February 6, 2008 – Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21 and Matthew 13:33
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Tonight we begin the 40-day journey of Lent, a journey that asks us to invest ourselves in particular ways as people of faith and which promises us a rich return in our relationship with God and with this world that God loves. It is a journey in which we will follow Jesus from his wilderness temptations to his raising to life of Lazarus; a journey that will lead us into the vulnerability of Good Friday, through the abyss of Holy Saturday and into the divine surprise of Easter Sunday.
The Gospel reading on Ash Wednesday is always St. Matthew’s account of Jesus teaching his followers how to do what they’re expected to do; specifically, how not to be a bunch of show-offs. Religious devotion was a primary expectation of all Jews in Jesus’ day, and that devotion was fleshed out in very concrete ways: in prayer, at specific times of the day; in fasting, or the practice of denying oneself a favored activity in order to focus more clearly on God; and alms-giving, or the giving of money for the poor. Those disciplines were simply expected as marks of personal piety. So Jesus told his friends that when they practiced their devotion they were to do it mindful that the world is not a stage; rather, that they were in fact playing to a heavenly audience of One.
Although the practices Jesus commends are still to be in effect in believers’ lives, his caution to his followers seems out of place today. I doubt that Christians in this or any other mainstream congregation are eager to be seen by others as hyper-religious, as if praying long, eloquent prayers in public is a temptation. We have trouble finding someone to offer a few words of grace before a midweek Lenten soup supper in our own fellowship hall! No, in America 2008 the Christian movement is in far greater danger of being seen as irrelevant rather than showy.
And yet, here we sit, ashes on our foreheads. The practice of wearing ashes in this way was instituted by Gregory I, bishop of Rome back in the 7th Century, and was intended to signify sorrow for one’s sins and recognition of one’s need for God. However, the corporate confession of sin and brokenness we shared a few moments ago sweeps us up into an even larger truth: We also mourn over the sins of the world.
During a recent forum here at Advent one of the participants asked, How do we keep from getting overwhelmed with all the need that we see in the world? There’s so much human suffering, every place you look there’s so much that needs to be done. Her comment pointed us to something Jesus said at the beginning of St. Matthew’s gospel, when he said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” It is a hard blessing to mourn not only over one’s own sins but also over the brokenness of the world, a burden that is at once obvious and impossible. What she was feeling was a holy unrest, and it is that unrest also that we are to experience in Lent. We grieve over the brokenness in our own lives, and also over the sin-filled fractures in creation.
So how do we move forward faithfully in this new season? The ancient practices Jesus commends to us will serve us well.
Prayer, in which we intentionally enter into the presence of God; try reminding yourself to stop for just a moment at specific times during the day, every day, say at 9 a.m., noon, and 3 p.m., and offer petitions both of thanks and of concern for those around you, and for those half-way around the world.
Fasting, in which we either deny ourselves something in order to focus our attention more nearly on God or take on a new activity or discipline in order to accomplish the same purpose.
Alms-giving, or works of devotion to and care for the poor. Not the poor in spirit, or the sorrowful, or the unhappy. The poor, the empty ones who are near as well as those you can reach through ELCA World Hunger Appeal.
Jesus instructed his followers to make sure that their motives, their reasons, for acting out their devotion to God were clear and clean; and the same instruction applies to us. We do not follow the disciplines of Lent so that God will somehow love us more but because the disciplines of Lent reflect who we genuinely, authentically are – they are marks of our identity, and living out our identity is God’s way of reclaiming Creation.
The assembled people of God, acting authentically, purposefully in the power of God given through the Holy Spirit, is the only lasting alternative to the world’s system of power and domination. The assembled people of God, acting authentically, purposefully in the power of God through the Holy Spirit, is the only lasting alternative to war, to the oppression of one people by another, to a global value system that allows children to starve to death at the rate of one every three seconds; it is the only enduring alternative to the illusion that if we just have enough money, enough prosperity we can keep fear away and death will not find us.
The assembled people of God, acting in the power of God through the Holy Spirit, is the hope of the world. It is for us to live fully as the people God created us to be.
Hundreds of years before Jesus, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah and called the people of his day to account with a clear message: Stop fooling yourselves; if you want to get closer to God, stop going through the motions of worship and instead roll up your sleeves and start making a Godly difference in the world. Jesus tuned up the message for his day: Orient yourselves to God, do it with consistency and quiet passion, and God will be your destination.
And so the message comes down to us. God sends us out, to practice the disciplines of Lent; sends us out into the world like leaven that God mixes in with flour until – until, not if – the entire batch is leavened. Like God’s leaven, we tend to our disciplines and have our impact, remembering that a little over a month ago, we celebrated the birth of Jesus. Now, as we begin the journey to his death, we are mindful of a divine symmetry: God brought Jesus to us, so that Jesus might bring us to God.
May your Lenten journey bring you nearer to God, and in the process may you be healing for the world. Amen.
