This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka on Sunday February 26, 2020.
The Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday is a portion of the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon that I preached on just a few Sundays ago and described as one of the most significant and influential sermons or speeches ever delivered. Once every three years, during Year A of our 3-year lectionary, we get to hear large chunks of this great sermon prior to Ash Wednesday so that we are primed and prepared for the portion of the sermon that we hear today.
In the part of the Sermon on the Mount we heard today, Jesus describes three spiritual disciplines that he expects his followers to practice. Remember: the word “disciple” is connected to the word “discipline” because being a disciple means having some discipline and practicing disciplines for spiritual growth; being a disciple of Christ (being a Christian) means that we engage in particular spiritual practices, we practice particular disciplines. So what are the three disciplines that Jesus describes in his sermon par excellence?
We often overlook these disciplines because we focus so much on the fact that Jesus is teaching us to not perform our acts of righteousness (dikaiosyne) in front of others in order to be seen by them and to garner glory for ourselves. (The irony, of course, is that we then proceed to mark our foreheads with ashes and thus demonstrate our piety to others. However, it is important to note that the church understands Ash Wednesday as a public day of fasting and repentance so “going public” with your piety on Ash Wednesday is actually entirely appropriate. The rest of the season of Lent, however, is a time of primarily private fasting and repentance, which is why we are given this teaching from Jesus on this day: to prepare us for a season of personal and mostly private disciplines: of giving, praying and fasting in secret for our heavenly Father who sees what is done in secret.)
The problem is that we can so easily throw the baby out with the bathwater. In our attempts to avoid coming across as too self-righteous and pious, we may avoid practicing the spiritual disciplines altogether, disciplines that are absolutely essential for our growth in Christ. Notice that Jesus does not say, “If you give alms” or “If you pray” or “If you fast, do not do it to be seen by others.” No, he says, “When you give alms,” “When you pray,” “When you fast, do not do it to be seen by others.” Jesus expects his followers (us) to give alms, to pray, and to fast on a regular basis.
Now in Jesus’s day, giving alms meant giving money or clothes or food to the poor. So we practice this crucial discipline now by giving back to God a portion of the gifts God has lavished upon us. We do this by giving to those in need, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly by supporting Betty Chinn or the Food Bank or the Forgotten Initiative or St. Vincent’s Dining Hall or the Rescue Mission or all of the above. Also, in Jesus’s day, giving alms meant giving money to the temple so that the priests could continue glorifying God through worship and sacrifice. So we also give alms by giving money to the church so that the church can continue glorifying God and offering public worship services here in the beauty of holiness on a regular basis. Furthermore, a portion of the money that is given to this church goes straight to organizations that help people in need. So giving money to this church is also giving money to the poor. This is a crucial discipline that Jesus reiterates at the end of the teaching today when he says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” During this season of Lent, may we give alms by giving a little bit more to the poor and to the church, not for our own glory but for the glory of God, and not for earthly pleasure but for the sake of heavenly treasure.
Jesus expects his followers to give alms and he expects his followers to pray. It goes without saying that Jesus expects his followers to consistently gather for communal prayer and worship, but that is not what Jesus is talking about here. Here, Jesus is talking about a discipline of personal and even private prayer. He says, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.” Jesus expects each of us to have a place set aside in our home for personal prayer. During this season of Lent, may we not only make extra special effort to worship with the communion of saints each Sunday (and Saturday and Tuesday), but we may also set aside some time each day in the sacred privacy of our homes to pray to our Father who is in secret.
Jesus expects his followers to give alms and to pray. So far Jesus’s teachings seem to align fairly well with the teachings of the Episcopal Church. Like a good Episcopalian, Jesus seemed to know the Book of Common Prayer pretty well because if you look at page 856 in the prayer book, you will see what the church considers to be the duty of all Christians. In the Catechism, on page 856, the prayer book says, “The duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.” Now we are not to do these things out of legalistic obligation, but out of love. We practice these disciplines in order to express our love and gratitude to God and to enter more deeply into that ever-giving flow of divine generosity. We come together week by week for communal worship, we work, we pray and we give.
But then Jesus includes this other discipline that (unfortunately) did not quite make it into our prayer book’s catechism at all (at least I can’t find it): that is, the discipline of fasting. Again, Jesus doesn’t say “If you fast” or “If you choose to fast.” He says, “When you fast.” Now fasting is a powerful spiritual practice and it ought not be entered into unadvisedly or lightly. For some people with particular health issues, fasting should probably be avoided entirely. At the same time, a great deal of evidence shows that occasional fasting can be enormously beneficial to one’s health. Jesus does not go into any detail about the intricacies of fasting, except to say that we ought not do it in order to show off how pious and holy we are. The church, however, has offered some helpful suggestions and guidelines when it comes to fasting. During seasons of penance (like Lent), the church recommends fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays (with the major fast days being today Ash Wednesday and Good Friday), but that does not necessarily mean avoiding all food and drink for 24 hours. It means eating and drinking considerably less than usual or sometimes not at all throughout the day, until the evening when we break the fast with a small meal. For others, fasting might mean abstaining from alcohol or sugar or caffeine or meat or social media or whatever, and then perhaps using the money that would have been spent on such products to give to others who are in need. However you choose to fast or however you might feel about fasting, I do encourage you to consider the fact that fasting is a spiritual practice that Jesus expects his followers to observe.
Personally, whenever I fast, I notice that I become much more attentive to my body, mostly because my body (particularly my stomach) starts demanding my attention by growling and wondering out loud why I’m not feeding it. For me, this is actually one of the great gifts of Lent: a heightened awareness and appreciation of the body, of the fact that I have a body, and of the fact that, in many ways, I am a body. I am here with you now because my body is here. Of course, we believe that we are more than these mortal coils and that we will undergo a kind of bodily resurrection in the world to come, but Lent is a season for us to acknowledge and appreciate these incredible and beautiful and frustrating earthly vessels we call bodies. And Ash Wednesday is a day in which we reflect upon the fact that our bodies are made from dust (more specifically stardust) and that we will eventually return to this dusty rock that revolves around the sun. Ash Wednesday is a day when we realize that we are what Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel called “God-breathed dust.” We are dust that breathes the breath of God. We are jars of clay that hold within us the all-surpassing power of God (2 Corinthians 4:7). Although Lent is often understood as a time for denying the flesh (the word “Carnival” means “put away the flesh”), I believe the radical and countercultural practice today (in our media-saturated world) is to actually befriend the flesh, not in a hedonistic way but in a humble way, with gratitude.
During this season of Lent, may we give alms and may we pray and may we attend to our bodies by fasting and feasting and appreciating the many bodily gifts we so often take for granted: the gifts of hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling and touching. Remembering that our bodies (according to Scripture) are temples of the Holy Spirit, may we, this Lenten season, learn to value and care for our temples with the same reverence that we have when we care for places of worship like this so that we may glorify God, follow Jesus Christ and serve all people through the power of the eternal Spirit that dwells in and affirms our mortal bodies. Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 