Dirty theology

God’s use of dirt throughout the ages is quite remarkable.  In fact dirt has been an active agent in God’s ongoing renewal of all things.  Only God could use dirt to bring life and healing and redemption. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Consider with me that the story of mans existence begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it.
Genesis 2:7 (NLT)
Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.
 
Before there was bone and flesh and muscle and blood, before there was life in the form of Adam, there was dirt. From the dirt God “formed” the man.
4000 years after the creation of Adam, mankind was so messed up that as a race we needed redemption.
 
So out of the pristine and perfect cleanliness of heaven, Jesus, God’s only Son, arrives on the earth. He arrives in an animal stable. Really, it was probably more of a cave, hewn out of some rock behind the bed and breakfast. And caves are dirty, and manure is smelly, and after the one who would renew all things slept for a while in some dusty hay, his parents picked him up, dusted him off, and carried him into his earthy journey and mission.
At one point, several years into the journey, Jesus takes some dirt, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him.
John 9:6-7 (NLT) 6 Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and smoothed the mud over the blind man's eyes. 7 He told him, "Go and wash in the pool of Siloam" (Siloam means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came back seeing!
It’s amazing what God can do with a handful of dirt.
In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" distanced from the need and pain and mess and dirt, but who moves into grungy old Nazareth, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come", and he got his hands dirty, spending time with all of society's rejects. 
Then the end of his earthly journey, Jesus died on a Roman cross, reserved for failures—people like me and people like you.   
The triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything dirty we do to ourselves and to others. The blood that Jesus shed that day cleaned us up and gave us a new start!
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)