Sermon delivered Wednesday, March 1, 2017 (Ash Wednesday) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” This is what we asked of God in our opening collect a few moments ago. As we enter the season of Lent, the season of penitence and fasting, self-examination and renewal, we hear again that biblical refrain that we’ve heard recently from John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul: all the right ritual actions are meaningless if not accompanied by the right intentions. Our hearts must be in the right place as we come to worship God, and our actions must reflect the faith we say we have.
This message was not new with John the Baptist and Paul: they were echoing the ancient call of the Hebrew prophets, like the passage from Isaiah that we hear today. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God says through Isaiah to the people who observe the right rituals, but “who serve [their] own interest[s] on [their] fast day and oppress all [their] workers.” And Jesus repeats this theme in the Sermon on the Mount, warning his disciples against doing religious acts for the wrong reasons. Fasting or prayer or almsgiving should be done out of a sincere faith and desire to please God and to grow closer to God, not out of a desire for approval or recognition from one’s peers. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in other to be seen by them,” Jesus says, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
The issue here is one of intention and motivation. Those who practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them will have no reward from God not because they have performed religious actions publicly, but because the act of “going public” with their faith has caused their intentions to go astray: they are motivated by a desire to please other people rather than a desire to please God. Their hearts are not in the right place. Their actions become all about them instead of all about God.
The people Isaiah addresses are caught in this sin of self-absorption: they observe the fasts because they want to win favor with God, but they ignore God’s commands to care for the poor and to deal justly with others because of their desires for power or money. Both their business practices and their religious practices are entirely self-centered. Their only concern is securing a place for themselves, both on earth and in heaven.
Fasting is intended to be an act of personal sacrifice, a way of denying and emptying oneself in order to open oneself more fully to God. This meaning is negated if the person fasting continues to behave in a manner incongruent with the commandment of God to love one’s neighbor as oneself. A real sacrifice of self, God says through the prophet of Isaiah, is to give of yourself in service to others, to share your bread with the hungry, to clothe the naked, to work for justice and free the oppressed. Not only must there be right intentions, but right actions must flow from them. We must show, as John the Baptist would put it, “fruits worthy of repentance.”
The season of Lent invites us to take a step back from our regular routines and examine our own hearts and actions. Am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Am I giving of myself in the fast that God chooses, a fast that leads not to self-absorption, but self-giving? Has my worship become empty and rote, devoid of heart-filled sincerity? Am I at peace with the ways I am practicing my faith and living it out in my life?
But the self-examination of Lent invites us to go even further, looking beyond our individual lives. The discipline of Lent is a corporate as well as an individual one. We could ask the same questions of our life together as a church: not just am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance, but are we, as St. Cuthbert’s, as the Diocese of California, as the Episcopal Church, bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Are we practicing the fast of self-giving rather than self-absorption? Is our worship heartfelt and sincere? Are we satisfied with how we are practicing our faith together and living it out in service to our community, the nation, and the world?
But it doesn’t stop there. We are also invited to consider, as we expand the circle of our concern even wider, the corporate sins and shortcomings of the country and culture in which we live. In the litany of penitence that we will pray together in a few moments, we confess not just ways that we as individual Christians have sinned and ways the Church has sinned, but systemic sins rooted in our wider culture: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” This “our” is much bigger than you or me or all of us in this church combined. It is an “our” that resonates with the wider American culture: our materialism that values things over people, our individualism that leads us to believe we need to care only for ourselves and our families and not for the wider community, and our obsession with violence that desensitizes us to the image of God in all people. In our current political climate, these communal sins of our culture are on display in a particularly vivid way. This year I am especially aware of “the evil done on our behalf” that our confession of sin refers to – sins we may have not have committed personally, but things our government has done “on our behalf,” in which we are implicated whether we like it or not.
On Ash Wednesday, we are invited us to remember and contemplate our mortality and the fragility of human life. It is a time for examining our actions and behaviors and priorities and the intentions behind our actions, and taking stock of what is really important in the life of faith.
So as you begin Lent this year, take some time to consider: what is really important to you in your life of faith? What spiritual practices do you wish you were doing on a more regular basis? Could you commit to doing at least one of them during Lent? What relationship in your life do you most need to change in order for God’s love to be reflected in and through it? Could you take some steps toward changing that relationship during Lent?
Each of us may have a different Lenten discipline this year, but the underlying theme of our work is the same: to consider how we are called to live out our faith authentically in the world, in such a way that we contribute to God’s work of bringing justice and freedom to all. Through our Lenten fast, whatever form that may take for each of us, may we all seek a deeper knowledge of the heart of God and bear fruits of authentic repentance.
Showing posts with label Ash Wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ash Wednesday. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Sunday, August 30, 2015
To Everything There is a Season
Sermon delivered on my last Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN -- Sunday, August 30, 2015 (14th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 17).
(Song of Solomon 2:8-13, James 1:17-27)
Our first reading today comes from the Song of Solomon, that great love poem of the Hebrew scriptures, and is perhaps best known for its use at weddings. But at this particular time in my life and in the life of the community at St. Paul’s, I am struck by another aspect of this poem – its emphasis on change and seasons.
“Now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come” (Song of Solomon 2:11-12).
Although the poem describes physical aspects of the earth’s changing with the seasons – from winter to spring, from rain to flowers – perhaps there is a deeper metaphorical message. The lovers can celebrate their love with joy and go away together because “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” Perhaps the “winter” was a difficult time in their relationship; perhaps the “rain” was external stressors beating in from every side.
In any case, this passage points us to change – change in seasons, change in dynamics of relationships, and a recognition of the impermanence of everything in life, even of our lives themselves. It reminds me of another passage from the wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible that gives voice to this theme more fully. Made famous by Pete Seeger setting it to music in the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in the 1960s, the words are from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3:
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
This passage resonated with me as I thought about taking my leave from you after three years serving together in ministry, and as this congregation goes through significant changes in leadership. “To everything there is a season.” A time to arrive, a time to depart. A time to welcome new people, and a time to say goodbye. A time to remember and honor the past, and a time to move forward and look to the future. Having just packed up my office, I know quite a bit about “a time to keep, and a time to throw away,” and perhaps rather than stones, “a time to throw away books, and a time to gather books together.”
This passage reminds us that no state of being lasts forever, whether it be positive or negative. Although we might bristle at the suggestion that there is “a time to hate” and a “time to kill,” I read this passage as describing the reality of human existence in this world, not necessarily the ideal or how it will be in the next life. In this life, nothing lasts forever. In this life, we experience seasons of good things and seasons of bad things. There are times of weeping and times of laughing. When we’re weeping, thinking that there will be a time to laugh in the future may bring us hope, and help get us through the tough times. When we’re laughing, we always realize that at any moment, something could happen that will send us back into crying again. Nothing lasts forever. Everything is temporary, no matter how permanent it may seem to us in the moment. Even our buildings and monuments that outlast generations of people are subject to the destructive forces of nature. As a line in our closing hymn today says, “Though with care and toil we build them, tower and temple fall to dust.”
But our epistle reading from James reminds us of what is truly eternal. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). With God there is “no variation or shadow due to change.” It is only in God that we find permanence, constancy, a true illustration of the word “forever.” Although “tower and temple fall to dust,” in the hymn text we go on to proclaim, “But God’s power, hour by hour, is my temple and my tower.” In the midst of this ever-changing tide of seasons that flows through our lives, bringing good and bad, life and death, we must always remember to turn our attention to the one “fixed point” in the midst of all the changes: God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s power, God’s eternal presence, the fount of all being, sustaining and guiding us as our life unfolds.
One of my favorite prayers in the prayer book is in the service of Compline, that service in the Daily Office intended for use right before bedtime. It says:
“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 133).
“We who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life” – that is such a vivid turn of phrase, isn’t it? Who among us can’t relate to the feeling of being “wearied by the changes and chances of this life” – this life which can change in an instant, in which things we spend hours and years building can be destroyed overnight, this life in which friends and relatives can betray our trust, drift away from us, or get sick and die, this life which offers us no guarantees except for the fact of change itself.
But even in the midst of all that, God remains constant. As the collect says, we can rest in God’s “eternal changelessness,” that solid foundation at the center of our faith. And as Christians, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Change and transformation are at the heart of what we understand God to be about in the world, bringing new life from death. The year I graduated high school, the song “Closing Time” by SemiSonic was at the top of the radio playlists, and I have always remembered a line from that song during times of transition in my life: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” SemiSonic didn’t come up with that line; it is actually an ancient saying often attributed to the 1st century Roman philosopher Seneca. But it could very well be the slogan for the Christian faith: “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Or as Jesus puts it in the Gospel of John, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
On Ash Wednesday and at every funeral liturgy we are reminded that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.” As we commend a loved one to the Lord, we say to God: “You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return” (BCP 499). Our opening hymn today reminded us, in words that echo lines from the psalms and the prophet Isaiah, that “we blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree; then wither and perish, but nought changeth thee.”
Nought changeth thee. The author of the letter to the Hebrews put it this way: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The scriptures say in various places that Christ is our foundation, our cornerstone, our rock. God is the one thing we can count on not to change, no matter what. But for everything else, there is a season…
(Song of Solomon 2:8-13, James 1:17-27)
Our first reading today comes from the Song of Solomon, that great love poem of the Hebrew scriptures, and is perhaps best known for its use at weddings. But at this particular time in my life and in the life of the community at St. Paul’s, I am struck by another aspect of this poem – its emphasis on change and seasons.
“Now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come” (Song of Solomon 2:11-12).
Although the poem describes physical aspects of the earth’s changing with the seasons – from winter to spring, from rain to flowers – perhaps there is a deeper metaphorical message. The lovers can celebrate their love with joy and go away together because “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” Perhaps the “winter” was a difficult time in their relationship; perhaps the “rain” was external stressors beating in from every side.
In any case, this passage points us to change – change in seasons, change in dynamics of relationships, and a recognition of the impermanence of everything in life, even of our lives themselves. It reminds me of another passage from the wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible that gives voice to this theme more fully. Made famous by Pete Seeger setting it to music in the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in the 1960s, the words are from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 3:
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
This passage resonated with me as I thought about taking my leave from you after three years serving together in ministry, and as this congregation goes through significant changes in leadership. “To everything there is a season.” A time to arrive, a time to depart. A time to welcome new people, and a time to say goodbye. A time to remember and honor the past, and a time to move forward and look to the future. Having just packed up my office, I know quite a bit about “a time to keep, and a time to throw away,” and perhaps rather than stones, “a time to throw away books, and a time to gather books together.”
This passage reminds us that no state of being lasts forever, whether it be positive or negative. Although we might bristle at the suggestion that there is “a time to hate” and a “time to kill,” I read this passage as describing the reality of human existence in this world, not necessarily the ideal or how it will be in the next life. In this life, nothing lasts forever. In this life, we experience seasons of good things and seasons of bad things. There are times of weeping and times of laughing. When we’re weeping, thinking that there will be a time to laugh in the future may bring us hope, and help get us through the tough times. When we’re laughing, we always realize that at any moment, something could happen that will send us back into crying again. Nothing lasts forever. Everything is temporary, no matter how permanent it may seem to us in the moment. Even our buildings and monuments that outlast generations of people are subject to the destructive forces of nature. As a line in our closing hymn today says, “Though with care and toil we build them, tower and temple fall to dust.”
But our epistle reading from James reminds us of what is truly eternal. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). With God there is “no variation or shadow due to change.” It is only in God that we find permanence, constancy, a true illustration of the word “forever.” Although “tower and temple fall to dust,” in the hymn text we go on to proclaim, “But God’s power, hour by hour, is my temple and my tower.” In the midst of this ever-changing tide of seasons that flows through our lives, bringing good and bad, life and death, we must always remember to turn our attention to the one “fixed point” in the midst of all the changes: God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s power, God’s eternal presence, the fount of all being, sustaining and guiding us as our life unfolds.
One of my favorite prayers in the prayer book is in the service of Compline, that service in the Daily Office intended for use right before bedtime. It says:
“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (BCP 133).
“We who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life” – that is such a vivid turn of phrase, isn’t it? Who among us can’t relate to the feeling of being “wearied by the changes and chances of this life” – this life which can change in an instant, in which things we spend hours and years building can be destroyed overnight, this life in which friends and relatives can betray our trust, drift away from us, or get sick and die, this life which offers us no guarantees except for the fact of change itself.
But even in the midst of all that, God remains constant. As the collect says, we can rest in God’s “eternal changelessness,” that solid foundation at the center of our faith. And as Christians, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Change and transformation are at the heart of what we understand God to be about in the world, bringing new life from death. The year I graduated high school, the song “Closing Time” by SemiSonic was at the top of the radio playlists, and I have always remembered a line from that song during times of transition in my life: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” SemiSonic didn’t come up with that line; it is actually an ancient saying often attributed to the 1st century Roman philosopher Seneca. But it could very well be the slogan for the Christian faith: “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Or as Jesus puts it in the Gospel of John, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
On Ash Wednesday and at every funeral liturgy we are reminded that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.” As we commend a loved one to the Lord, we say to God: “You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return” (BCP 499). Our opening hymn today reminded us, in words that echo lines from the psalms and the prophet Isaiah, that “we blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree; then wither and perish, but nought changeth thee.”
Nought changeth thee. The author of the letter to the Hebrews put it this way: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The scriptures say in various places that Christ is our foundation, our cornerstone, our rock. God is the one thing we can count on not to change, no matter what. But for everything else, there is a season…
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Reflections on "Ashes to Go" - an answer to the critics
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| Our rector, Bob Cowperthwaite, and parishioner Gerald Hancock offering Ashes to Go at our first shift from 8:30-9:30 a.m. |
Ashes to Go has become a nation-wide movement. It started with several Episcopal churches in the St. Louis and Chicago areas in 2007 and 2010, and it “went viral” in 2012, with more than 80 churches in 21 states participating. In 2013, it went international, with participants in Canada, the UK, and South Africa, in addition to the U.S. (Statistics from the Ashes to Go website at www.ashestogo.org.)
As Ashes to Go has become more known amongst “church people,” especially amongst professional church people like clergy and church staff, there has been a lot of discussion about it. It has its share of critics, who assert that this “quickie” liturgy cheapens what should be a somber call to repentance. The critics say that people should make time to attend the full-length liturgy on Ash Wednesday, and if they can’t attend church, that shows that their priorities are in the wrong place. They worry about people taking Ash Wednesday too lightly, or going to an Ashes to Go site just to “get their ashes” as some kind of a token or rote ritual rather than out of a true sense of repentance and desire for connection with God.
I must admit that despite the fact that my call to the priesthood emerged out of my involvement with a street church for homeless people in Cambridge, Mass., and the fact that I was naturally drawn to Ashes to Go when I first heard about it because of the "street church" element of it, my training in seminary conditioned me to always take a step back and listen to the other side of the story, to another perspective. The critics' arguments against Ashes to Go were well-crafted enough that they gave me pause. Maybe this was an inappropriate cheapening of the dignity of the liturgy. Maybe we shouldn't do it.
But after serving two one-hour “shifts” out on the street corner on Ash Wednesday, I can say that not a single person we encountered in those two shifts seemed to be taking this encounter lightly. Some people had driven from the other side of town just to participate in this brief encounter on the sidewalk. They’d seen an article that the local paper had run about the fact that we were going to do this, and they made time in their day, they went out of their way to come to downtown Franklin just to get their ashes. Their schedule may not have allowed them to attend services at the traditional times of noon or later in the evening, but for whatever reason they were able to get away mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and they were so appreciative because otherwise they really would not have gotten to have an Ash Wednesday experience today, however brief our encounter was. Several people even got tears in their eyes as they thanked us, clearly moved that we were taking the time to bring church to them.
There was a depth of gratitude in their voices as they thanked us that echoed the deeply grateful sincerity I’ve heard in people’s voices when I’ve taken communion to people who are in the hospital or homebound. “Thank you so much for doing this!” they say, with a depth of gratitude that goes beyond the cursory “thanks” we give the cashier at the grocery store or a friend or family member who passes us the salt at dinner. This is a different kind of thanks, a thanks born out of touching a place of need and vulnerability, of mediating a brief moment of grace from one human being to another – whether an Ashes to Go recipient or a parishioner recovering at home from surgery.
As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that I can’t imagine any of the critics of the Ashes to Go movement who are within the Episcopal Church saying that we shouldn’t take communion to people at home or in the hospital because it would “cheapen” the experience, that if they can’t get to church on Sunday for the entire celebration of the Eucharist, then their priorities must not be in the right place. We consider Eucharistic visitation to be one of the most sacred and holy things we do as priests. And yet, what we say and do when we take communion to people is a very shortened version of the full Eucharistic liturgy, just as Ashes to Go offers a shortened version of the full Ash Wednesday liturgy.
That’s when I realized that Ashes to Go is basically a series of “pastoral visits” on the street. It’s about offering a shortened version of the regular liturgy to those who can’t be with the rest of the gathered community. And just as we do when we visit people in the hospital, if there are several people present visiting with the patient, they are all invited to join in the communion, so on Ash Wednesday, when two people happened to walk up at the same time, we invited them to all join together with us in the brief liturgy. Even though none of us had ever met before, in that one brief moment, we were a community of faith praying together. “Wherever two of three are gathered,” Jesus said, “I am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Not “wherever there is an officially sanctioned, full-length liturgy approved by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.”
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| Praying with several people who walked up at the same time. "Wherever two or three are gathered..." |
So even the Ashes to Go recipients did get an opportunity to join with other Christians in prayer today. Yes, they could have gone home and read through the entire Ash Wednesday liturgy in their prayer books instead, to get the “full experience,” but there’s something about the encounter with another person, that incarnational experience that is really at the heart of our faith, that is sacred and powerful, however brief.
The difference between Ashes to Go and a traditional pastoral visit, of course, is that we are doing it in a public place. It is no small irony that the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday is the passage from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus warns us to “beware of practicing your piety before others, in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1), and tells us not to “stand and pray… at the street corners, so that we may be seen [by others]” (Matthew 6:5). Um, gulp. The critics of Ashes to Go point out that we appear to be doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do! When I was “plugging” Ashes to Go to one of my classes at church, encouraging lay people to sign up to help out with it, I made a joke about the irony of this passage and what we were going to do. Everyone laughed, but one of the parishioners spoke up in a serious tone and said, “But I don’t think that’s the same thing as what you’re doing. Jesus was talking about being hypocritical. I don’t think that’s what this is. I think this is different.”
I was surprised by her immediate positive view of what we were doing with Ashes to Go and the disconnect for her in associating it with Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount. But after my experience on the street and my insight into the ways in which Ashes to Go is a pastoral encounter, it makes me appreciate her insight even more. If we’re doing Ashes to Go primarily “to be seen by others” in a showy kind of way, then yes, we should hear Jesus’s words of rebuke in the Sermon on the Mount for showy displays of piety. But if we’re doing Ashes to Go out of a sincere desire to serve others and to care for them, then perhaps the more appropriate words of Jesus to remember would be the ways he rebuked the religious leaders for being unwilling to break tradition in order to address human need. “What is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil?” (Mark 3:4) he said to those who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath. And while I’m not saying that it’s a matter of life and death for people to get their ashes on Ash Wednesday, I do think that we are addressing a very real need and a very real and sincere desire and longing to connect with God and the liturgies of the church, not throwing tradition to the wind or dismissing the gravity and seriousness of that day.
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| An Ashes to Go recipient jumps for joy after receiving her ashes. |
I hope that the critics of Ashes to Go might be willing to just give it a try one year and see what happens. The great thing about Ashes to Go is that if you do it, you do it on your own terms. Do you think people should recite at least part of Psalm 51 for it to really be Ash Wednesday? Then include that in the brief liturgy you offer to people. Or, decide to do the whole Ash Wednesday service at a non-typical time in a location more convenient to working people in your area. Take ashes to people in the hospital and in nursing homes and do an abbreviated version of the liturgy with them. Whatever you do and however you do it, the intention is to bring the church to people where they are, to represent symbolically the truth that although it is true that we must make the choice to step toward God in faith, God also is already stepping out to meet us wherever we are. I can think of no more sacred and holy task than to serve as a symbol of that for the world.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Lent, corporate repentence, and gun violence
Sermon delivered Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 103, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21).
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” This is what we asked of God in our opening collect a few moments ago. As we enter the season of Lent, the season of penitence and fasting, self-examination and renewal, we hear again that biblical refrain that we’ve heard recently from John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul: God calls us not only to right ritual, but to right intention and right action. Our hearts must be in the right place as we come to worship God, and our actions must reflect the faith we say we have.
This message was not new with John the Baptist and Paul: they were echoing the ancient call of the Hebrew prophets, like the passage from Isaiah that we hear today. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God says through Isaiah to the people who observe the right rituals, but “who serve [their] own interest[s] on [their] fast day and oppress all [their] workers” (Isaiah 58:4, 3). And Jesus repeats this theme in the Sermon on the Mount, warning his disciples against doing religious acts for the wrong reasons. Fasting or prayer or almsgiving should be done out of a sincere faith and desire to please God and to grow closer to God, not out of a desire for approval or recognition from one’s peers. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in other to be seen by them,” Jesus says, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:1).
The issue here is one of intention and motivation. Those who practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them will have no reward from God not because they have performed religious actions publicly, but because the act of “going public” with their faith has caused their intentions to go astray: they are motivated by a desire to please other people rather than a desire to please God. Their hearts are not in the right place. Their actions become all about them instead of all about God.
The people Isaiah addresses are caught in this sin of self-absorption: they observe the fasts because they want to win favor with God, but they ignore God’s commands to care for the poor and to deal justly with others because of their desires for power or money. Both their business practices and their religious practices are entirely self-centered. Their only concern is securing a place for themselves, both on earth and in heaven.
Fasting is intended to be an act of personal sacrifice, a way of emptying ourselves in order to open ourselves more fully to God. This meaning is negated if the person fasting continues to behave in a manner incongruent with the commandment of God to love our neighbors as ourselves. A real sacrifice of self, God says through the prophet Isaiah, is to give of yourself in service to others, to share your bread with the hungry, to clothe the naked, to work for justice and free the oppressed. Not only must there be right intentions, but right actions must flow from them. We must show, as John the Baptist would put it, “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8).
The season of Lent invites us to take a step back from our regular routines and examine our own intentions and actions. Am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Am I giving of myself in the fast that God chooses, a fast that leads not to self-absorption, but self-giving? Has my worship become empty and rote, devoid of heart-filled sincerity? Am I at peace with the ways I am practicing my faith and living it out in my life?
But the self-examination of Lent invites us to go even further, looking beyond our individual lives. The discipline of Lent is a corporate as well as an individual one. We could ask the same questions of our life together as a church: not just am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance, but are we, as St. Paul’s, as the Diocese of Tennessee, as the Episcopal Church, bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Are we practicing the fast of self-giving rather than self-absorption? Is our worship heartfelt and sincere? Are we satisfied with how we are practicing our faith together and living it out in service to our community, the nation, and the world?
But it doesn’t stop there. We are also invited to consider, as we expand the circle of our concern even wider, the corporate sins and shortcomings of the country and culture in which we live. In the litany of penitence that we will pray together in a few moments, we confess not just ways that we as individual Christians have sinned and ways the Church has sinned, but systemic sins rooted in our wider culture: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” This “our” is much bigger than you or me or all of us in this church combined. It is an “our” that resonates with the wider American culture: our materialism that values things over people, our individualism that leads us to believe we need to care only for ourselves and our families and not for the wider community, and our obsession with violence that desensitizes us to the image of God in all people.
If you read the announcements in the February newsletter and last week’s Take-Out about our upcoming Lenten series on Thursday nights, you know that our adult Lenten program this year will be on the topic of gun violence. You may have wondered, as you read that announcement, what this subject has to do with Lent. I believe that the prevalence of gun violence in our country at this time is a corporate sin that we are called to grapple with, and it is in the Lenten spirit of self-examination and “taking stock” of ourselves that we will consider this issue in our Lenten study this year.
Gun violence is by no means the only corporate or systemic sin in our country, but we will focus on this one because of its immediacy in our national discourse at the moment. In the seven short months that I have been with you at St. Paul’s, there have been three mass shootings in the U.S. that have made major media coverage: the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July, the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August, and the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in December. Although mass shootings are nothing new in this country, the frequency and intensity with which they happened last year has led many people, including me, to take note and begin to ask questions about why these things are happening, and about what it says about our culture. After the shootings in Newtown, the Episcopal bishops of Connecticut called for their diocese to spend the season of Lent this year in “a time of discernment and action on how all of us can best work to overcome the death-dealing culture of violence that seems to be so prevalent in our society at this time.” This is an appropriate topic to explore during Lent, a time set aside for reflection and self-examination, and a time during which we reflect on the ways in which another “death-dealing culture of violence,” in first century Palestine, led to the death of our Lord. My prayer is that these discussions will help each of us discern what part we are called to play in “loosing the bonds of injustice” (Isaiah 58:6) that leave too many parents childless and too many children motherless and fatherless.
And as we do this, I pray that we are mindful of another one of our confessions from today’s litany: “for all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us.” There can and will be very different views amongst us about the best way to address the issue of gun violence, especially considering the ways this issue has been highly politicized. Our study will attempt to offer a balanced presentation of the issue and encourage honest dialogue between those of you with different perspectives, a dialogue that will attempt to dismantle those false judgments and prejudices that we may have toward those whose views differ from ours.
On Ash Wednesday, we are invited us to remember and contemplate our own mortality and the fragility of human life. During this season of Lent, my prayer is that we as individuals and as a community will examine our priorities and the intentions behind our actions, and take stock of what is really important in the life of faith. Whether each of you do that through participation in the Lenten study or through examining and contemplating other issues or concerns that are more pressing and relevant in your life right now, the underlying theme of our work this season is the same: to consider how we are called to live out our faith authentically in the world, in such a way that we contribute to God’s work of bringing justice and freedom to all. Through our Lenten fast, whatever form that may take for each of us, may we all seek a deeper knowledge of the heart of God and bear fruits of authentic repentance.
“Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.” This is what we asked of God in our opening collect a few moments ago. As we enter the season of Lent, the season of penitence and fasting, self-examination and renewal, we hear again that biblical refrain that we’ve heard recently from John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul: God calls us not only to right ritual, but to right intention and right action. Our hearts must be in the right place as we come to worship God, and our actions must reflect the faith we say we have.
This message was not new with John the Baptist and Paul: they were echoing the ancient call of the Hebrew prophets, like the passage from Isaiah that we hear today. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God says through Isaiah to the people who observe the right rituals, but “who serve [their] own interest[s] on [their] fast day and oppress all [their] workers” (Isaiah 58:4, 3). And Jesus repeats this theme in the Sermon on the Mount, warning his disciples against doing religious acts for the wrong reasons. Fasting or prayer or almsgiving should be done out of a sincere faith and desire to please God and to grow closer to God, not out of a desire for approval or recognition from one’s peers. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in other to be seen by them,” Jesus says, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:1).
The issue here is one of intention and motivation. Those who practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them will have no reward from God not because they have performed religious actions publicly, but because the act of “going public” with their faith has caused their intentions to go astray: they are motivated by a desire to please other people rather than a desire to please God. Their hearts are not in the right place. Their actions become all about them instead of all about God.
The people Isaiah addresses are caught in this sin of self-absorption: they observe the fasts because they want to win favor with God, but they ignore God’s commands to care for the poor and to deal justly with others because of their desires for power or money. Both their business practices and their religious practices are entirely self-centered. Their only concern is securing a place for themselves, both on earth and in heaven.
Fasting is intended to be an act of personal sacrifice, a way of emptying ourselves in order to open ourselves more fully to God. This meaning is negated if the person fasting continues to behave in a manner incongruent with the commandment of God to love our neighbors as ourselves. A real sacrifice of self, God says through the prophet Isaiah, is to give of yourself in service to others, to share your bread with the hungry, to clothe the naked, to work for justice and free the oppressed. Not only must there be right intentions, but right actions must flow from them. We must show, as John the Baptist would put it, “fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8).
The season of Lent invites us to take a step back from our regular routines and examine our own intentions and actions. Am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Am I giving of myself in the fast that God chooses, a fast that leads not to self-absorption, but self-giving? Has my worship become empty and rote, devoid of heart-filled sincerity? Am I at peace with the ways I am practicing my faith and living it out in my life?
But the self-examination of Lent invites us to go even further, looking beyond our individual lives. The discipline of Lent is a corporate as well as an individual one. We could ask the same questions of our life together as a church: not just am I bearing fruits worthy of repentance, but are we, as St. Paul’s, as the Diocese of Tennessee, as the Episcopal Church, bearing fruits worthy of repentance? Are we practicing the fast of self-giving rather than self-absorption? Is our worship heartfelt and sincere? Are we satisfied with how we are practicing our faith together and living it out in service to our community, the nation, and the world?
But it doesn’t stop there. We are also invited to consider, as we expand the circle of our concern even wider, the corporate sins and shortcomings of the country and culture in which we live. In the litany of penitence that we will pray together in a few moments, we confess not just ways that we as individual Christians have sinned and ways the Church has sinned, but systemic sins rooted in our wider culture: “Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people… Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts… our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” This “our” is much bigger than you or me or all of us in this church combined. It is an “our” that resonates with the wider American culture: our materialism that values things over people, our individualism that leads us to believe we need to care only for ourselves and our families and not for the wider community, and our obsession with violence that desensitizes us to the image of God in all people.
If you read the announcements in the February newsletter and last week’s Take-Out about our upcoming Lenten series on Thursday nights, you know that our adult Lenten program this year will be on the topic of gun violence. You may have wondered, as you read that announcement, what this subject has to do with Lent. I believe that the prevalence of gun violence in our country at this time is a corporate sin that we are called to grapple with, and it is in the Lenten spirit of self-examination and “taking stock” of ourselves that we will consider this issue in our Lenten study this year.
Gun violence is by no means the only corporate or systemic sin in our country, but we will focus on this one because of its immediacy in our national discourse at the moment. In the seven short months that I have been with you at St. Paul’s, there have been three mass shootings in the U.S. that have made major media coverage: the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July, the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin in August, and the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in December. Although mass shootings are nothing new in this country, the frequency and intensity with which they happened last year has led many people, including me, to take note and begin to ask questions about why these things are happening, and about what it says about our culture. After the shootings in Newtown, the Episcopal bishops of Connecticut called for their diocese to spend the season of Lent this year in “a time of discernment and action on how all of us can best work to overcome the death-dealing culture of violence that seems to be so prevalent in our society at this time.” This is an appropriate topic to explore during Lent, a time set aside for reflection and self-examination, and a time during which we reflect on the ways in which another “death-dealing culture of violence,” in first century Palestine, led to the death of our Lord. My prayer is that these discussions will help each of us discern what part we are called to play in “loosing the bonds of injustice” (Isaiah 58:6) that leave too many parents childless and too many children motherless and fatherless.
And as we do this, I pray that we are mindful of another one of our confessions from today’s litany: “for all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us.” There can and will be very different views amongst us about the best way to address the issue of gun violence, especially considering the ways this issue has been highly politicized. Our study will attempt to offer a balanced presentation of the issue and encourage honest dialogue between those of you with different perspectives, a dialogue that will attempt to dismantle those false judgments and prejudices that we may have toward those whose views differ from ours.
On Ash Wednesday, we are invited us to remember and contemplate our own mortality and the fragility of human life. During this season of Lent, my prayer is that we as individuals and as a community will examine our priorities and the intentions behind our actions, and take stock of what is really important in the life of faith. Whether each of you do that through participation in the Lenten study or through examining and contemplating other issues or concerns that are more pressing and relevant in your life right now, the underlying theme of our work this season is the same: to consider how we are called to live out our faith authentically in the world, in such a way that we contribute to God’s work of bringing justice and freedom to all. Through our Lenten fast, whatever form that may take for each of us, may we all seek a deeper knowledge of the heart of God and bear fruits of authentic repentance.
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