All that we are, all that we have, all that we do, is
but dust in the wind. Except one thing: the Word of God,
the one thing that has the power to transform ashes into
eternity.
After our Shabbat
Shuvah service yesterday and after the oneg and
fellowship with new friends in our home, I was very
tired. When I arose from my nap, for some reason, there
was a song in my head. But I didn't like it! It was Dust
in the Wind. Sing: All we are is dust in the wind. I
hadn't heard this song in years. I don't even remember
any other words. I couldn't figure out why this song was
ringing in my mind, swirling over and over again, all
evening. It's such a depressing song, pointing out the
futility of human pursuits, desires, goals, ambitions,
politics, money, love affairs, religiosity. Call little
more than chasing after the wind. Maybe it was because
my stomach was a bit sour? Maybe it was because my heart
was grieving about relationships that seem to be
slipping away, like leaves falling off trees? Maybe it
was because of spiritual warfare, a demon of depression
seeking to distract me from my own hopes and dreams?
This morning, when I went for another walk, in Trexler
Park, which was really glorious this morning, when I
prayed about this Yom Kippur message, the Holy Spirit
said, softly but distinctly: Dust in the Wind. Maybe it
was because, after all, he is the holy wind?
We are, after all, but
dust. G-d spelled it out to Adam, and all of his
descendants, in Genesis 3:19: By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to
dust you will return. The writers of Scriptures often
remembered this theme, especially in their bleaker
moments. Job 2:12 tells us, When [his friends] saw him
from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they
began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and
sprinkled dust on their heads. So, dust had become a
symbol of mortality, and sprinkling dust on the head a
sign of grief. Job cried out to Hashem, in Job 10:9,
Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn
me to dust again? Some say that Job is the oldest book
in the Bible. But Job clearly was aware of what G-d had
said to Adam. There is a time to remember what G-d said
to Adam. In Job 7:21, he cries out: "Why do you not
pardon my offenses and forgive my sins? For I will soon
lie down in the dust; you will search for me, but I will
be no more. What is the connection between our offenses
and sins and our lying down in the dust? Job understands
that it because of sin that every human being must die.
And his greatest terror is that he will just die in his
sins, unpardoned. Oh, how he needed Yom Kippur! Oh, how
we need the Day of Atonement!
Lest we forget,
Ecclesiastes 3:20 reminds us, again: All go to the same
place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.
Koheleth, the Teacher, recognized that every human
endeavor is vanity, meaningless: 2:17. So I hated life,
because the work that is done under the sun was grievous
to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the
wind.
Hugh! Here's how T. S.
Eliot describes modern life, in his famous poem, The
Waste Land: Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter
dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had
not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and
infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes
before his feet, Flowed up the hill and down King
William Street . . . Eliot got the line, so many, I had
not thought death had done so many, from Dante's
Inferno, where he uses to describe people who had spent
their whole lives chasing one thing or another, like
flags shifting in the wind, while all the while they are
chased by hornets stringing them. If we are but dust,
what is the meaning of our toil? Whenever we try to
cling onto anything, it becomes dust between our
fingers.
So people try not to
think about it. They try to push it out of the picture
... and so deceive themselves. They try to act as if
life will go on, day after day, or act as if it doesn't
matter what they do. But the reality remains: death, the
wages of sin, has undone so many.
In Isaiah 40:6. AA
voice says, Cry out.' [Whose voice? Whose voice told the
prophet, Cry out'?] And I said, What shall I cry?' All
men are like grass, and all their glory is like the
flowers of the field.' [What is human glory, in this
life? What glory, what recognition, are you after?
Sometimes I would like people to say, what a great Rabbi
you are! Sometimes I would like people to say, what a
great friend you are! How is this glory, this
recognition, this pride of life, like the glory of the
flowers?] The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the LORD blows on them. Surely the
people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall
. . . There is one thing, one thing alone, that endures,
that gives meaning to life, that overcomes our
selfishness and sin, that outlasts death: The grass
withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our G-d
stands forever.
All that we are, all that we have, all
that we do, is but dust in the wind.
Except one thing: the
Word of G-d, the one thing has the power to transform
ashes into eternity.
Listen to the Word of
G-d, from Psalm 90, a prayer of Moses the man of G-d.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all
generations. This is G-d's answer to the pain of the
realization that we are but grass, turning into dust. I
am your dwelling place throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the
earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you
are G-d. You turn men back to dust, saying, "Return
to dust, O sons of men." For a thousand years in
your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like
a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of
death; they are like the new grass of the morning -
though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it
is dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger and
terrified by your indignation. You have set our
iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of
your presence. That line - With the Lord a day is like a
thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day isn't
it awesome? When you heard it, did any of you hear
something like a wind, a breath, blowing out of
eternity? Peter elaborates: Do not forget this one
thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a
thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. For
animals and infants, time is like a point, virtually
one-dimensional: they don't dwell much on the past or
the future. Recently, Abigail started talking about the
past, but it's always yesterday. She went to Aunt Melody's
yesterday even though it was actually many months ago.
When we grow up, time is 2-dimensional, like a line:
always flowing forward, inevitably, like a stream. Or it
is like a chain, linking moment to moment, inextricably.
We remember the past and imagine the future, but we can't
get there from here; we can only go forward, point to
point. Pagan religions, Greeks and Hindus, envision time
as a circle, actually a vicious cycle, like a snake
eating its own tail. It is a picture of pain and
frustration: is there no escape?
The Word of G-d tells
us something different. In Ecclesiastes, after the
famous part about a time to tear and a time to mend, a
time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a
time for peace, Eccles 3:11 says, He has made everything
beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the
hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what G-d has done
from beginning to end. G-d put us in time, but he also
has set eternity in our hearts, a yearning for eternal
meaning and beauty which we can only find in Him. For
G-d, time has many dimensions. He can speed it up (a
thousand years are like a day) or slow it down (a day is
like a thousand years). Our secret sins are in the light
of his presence, every moment as well as the Day of
Judgment. Yet also, his mercies are new every morning.
He can come in and out as he chooses, making an
appearance here to wrestle with Jacob, there to give the
Torah to Moses, here to give David or Isaiah a vision of
Messiah, there to live in our life of suffering and
death himself. After Yeshua rose from the dead and
assumed his new, glorified body, he could visit friends
without their even recognizing him, then vanish before
they eyes; he could appear to them in locked rooms and
by breathing on them, give them understanding of the
Word of the Lord, which endures forever. He could give
them the meaning and purpose of life, a taste of
eternity, unlike anything else in this world: the gift
of the Ruach, the Wind out of eternity. They carried
this gift from Jerusalem, to Samaria, and to the ends of
the world. They brought this gift to you and me.
I don't know about you,
but I need this gift, which He has brought to us our of
eternity, this gift which is the only answer to the
array of my iniquities set before me, "even my
secret sins in the light of his presence.
This gift is what Yom
Kippur is all about. It is the gift of atonement,
covering our sins, and reconciling us to G-d forever. It
is a gift I can no more cover my own sins by myself than
I can escape death by myself. It is a gift because G-d
made our hearts for eternity. It is a gift that Yeshua
gave us, once and for all, by dying on a cross outside
of Jerusalem. The death of Yeshua on the cross happened
once, nearly 2000 years ago, and probably nobody there
really comprehended what was happening. Yet the cross is
G-d's atonement for every sin, at every moment of time.
The writer to the
Hebrews (or first century Messianic Jews) explains, in
Hebrews 7:27: Unlike the other high priests, he does not
need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his
own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He
sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered
himself. Day after day, in the Temple, other priests
offered sacrifices, as prescribed by Moses. Yet Yeshua
offered a sacrifice once for all not merely once, but
for all time.
Leviticus 16 explains
in detail the ancient Yom Kippur service. In Lev 16:6,
Aaron [the high priest] is to offer the bull for his own
sin offering to make atonement for himself and his
household. As the writer to the Hebrews says, first for
his own sins. Why? Because the High Priests could not
make atonement for anyone else until he himself had been
covered. Then he offered sacrifices for the sins of the
people specifically, a bull and two goats. One goat was
for a sin offering the cohen hagadol brought its blood
into the Holy of Holies, once a year, and sprinkled its
blood on the mercy seat of Hashem. Leviticus 16:15-16
instructs: He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin
offering for the people and take its blood behind the
curtain and do with it as he did with the bull's blood:
He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front
of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most
Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of
the Israelites, whatever their sins have been."
Once, when I was
preparing for Yom Kippur, using a Conservative prayer
book, I found absolutely no mention of blood in their
version of the Temple avodah (service)! Yet it is clear,
in Lev 16, that blood is central to the ancient
ceremony. (The blood is in the Orthodox avodah!) Why
would modern Jews be squeamish about blood? Perhaps they
think the bloody sacrifices are too barbaric to
remember? But it is dangerous to remove anything from
the Word of G-d! All we will left is a man-centered
religion, which will not endure.
To be sure, there is
some basis for squeamishness blood is precious, for it
is life itself! Leviticus 17:11 tells us that "the
life of the creature is in the blood, and G-d has given
it to you to make atonement for yourself on the
altar." The blood of the goat cleansed the altar -
blood thus renews our access, as a people, to G-d. Once
and for all, Messiah Yeshua became the sacrifice whose
blood makes atonement for our sins. Hebrews 9:12
explains, He did not enter by means of the blood of
goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place
once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal
redemption. What made the blood of Messiah different
from the blood of goats and calves? He made the
sacrifice once, at a particular moment in our human
history, yet he also made it for all, for all eternity,
for all who put their trust in him. Heb 9:11 explains,
When Messiah came as high priest of the good things that
are already here, he went through the greater and more
perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say,
not a part of this creation.
In other words, what
happened that day on the cross was not just that day; it
was a rip in the fabric of eternity! He made his
sacrifice in a perfect tabernacle that is not a part of
this creation. Heb 9:25 elaborates, Nor did he enter
heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the
high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with
blood that is not his own. Then Messiah would have had
to suffer many times since the creation of the world.
But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the
ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Awesome! He offered up his own body as a sacrifice, once
and for all.
700 years before it
happened, the prophet Isaiah saw it happening, and tells
us in Isaiah 53:5, But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the
punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by
his wounds we are healed. 500 years before it happened,
the prophet Zechariah saw it happening, in Zechariah
12:10, The inhabitants of Jerusalem ... will look on me,
the one they have pierced. Actually, more than 500
years, because Zechariah also says, And they will mourn
for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve
bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
That hasn't happened yet, but it will . . . When Messiah
Yeshua return, he won't be on the cross, but the
inhabitants of Jerusalem will see the pierce marks of
the nails on hands and feet, and that day he suffered
and died will suddenly become real to them, and so, as
Romans 11:26 says, all Israel will be saved. These
things happen in the fullness of time, in moments, on
days, that transcend time, and bring us into the
presence of the Eternal One. On that day, when Yeshua
died, He said, "Father forgive them, for they know
not what they do." Who was Yeshua forgiving, as he
died on the cross? Was he forgiving the High Priest and
his crowd who had condemned him and jeered at him? Was
he forgiving the Roman soldiers who carried out the
unjust sentence? Perhaps they couldn't fully comprehend
what they were doing? Who can really comprehend eternity
or the things of G-d, in the rust of a moment? Or was he
forgiving you, and me?
The moment he died,
Mark 15:38 tells us, The curtain of the temple was torn
in two from top to bottom. Today, if you confess your
sins, Yeshua hears you from his cross, and forgives you.
1 John 1:9 says, If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from
all unrighteousness. He did this from the cross on
Golgotha, one moment that cuts across all our moments,
so that he is able to make atonement for us, once and
for all. It never ceases to amaze me: his mercies endure
forever! He will never stop forgiving my sins! The blood
of Messiah, who was without sin, like a lamb without
blemish, became, once and for all, our guilt offering
The blood of Messiah washes the holy altar - the inner
sanctuary of our hearts - clean. The blood of Messiah
provides access to the eternal Holy of Holies - the
mercy seat of Heaven.
On Yom Kippur, it is
traditional to say, chatimah tovah, which means a good
sealing, because, traditionally, the Book of Life is
sealed, once and for all, on Yom Kippur. Are you
inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life? Not just for a
year, but forever? The book of life appears in Daniel
12: There will be a time of distress such as has not
happened from the beginning of nations until then. But
at that time your people - everyone whose name is found
written in the book - will be delivered. Multitudes who
sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to
everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting
contempt. Are you written in the book of everlasting
life?
Revelation 20:12
reveals that the book of live will be opened the last
day: And I saw the dead, great and small, standing
before the throne, and books were opened. Another book
was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were
judged according to what they had done as recorded in
the books. That day is coming: it presses upon us every
day of our lives. You have set our iniquities before
you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. Are
you inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life? The Word
of G-d reveals how you can be inscribed and sealed
forever in the Book of Life: Lev 17:11: "G-d has
given the blood to you to make atonement for yourself on
the altar." Heb 10:13 says: "How much more
then, will the blood of Messiah who, through the eternal
Ruach Hakodesh, offered himself up to G-d, cleanse your
consciences from worthless deeds, that we may serve the
living G-d? From
eternity, G-d has given us this awesome gift of
everlasting mercy: accept it, tonight! Psalm 103:13
speaks of this wonderful gift: As a father has
compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion
on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are
like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place
remembers it no more. But from everlasting to
everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him.
If your heart is telling you these
things are true, now it the time.
If you would like to pray to the Eternal One, pray with
me, and the Holy Spirit, who is here . . .
Eternal One, I recognize that I cannot
know you unless you reveal yourself to me.
You are eternal; I am but dust in the wind.
You are holy; I fall short of your glory every day.
I recognize that I need your atonement to cover my sins.
My sins, G-d, separate me from you.
I thank you that have provided a way to cleanse my
conscience and my life.
I thank you for the Lamb of G-d who takes away the sin
of the world: the Messiah, Yeshua.
I recognize that he came, fulfilling the promises of the
prophets,
to open a way for me to
know the living G-d.
I accept your gift of atonement.
Thank you for accepting me.
Teach me how to live a life of holiness,
looking more and more
like the image of G-d you created me to be,
looking more and more
like Messiah Yeshua, the holy one,
whom you have revealed to
me, and all humanity, in your Word.
In the name of Messiah Yeshua.
Amen.
If you prayed this prayer and would
like to know what to do next,
or have any questions or
comments, feel free to ask the Rabbi.
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