, God removes our sins from us, for God knows that we are but dust. Our suffering is not the result of God’s wrath. It’s the source of God’s compassion, God’s choice to come alongside us, and help us bear the load.

So this Lent, remember that you are but dust. Your greatest achievements, the things in life of which you are most proud, will one day be dissolved. Your youth and health, if you still have them, will crumble into ash. Even the most powerful legacy will be forgotten one day. But the same is true of your flaws. Your deepest shame, your darkest moments, the ineradicable issues you wish that you could fix, but can’t, will one float away, like so much dust on the wind. There is no shame that you can carry that will last forever, no mistake that can prevent God from saving and redeeming you. God sees you as you are, and God cares for you as you are, because God knows whereof you are made. God knows that you are but dust, and God wants to love you nevertheless, so much that God will die to save you, and to turn your dust and ashes into new and eternal life: for God is “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”