By Rev. Aidan Moon

A Brief Theology of Dirt

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking this SoundCloud link.

“…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

– Genesis 2:7, English Standard Version

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 

There’s a bit of wordplay in Genesis 2: I am no Hebrew scholar, but the words for “the man” and “the ground” are a pun of sorts. Literally, the verse reads “the Lord God formed adam from the dust of the adamah.” Humanity is earthy. We come from the dirt.

That same word, adamah, echoes across the scriptures. It carries with it the idea of the land, the earth, the soil. It carries with it the connection we have with the ground we come from, the innate earthiness of our being. We are not just spiritual creatures, but creatures of earth filled with God’s breath. And even in the end, in death, we return to the soil from which we were formed. Dust you are, to dust you shall return. 

But not only this, Jesus reaffirms this value of something so lowly, of the earth. Jesus uses the things of earth. Jesus tells earthy stories – about people and the earth on which they live. Jesus walks the earth, and he spits on the earth and uses the mud to heal a blind man. Jesus takes the fruit of the earth, and gives it to his disciples: “This is my body; this is my blood.” And finally Jesus was buried under the earth, planted like a seed to grow up into a new, resurrected life.

The earth, the dirt, the soil, is God’s creation too. And God does not hesitate to continue to use earthen vessels to do his work. The God who formed us from earth has raised Christ from the earth. Even the earth is part of God’s redemption story.

Copyright Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado