Ash Wednesday February 22, 2012
Joel 2:1-12, 12-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matt 6:1-6, 16-21
Mardi Gras, I heard on the news, is an official holiday in
New Orleans. No one would get anything done anyway, the newscaster said, so the
city just decided to go along with the party. Let the good times roll, as they
say.
The news media focuses on the more lurid aspects of the
revelers on Bourbon Street, but really, of course, Mardi Gras has deep
religious symbolism. During the Mardi Gras revels, the participants wear masks,
to hide their real identities and carry on as someone else – as someone wild
and irresponsible, as someone you would never be in your right mind. But today,
on Ash Wednesday, the masks come off. The revelers of last night are revealed
today as who they really are, stripped down and laid bare.
During Lent the church has for centuries encouraged the
practice of fasting, of giving something up, as a spiritual discipline. Symbolically,
fasting is a way for us to take off our masks, to lay ourselves bare before God
– to be for once, at least, real to God. Fasting is about not pretending we are
someone else, at least for right now. Fasting – even if it is a small thing we
do or do not do, a small thing we give up, a small discipline we take on – is
our symbolic way to journey inward, inside ourselves, with God.
In a few minutes, the liturgy will invite us to the
observance of a Holy Lent, and that observance is about that inward journey
toward intimacy with God, a journey that can take us into the very heart of
God. In that sense, fasting has a deeply personal and private dimension.
The observance of a Holy Lent, through fasting and
discipline, also has a social dimension. The prophet Joel makes it pretty clear
that this kind of fasting is not to encourage humble piety, nor is it a
personal exercise like a fitness routine or the latest fad diet! For the
prophet Joel, fasting and doing justice are united. When we fast, or whatever
we do during Lent, we are about justice: about restoring our right relationship
to God and humanity. One theologian says fasting should be “considered the
restoration of stolen things, not the generous gift of them to the deserving,
out of our rightfully owned bounty.”[1]
When we “give up” something during Lent, it is to remember what we have is part
of the commonwealth - -the wealth common to all the people of God. This is how
theologians understood this in the early church. St. John Chrysostom denounced
inherited wealth as rooted in injustice. Basil the Great proclaimed, "The
bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry, the coat hanging unused in your
closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong
to the one who has no shoes, the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor."
St. Ambrose of Milan said, "God willed that this earth should be the
common possession of all and he offered its fruits to all,” and Augustine takes
us back to Isaiah: "Assisting the needy is justice."
Lent, then, is personal and social – and in this world,
profoundly counter-cultural. Where the rest of society revels in sort of a
permanent Mardi Gras of excess, consumerism, exploitation and even violence, we
Christians are called to take off the masks and costumes and clothe ourselves
in simplicity and silence. When the rest of society values getting more and
more, we are called to give things up, to share what we have with those who
have less. When the rest of society is in a mad rush, admitting no wrong and
taking no prisoners, we are called to stop and think and pray and repent – to
take stock of all that we have and all that we have done which keep us from the
love of God, which keep us from taking that inward journey to the heart of God.
When the rest of society strives for power and domination, we are called to
follow the one who gave up all of that for love.
To follow that one who has loved us since the beginning of
time, is the journey of Lent. In silence, in simplicity, in service, let us
begin.
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