Ash Wednesday (March 2, 2022)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?

In modern, Western Christianity, there is an overemphasis on one experience. So one is not a Christian because they were baptized into the Church but because they “asked Jesus into their hearts.” There is a pressure in many circles to craft a testimony that involve a conversion experience that rivals St. Paul on the Road to Damascus. There are, of course, opposite tendencies in other Christian traditions which emphasize the outward only, making religion purely mechanistic.

Today, on Ash Wednesday, we are reminded of the danger of both of these approaches. Our emphasis today and during the rest of Lent is not purely on the inward feeling and experience nor is it purely on the outward actions at the expense of inward feeling. And this is an important lesson for us.

The Collect helps set the stage. We prayed to a God “who hates nothing though hast made” and who “dost forgives the sins of all those who are penitent.” This reminds us that, in the midst of our penance, God is good and his property “is always to have mercy.”

So why are we fasting during Lent? Because we desire for God to “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness , may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.” So we fast as a way of demonstrating to God our penance, throwing ourselves at his grace, precisely because he is merciful.

In the Book of the Prophet Joel, which is where our Epistle reading comes from, God uses the prophet to call the people of Israel to repentance. In our reading, we heard God call to Israel: “Turn ye even to me, saith the Lord, with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God." The internal and external must match. To go through the motions to check off the boxes is just empty ritualism. While self-discipline is valuable, in and of itself, it is not the point, especially when one is lacking true contrition. At the same time, Joel is very careful to remind the Israelites of their responsibility to fast, week, and mourn, all external actions. Sheer internalism is the opposite problem of empty ritualism. Internalism means we just say we feel sorry without actually making any sacrifice, something we are called to do. So the inward and outward must match.

They match when we become aware not just of our own sinfulness but also of who God is; that he is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repented him of the evil.” It’s because we are aware that his property is truly to always have mercy that we can find protection in him who is our solid rock. At the same time, we would be wise to heed John Wesley’s caution against presuming on God’s grace which is what we do when we become aware of his mercy and grace and then go about our business or use it as an excuse to sin: “Shall we continue to sin that grace may about?” Paul asks in Romans 6. “May it not be so!”

There is a final dimension to the external/internal dynamic addressed by our Gospel lesson from St. Matthew. In the reading, Jesus gives instructions to his disciples not to fast like the hypocrites who disfigure their faces but to clean your face so that your fasting is kept secret. To disfigure one’s face to draw attention to fasting is to seek recognition from others. That, Jesus says, is its own reward, but it is a foolish thing to seek after because it’s akin to laying up “treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.” Seeking commendation form others is a perishable reward. Doing Fasting and other spiritual acts in secret means only our heavenly Father sees the pure intention underlying the act. This leads to an imperishable reward because it amounts to “laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Whether we seek applause and adulation from the world or form the Father is an indicator of where we are. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Lent is a time for us to reconcile the inward and outward.

There are two basis on which we do that: (1) The first is God’s faithfulness, love, and forgiveness. (2) The second is our own mortality — “From dust we have come and to dust we will return.” We enter into this season aware of God’s infinitude and great love but also of our own finitude, fragility, and sinfulness. Together, these two realizations should lead us to seek conformity to him.

“Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them wherefore should they say among the people Where is their God?"

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.