Ash Wednesday

 

Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Today we join together to begin our Lenten journey to the cross.  These 40 days are a special time of dedication and focus in the church.  It is a season of repentance where we remember both our sinful nature and our need for God’s forgiveness.  But much more importantly it is a time for journeying with Jesus.  A time to focus more deeply on how Jesus is calling us and where Jesus is leading us to be.  And so it is also a time where we often heighten our observance and engage in Lenten disciplines like prayer, mediation, bible study, fasting, almsgiving and service to others.

The lessons appointed for today are perfectly designed to help us enter into Lent.  The reading from Isaiah reminds us of the true nature of worship before God.  He warns us of the dangers of shallow worship, of saying the right things and doing right things while letting injustice fester at out feet.  Instead Isaiah calls on us to live out our faith actively and deeply in ways that directly benefit those around us.  God tells us “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly;”

But the danger of this passage is that in our minds it can quickly become transactional, if I do good, if a perform enough good deeds then God will reward me and God will protect me and nothing will go wrong.  We think we can bribe God into blessing us if we just do enough good deeds.  But that is not how this works.  God is not transactional.  And good deeds are not the punishment, they are the reward. The life, the community, the mutual relationship with God and with our neighbor is the goal.   A life of justice, peace and mercy here and now is the actual point of practicing our faith.

And Jesus really drives this home in our Gospel lesson where he exhorts us to closely examine the motivations behind our heightened religious practices during this season. Jesus sternly warns against the pitfalls he has witnessed among those who engage in religious practice for the wrong reasons before exhorting his disciples to behave differently.  This passage ends with the famous line “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.” 

And it is even easier to fall into transactional pitfalls when we first hear this passage.  If we build beautiful things and do good deeds here on earth, pray, worship, give to the church, serve others, etc, we are somehow amassing points in heaven and no matter what happens here on earth, someday when we die, God will reward us for what we have done when we get to heaven.  We can so easily begin to think of our good deeds and religious acts like deposits in some sort of a heavenly savings account to be drawn upon to pay the debt of our sins or to enjoy after our spiritual retirement in heaven.

But God doesn’t work that way.  Notice that there is no future tense in this passage.  Paul even tells us “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” Jesus is not talking about life after death but how we live our spiritual lives here today.  The heavenly reward that Jesus is offering is not some far off boon we will receive after we die, but a deeper relationship with God right here and now.  For it is that relationship that is the focus of this whole passage and really the focus of Ash Wednesday and all of Lent.

What God truly desires in not a show, is not visible acts of piety, but a deep and meaningful mutual relationship that naturally produces the fruits of the spirit.  Jesus invites us during this season to turn away from those things that are perishable, our worldly good, our distractions, our social standing and our creature comforts and to turn our hearts toward the one thing that is truly imperishable, our relationship with God almighty.

As we come forward and our foreheads are marked with ashes, we are told to ‘remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return’.  But the ashes we use are no ordinary ashes, they a made from the burned Palms of past palm Sundays, the mark of a riotous celebration, turned to dust by human sin. Yet even this palm ash has not outlived its usefulness.  It is transformed once again this night.  While it was nothing but ashes before, when it takes the form of the cross as it adorns the heads of the believers, it becomes a powerful symbol of our connection to the one that will never perish.  As we receive this mark of Christ on our bodies, I invite you to consider how Christ may be transforming you as well.  And I invite you to enter even more deeply into the discipline of Lent.  

Now I know that the very word discipline can be a stumbling block for many on this Lenten path.   A Lenten discipline to modern ears can sound very much like a punishment, a spiritual trip to the principal’s office of you will.  But that is not what discipline actually means.  It comes from the same Latin word as disciple meaning to be taught or to learn.  So a Lenten discipline is not a punishment but an opportunity to learn and grow.  Perhaps we would be better in this day and age to call it a Lenten apprenticeship than a Lenten discipline.   The very purpose is to help us listen more closely to God, grow in our faith and deepen our relationship with Christ.

Lent is a season that gives us so many opportunities to transform the dust of our lives into the shape of the cross.  So I invite you to apprentice yourself to Christ this season, setting aside your time, attention and talents to focus on deepening your relationship with God perhaps in new ways.  Not out of habit or obligation, not to be seen by others, or to atone for our sins but because God so deeply desires a relationship with us that he would send his own son to die for it. Amen.