March 9, 2011 - Ash Wednesday (RCL)
Today, Ash Wednesday, is the second most solemn service
in our year.
We stop
in the middle of the week, in the middle of our lives,
to take time to remember our mortality.
We mark the beginning
of the season of Lent, a time of preparation
and penitence;
we examine ourselves
and confess our sins with a litany of penitence;
we pray a psalm calling on the mercy of God;
we mark ourselves with ash,
a traditional sign of mourning,
and with a cross,
remembering our baptism in the name
of the one who died for our sake
and offers us
forgiveness.
But there’s one jarring note in the service.
And that’s
the gospel.
Each year, we read the same few verses
from the gospel according to St Matthew.
And each year, on the one day
that we are going to mark ourselves with a visible sign of piety,
that cross marked in dirty gray ash,
we read these words:
“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”
Jesus goes on to give examples of times when people do things in public, but would be better doing it
in secret:
praying, fasting, giving alms.
So how do we reconcile the church’s tradition
of publicly marking penitence with ash
with the scriptural instruction
to do our religious acts
in secret?
I think the key
is why we do it.
Jesus’ point
is not to say
hide your faith.
In fact, just a little earlier in the Sermon on the Mount
he says that you should let your light shine, and not hide it.
What he’s saying here
is that you shouldn’t do acts of piety
just so other people
with think more highly of you.
Instead, examine your own motives.
The problem that Jesus is pointing out
is not simply practicing your faith in a visible way;
it’s when you do things
not because you love God,
but because you want people to see you and say,
“She goes to church. She’s such a good person”
or
“He’s really religious. He must be trustworthy.”
And before you say, that would never happen,
think about those times, mostly in the past,
when it was expected that everyone went to church.
If you didn’t, you might find
that you weren’t invited to be a member of Rotary,
or your business suffered in comparison with the one down the street, whose owner did go to church.
Or perhaps you didn’t get invited to the more significant social events.
Or perhaps you couldn’t get elected to public office.
I always remember the Prime Minister of Australia
whose home electorate was where I lived.
He would show up occasionally at ecumenical events,
and always claimed to be an active Anglican.
But according to someone I knew who was his parish priest,
it was his wife who was active.
He had relatively rarely shown up over the years.
And so it felt like he was just using religion
as a political tool.
I used to live in Princeton, New Jersey.
And there was a kind of undercurrent in society there,
that it mattered
what church you were seen to belong to.
Nassau Presbyterian was the best;
after all, the university was founded as a Presbyterian school,
and one of the most prestigious Presbyterian seminaries is located there.
If you didn’t go to Nassau, the next best was the Episcopal Church. It was large - the largest in the diocese - and well thought of.
But if you didn’t go to one of those two churches, you likely weren’t part
of the social scene.
We’ve inherited a little of that culture here at St James.
After all, we might not be the largest church in town, but we are the one
that the town was named after.
And occasionally I hear a trace of that
as I move around the community.
And Jesus is saying, forget about that.
Examine yourself;
ask yourself why
are you doing this.
Are you doing it for love of God,
or are you doing it for other reasons?
Of course, if we’re honest,
most of us have mixed motives.
I come to church on Sundays
in part, because it’s my job.
And when I’m on vacation, I go because it’s habit, and because I want to meet people, and because it’s in my ordination vows,
but underneath I go
because it’s at the heart of my faith.
Going to church, for me,
is about meeting with God,
worshipping,
and letting God
shape my life.
But all this gets more complicated
when it comes to Ash Wednesday.
And every year I struggle.
Should I keep the ash on?
That way, it reminds me
of my own mortality,
it reminds me
that we are entering a different season of faith,
it reminds me of my baptism,
it reminds me
to take the time
to examine myself
and confess to God;
above all, it reminds me
that the demands of God
do indeed intrude
into everyday life.
And I kind of hope
that seeing it
reminds other people
of the same things.
Or should I wipe it off?
Am I just pretending that I need that ashy mark
as a reminder, justifying myself,
when really leaving it on
is about showing other people that I’m holier than they are
because I remembered
to go to church?
There’s no easy answer. It’s something that each of us
has to answer for ourselves.
But whether you decide to wipe yours off
or keep it on all day,
remember that you are but dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from your sin,
and be faithful
to God.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010