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Ash Wednesday, 02/25/2009
Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21, by Hubert Beck
Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. . . . . . . .
And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (English Standard Version)
A DAY, A SEASON, A LIFE
The Day
Ashes. Words. Bread. Wine.
Ash Wednesday is marked by ashes, words, bread and wine.
Ashes on the forehead. Words joined to actions and objects. Bread and wine enlivened by words.
Ashes in the shape of a cross. Words with the ashes: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Words with ashes emphasizing your mortality - words first spoken by God: "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:19 ESV) Remember this!
Ashes in the shape of a cross on your forehead where once were poured the waters of new life "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." The life of Jesus' cross and resurrection was joined there to those ashes of your mortality, putting aside the old person so that a new one could take its place. "Buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:3, 4 ESV)
Hands of absolution placed on your head, remembering your baptism with words such as these: "Blessed are you, child of God, blessed are you! Your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Go in peace."
Bread and wine with a long history going back to a meal long ago - the Passover Supper on the evening before Jesus went to his suffering and death. From the bread and wine he gave to his disciples that evening to the bread and wine of this day a long thread is unwinding.
Not just bread and wine in silence. Words are with them. The words Jesus said then, ""Take, eat; this is my body. . . . Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matthew 26:26, 27 ESV) Bread and wine in your hands, on your tongue, received as "The body of Christ, the Bread of heaven, given for you," "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation, given for you."
Christ's body. Christ's blood. Not body and blood spread around promiscuously here and there and everywhere. They are here specifically "for you." The body and blood that took our mortality upon himself are here given us that our body and blood may be joined to his. Thus the mortality of our ashes, administered in the form of a cross, are turned into the immortality of life everlasting.
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou." Famous words of worldly love from an earthly author are invigorated with a new meaning and a divine love in this meal. Without the "thou" the bread and wine are stuff of this earth. With the "thou" they are the Bread of heaven and the Cup of salvation.
Life here. Life after death. Life with God forever - signed in ashes, joined to water once poured with sacred words, bread and wine placed in our hands and on our lips with words of our Savior. Everything is as old as the dust of the death impressed upon all humankind in Eden and as new as the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whose death and resurrection we were joined in our baptism only a few years ago.
That is what this evening is all about.
The Season
And for some, fasting. Perhaps fasting today only. Perhaps fasting for the entire season of Lent.
Fasting. The partial denial either of things necessary or things that delight life. A sign that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4 ESV)
Denial at the same time that fullness of life is being affirmed by signs of an ashen cross and bread and wine.
Fasting: a discipline of body to instruct the spirit. Jesus did not say, "Do not fast." He said, in fact, "When you fast . . . ." Undoubtedly he fasted - at least on occasion. Undoubtedly the disciples fasted - at least on occasion. They were Jews. Jews had days and periods of fasting.
Lent is a season set apart for self-discipline. The body needs self-discipline for its own good. However, "Do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others." Not that kind of fasting - a fasting that "looks for reward."
Those who seek such "have received their reward." They are greatly admired for the self-control they exercise over their bodily appetites. That is what they look for - the admiration of lesser-willed people than themselves. The reward they seek is the reward they get. If that is what one seeks, one obtains it by "looking gloomy and disfiguring their faces." After all, one must get noticed to receive the reward!
Those rewards are truly ashes. Ashes smeared all over their faces like a dark blob. Not ashes in the form of a cross.
Your treasure, however, is not to be sought there. "Moth and rust destroy" those treasures. "Thieves break in and steal" treasures of that sort. They are fleeting treasures at best. They are completely deceitful treasures at worst. Earthly admiration fades with the evening dusk. When worms destroy the body, they also eat the heart out of the soul of those who seek treasures of this sort.
"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
That is why we must "beware of practicing our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then we will have no reward from our Father who is in heaven."
Yet, it must be confessed, we all too gladly join those who "trumpet" the good and charitable things we do "in the synagogues and in the streets, that we may be praised by others." How hard it is to "give to the needy without letting our left hand know what the right hand is doing, so that our giving may be in secret." It is terribly hard to do good things surreptitiously. Without a word or note of "thanks" we feel empty - which reveals all too vividly how empty our spirits can be, for, whether we want to admit it or not, our "treasures" are all too frequently grounded in this earth. How hard it is to do good when nobody notices!
Not only is it difficult to refrain from letting others know we have done such things, but it is hard to even keep them a secret from ourselves. How quietly we pat ourselves on the back. It is astonishing how many ways we can "hide" them in forms that make it perfectly apparent that we have done them even though we tell ourselves that we are not "bragging" about them!
Yes, we, too, are numbered among those of whom Jesus spoke, saying, "They have received their reward." The hypocrite hides in all of us.
The Benefit and the Danger of the Season
That is why Lent is a season of penitence. The ashes on our forehead today are to remain as ashes on our hearts for forty days. Our mortality is closely tied to that which is called "sin." St. Paul put it very plainly: "The wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23a) Where sin is, death rides on its heels. Where death is, one can be sure that sin is its drive-shaft. They go hand in hand.
To know and recognize this, however, is both the benefit and also the danger of this day and this season.
It is the benefit of this day and this season, for it makes it impossible for us to live with any self-deception. To think that we can escape death is absurd. This day refuses to let us think ourselves immortal even when we, at our highest powers, consider ourselves an enduring presence on earth.
It is the benefit of this day and this season, for it makes clear that our mortality and our sin is closely interwoven. We cannot speak of our death without speaking of our sinfulness. We cannot speak of our sinfulness without speaking of our death. "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:19c ESV) God would have us remember this with clarity.
The danger of this day and this season, however, is this: Sin has a strange but all too frequently unrecognized shadow, when it is brought to light, that it casts over our lives in turn. Sin wants us to dwell on ourselves. Sin desires that we keep our eyes closely attuned to our own lives - our internal thoughts and desires as well as our external deeds and actions. "Watch your selves carefully," sin tells us. "Never take your eyes off those things that drive you, that insist being acted upon. Be sure to keep close track of those things concerning which you must needs repent. Never forget them for a moment." Thus speaks sin, insisting that we piously "keep Ash Wednesday in particular and Lent in general by intense introspection." It wants to show us the darkness - and to keep us there!
Do you see the danger in this? To use this day and this season for self-examination is well and good. But that very intention can be a demonic side-tracking of that for which and to which the day and the season is intended. The ashes are vital. They remind us of very significant things - sin and death.
But the ashes are administered in the form of a cross. In that form they point beyond our sin even while they remind us of it!
They do tell us, as St. Paul did, that "the wages of sin is death," but they also tell us that "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23 ESV) How easy it is to quit listening once we are told "the wages of sin is death." How easily we turn Ash Wednesday and Lent into little more than a mourning over sin, keeping it awash in penitential tears of sorrow, fasting as a penitential act of self-punishment, and falling into a near despair over our inability "to not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing." It is all too easy to keep our eyes focused on ourselves and our weaknesses and our sin.
The bread and the wine, however, force us to look outside of and beyond ourselves, to seek "the free gift of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" whose presence is hidden in that bread and wine. All of these - the bread, the wine, the presence of Christ - come to us from outside ourselves. We do not make them. We do not purchase them. We cannot force Christ to be present. All come from outside the arena of our existence. They are exterior to our lives until they are introduced into the field of our sight and taste. They compel us to move beyond the bankruptcy of our lives to the help that comes to us from beyond our failed lives.
If they were only bread and wine, they would merely keep us aware of how bound we are to this earth. But they are joined to the same kind of words that energized the waters of our baptism - the words of our Lord who promises to be there in our eating and drinking.
He bids us come to this table as more than penitent sinners. He bids us come as those who believe in his redemptive suffering, death and resurrection, seeking his presence in that bread and wine. He bids us to bring our sins to him who has borne them on the cross in order to find there the free gift of God that comes to all who entrust their lives to his loving care.
Through our Lord we are freed from ourselves - freed from all that ultimately burdens us as mortal sinners. We are filled with new life and new hope - his life and the hope that lies in his promise. That is the true benefit of the season. In the moment we are caught up with our own failures with their temptation to despair, it compels us to turn outside ourselves in order to see our hope and salvation in the one whose cross is imprinted on our foreheads through the ashes of this day.
It is to this end that one is to observe Lent in all its aspects, for that matter. Although Lent is commonly portrayed as a "season of penitence" (and it surely has that aspect), it is, even more importantly, a season designed to follow Jesus from the time when he "began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." (Matthew 16:21 ESV) It is he whom we follow during Lent. Putting aside our own selves and our goals - and even our frustrations and terrors - we are to go with Jesus on what is called the via dolorosa, the way of sorrows, the way of the cross.
We dare to go with him on this way because we know that it is also the path to resurrection! But there can be no resurrection without his death, and Lent is the path to his death - for us!
Lent is far more a journey with Jesus to his cross, then, than it a journey of penitence over our sin, important though that is! They go together in many ways, of course. But let it be clear: If we only take our sins on this journey without him who bears those sins, it is a sure journey to despair!
The Season of Our Life
Ash Wednesday is a day. Lent is a season. Life is filled with days and seasons of many kinds.
Yet, is not life a perpetual season of faith? That, ultimately, is what Lent is - a forty day exercise in renewal of faith that will sustain us in all the days and seasons of life!
There is no moment in life that can be lived outside the remembrance of these things that we rehearse on this day and during this season. It is in the shadow of all that Lent is about that Jesus speaks the Sermon on the Mount from which our text is taken. He does not deny the importance of giving to the needy - or of praying (6:5-15) - or of fasting - the subjects of this part of that sermon. Rather, he is emphasizing the importance of doing such things without making a huge to-do over the fact that we are doing them, designed to attract the attention of those whom we wish to impress.
For, in the final analysis, when Matthew's Gospel is unfolded in its entirety, it becomes clear that when we do these things we no longer do them for self-gratification, hoping to reap a certain external reward. We do them, rather, for the Christ whom we see in those around us. "When did we do such things?" the servants ask in the parable of the Final Judgment. "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me," he responds. (25:31 ff.)
St. Paul puts it this way, "Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." (Romans 5:12, 13 ESV)
In perhaps a still more forceful way, Paul says "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:19 ESV) Our text assures us, "Your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
If the observance of this day and the Lenten season that follows deepens that sense of who you are as a child of God and how your life, as a child of God, is to be lived, then the ashes and the words and the bread and the wine and the fasting will have accomplished that for which they were intended!
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.