It all began in darkness, and to darkness all will return. For indeed, as the psalmist declares, 

“As for mortals, their days are like grass;they flourish like a flower of the field;for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,and its place knows it no more.”

We gather tonight under the cover, in the shelter of darkness at the beginning of this Lenten season. A season that already feels a year long.

We gather in darkness to be marked by the truth that we are dust: the dust of the earth; the dust of the stars; the dust of life, God-breathed and beautiful.

Called out of the darkness, out of the darkness of the earth, called God’s own. We are named God’s beloved no matter who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done. Beloved. 

It all begins in darkness like the days before time when out of the darkness God created the heavens and the earth; the earth and all that is in it: calling us good, calling you good, beloved, enough.

In Lent, we enter the creation story once again, but this time the unfolding creation of a new heaven, and a new earth. We enter the story of a God always creating with fingers in the loam; dirt and dust under fingernails, tending the soil of our lives. Preparing it. Preparing us to receive the seeds of new life, new contemplation, new understanding,  new found glory.

New ways of being faithful, even as the former ones pass away. 

There’s something about being reminded that we are dust as the days grow longer and as the earth warms in fits and starts. 

Beautiful sunshine one day, darkness and cold winds the next. The early bulbs dare to peak above the ground to explore the world beyond the darkness. That’s coming. That too will come. But not yet. 

This year, entering into Lent, I do so with some fear and trepidation. Fear and trepidation and assurance, blessed assurance that Jesus is here, is mine, is ours. Jesus has been here before and Jesus will be here with us once again in the dirt—the muck and filth of real life.

Such a life, a life marked by faith, faces its own hillsides and valleys. This lenten season, we descend from the mountaintop of the Transfiguration into the valley of shadows, and dry bones.

Feet in the ground, being reminded, being called into the soil of new life, being called to embody, to incarnate hope in the midst of darkness. 

This journey can be difficult. But friends, we do not journey alone. We journey with Jesus, and we journey with one another. 

And Jesus, the helpless child we met in the manger, the one who goes to die on the cross, the one who lived a good life, who brings healing and restoration, reconciliation and peace to all we who are hurting. That one journeys with us too. 

This is the journey we are on. Together. Not just as faithful sidekicks, to a superstar saviour, but as a community formed in and called to embody the way of Jesus in these 40 days of Lent—and beyond. 

It all began in darkness, the darknesss of the earth, on whom we depend for our very lives, our very survival. 

And so, our invitation in these lenten days is not merely to remember that we are dust, that we are soil, that we are of the land and made for it. Our invitation today is to prepare to receive the seed that will be planted in our hearts, our lives, our parish, our community. This is a seed that will bear fruit on the far side of complexity, on the far side of the great three days of death, unknowing, and surprising unbelievable resurrection. 

Jesus says, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” And so we wait with penitent, expectant hearts, preparing ourselves to receive the one who has given, who is giving, who will give himself once again for our life and the life of the world. And we turn ourselves to the work we have before us. 

In this time we pray for one another. 

For the healing of the body of the earth broken time and again

For the healing of our world, plagued by exclusion, indifference, and fear

For the healing of our parish, when relationships and trust have—from time to time—been broken

For our own healing, in whatever it is we face in these strange and uncertain days.

Everybody needs a healer. And that healing is on offer, as we open ourselves to such possibility, as we journey down this road with Jesus, as we acknowledge our own brokenness, receive absolution, and pursue reconciliation. 

Healing is on offer as we open ourselves to this journey. With Jesus. Through Lent. Towards the Cross. And indeed, the reconciliation of all things. 

Amen.