In the name of God, who creates, redeems, and
sustains. Amen.
“Is such the fast that I
choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and
to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to
the Lord? Is not this the fast
that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” What is the purpose of
Lent? Though the Judean prophet Isaiah was not writing about the Christian season
of Lent, for thousands of years the faithful have asked the question – what
would God have us to do?
The question goes
straight to the heart of worship. When Isaiah writes “Look, you fast only to
quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do
today will not make your voice heard on high,” I can’t help but think that
his critique of fasting in Ancient Israel might also apply to the ways in which
we fast during Lent. Giving up Facebook or chocolate doesn’t really strike me
as the sort of fast that God would choose. Now that isn’t to disparage those
Lenten disciplines, as they can be helpful if they are not an end unto themselves
and perhaps some of you are taking those up. But the question is- how does our
fasting enable the fast that God would have us to choose- namely loving God and
loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Traditionally, the
purpose of Lent has been to have a season of preparation for Baptism in the
season of Easter. Converts to the faith would often fast and simplify their
lives as they intensely focused on going deeper into their faith. Easter, of
course, is a season of transformation and reversals. In Easter, the impossible
becomes possible, death becomes not a period, but a comma. So it makes sense to
use Lent as time to prepare ourselves for transformation. And this the sort of
fast that Isaiah had in mind as well- a fast where the unjust structures of
society are redeemed and where oppression is transformed into liberation.
Sometimes the calendar lines
up with holy days in the Church in a way that is too coincidental to ignore.
I’ll never forget a few years ago when Palm Sunday fell on April Fools’ Day- I
didn’t preach that Sunday, but that sermon could have written itself. Today is
the feast day of the great reformer, Martin Luther. 469 years ago today, Martin
Luther joined the heavenly hosts upon his death. And the themes of his life and
the themes of Ash Wednesday are too congruous to pass over.
In today’s Gospel text,
Jesus speaks of the hypocrites who practice fasts that do not advance the
justice or peace of God, but instead are self-serving and self-promoting. “Hypocrite”
is a Greek word that was used for actors in plays. They want you to think that
they are something which, in reality, they are not. These religious hypocrites claim
to have power, to be spiritual, to be worthy of respect- and Jesus says that
they are not.
None of us like to think
of ourselves as hypocrites, but aren’t we all a bit? I don’t want to speak for
you all, but I know that I’m a hypocrite. I don’t write every letter to our
representatives in Congress that should be written, I don’t do prison ministry
or work at a soup kitchen as often as I think I should, sometimes I struggle to
see the love of God in others whom I’m mad at. If we’re honest with ourselves,
we will soon realize that none of us are perfect, and as Ash Wednesday reminds
us, none of us are sinless; none of us are innocent of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is
so attractive because, as Edmund Burke said, “hypocrisy can afford to be
magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs
nothing.” That is not the fast that God chooses.
And unfortunately,
hypocrisy is something known in the Church all too well. Isaiah speaks to this
fact- there are fasts being observed which claim to serve God, meanwhile the
poor and the oppressed are being trampled. And so Isaiah condemned that
hypocrisy just as Martin Luther did in his own time. You’ll recall that Martin
Luther was a priest who saw the hypocrisy in Rome. On October 31, 1517 he wrote
a letter to Archbishop Albrecht speaking out against the sale of indulgences-
essentially “get out of jail for your sins” cards. Previously, the Pope needed
money, well, not that he needed it, but he didn’t want to use his own wealth, and he wanted to get more money to do renovations to St. Peter’s Basilica in
Rome. The plan was to sell indulgences, and it worked. At the time, Albrecht
was deep in debt, so he figured that selling indulgences in Germany would be a
good idea as well. As the slogan went “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
the soul from purgatory into heaven springs.”
Luther saw the hypocrisy
in buying forgiveness, the hypocrisy in taxing the poor to pay for things that
the rich could, so he wrote a letter that has come to be known as the “95
Theses” and he posted them on the church door. Luther never intended to leave
the church, only to point out the hypocrisy and call the Church back to the its
foundations. But the Church wasn’t interested in change, and what came next is
what historians call the Protestant Reformation.
Lent is a time for us to
do the same- to consider the ways in which the faith that we profess and the
faith that we practice are dissonant, and then make adjustments. Some people
are into self-deprecation in Lent, but I think that misses the point. As I will
say shortly after the sermon, the point of Lent is the invitation to “the
observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer,
fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” In
other words, Lent is the season to do a spiritual check-up and get back to our
roots.
During the Sundays of
Lent, there is a theme that runs through all of the readings, and that theme is
“covenant.” So the sermons for the season of Lent will focus on understanding
the foundational idea that we are in a covenantal relationship with God. I’ll
say more about what this means on Sunday, but for our purposes today, I want to
highlight two aspects of the covenant.
As you might expect, a
covenant is about relationship, and my emphasis this Lent will be on getting
back to roots of our relationship with God. Hopefully, through examining and
deepening our relationship with God, we will be transformed and empowered to
practice the fast of justice that is suggested in Isaiah.
The first way to better
align our beliefs with our practices, and thus avoid the hypocrisy that Jesus
warns against, is prayer. Now, you’ll notice that Jesus mentions that the
hypocrites are good at praying, or at least, looking like they are praying. So we
ought to pay attention to what we mean by “prayer.” On Sunday mornings at 9:15
in Lent, I’ll be leading a class on the purpose and practice of prayer.
Theologian Karl Barth said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of
an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Prayer is a subversive act that
orients us to God and the ways of the Kingdom. As St. Paul wrote in one of his
letters, “pray without ceasing.” I’ve always liked that phrase, because if we
define prayer as “talking to God” and we believe that God is always with us,
then it follows that all of our life is prayer because God is always with us.
So on Sunday mornings we’ll be exploring how to better align our intentions for
prayer with our practices of prayer.
And the other topic that
we’ll be considering during Lent is Sabbath. On Wednesday evenings, we will
have a short service of Holy Eucharist with Anointing at 5:30, followed by a
parish wide dinner at 6. Then at 6:45, we’ll have a five week study on the purpose
and practice of Sabbath. The easiest way to define Sabbath is “stopping.” Stop
working, stop stressing, stop running around so that you can be still and know
that God is God. I’d argue that Sabbath is a very large part of the salvation
which God offers to us. But because Sabbath is so counter-cultural it can be a
challenge to do, so we’ll discuss the obstacles of remembering the Sabbath and
keeping it holy.
Lent is often defined as
a season of repentance, and the word “repent” means “to change your mind.” This
Lent, our task is to prepare for the transformation that will come on Easter. We
will do well to consider our faith- acknowledging our hypocrisy, asking for
forgiveness, and praying for the grace to be transformed. Through prayer and
Sabbath-keeping, we can practice the fast that the Lord chooses; a fast that calls us back to the roots of our
faith; a fast of loving God and loving all those whom God loves. “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.”
