Ash Wednesday
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Each of you have brought joy to the heart of God just by being here today, to offer yourself to God and ask for God’s grace to help you use this Lent well.
Every year the church invites us to use the gift of Lent to deepen our love for God and neighbors. When we celebrate the great Christian feasts of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, we celebrate what God has lovingly done for us as a human race. When we enter into Lent, we are invited to deepen our response of love to God for who God is and what God has done for us.
I discovered a fresh insight into the spirit of Lent this past week. I heard two men, in two different settings say they recognize that in their busyness, they have not given the quality of loving care and attention to their wives that as husbands, they want to give. Each man really loves his wife, but knows that he has not demonstrated that loving care as well as he wants to. So these men have made specific plans for how they will change their patterns of behavior to demonstrate their love for their wife more tangibly in the coming weeks.
This is what Lent is for. Lent is a yearly invitation for us to begin again to make specific plans to show our love for God and our neighbors in specific ways.
I don’t know what your experience has been, but I have found that it is possible for me to say the prayers of Lent, sing the hymns of Lent, hear sermons during Lent…but because of my busy, overfull life …the way I actually live during Lent is not much different from any other part of the year. Neither God nor my neighbors see any difference in my love for them.
Let me ask you…did the way you observe Lent last year make any difference in your life? Will the way you observe Lent this year make any difference in your life?
Isaiah was very direct in telling the people of his day that their season of fasting did not please God. God said, “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. 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…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…Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house…If you remove the…pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, … and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.”
As a nation, this Lent is a time for us to confess our sins before God. Our greed for more money has caused the financial markets of the world to tumble. People in Worcester and people around the world are loosing jobs, loosing retirement savings, not having enough money to buy food, loosing hope…because of the systemic greed and dishonesty in our nation. God will be pleased if we confess the sin of our nation and our own particular forms of greed as we come to the altar today. God will be pleased if we repent and change our greedy, dishonest behavior.
As contemporary American Christians, we make the news most often because of our fights and divisions and our lack of charity for each other and for people around us. We need to ask God’s forgiveness for our lack of love of our neighbors.
The first century Christians were persecuted, they were prevented from getting good paying civil service jobs in the Roman Empire because they were Christians. Yet in their poverty, they sacrificed so that they could care for the widows and orphans of Rome. That is how they loved their neighbors.
Remember the stories from World War II of European Christians who risked their lives to take their Jewish neighbors into their homes to hide and protect them from the German police and the death camps? That is how they loved their neighbors in their generation.
How is God inviting us to love our neighbors in this time of economic anxiety? It is a temptation for us as Christians to turn inward in self-centered ways, to focus on protecting what we have instead of focusing on ways in which God might be calling us to sacrifice ourselves so that we can care for our neighbors in need who have less than we have.
Jesus reminds us in today’s gospel that prayer, fasting and almsgiving are concrete ways in which we can express our love for God and our neighbor. He warns us not to practice these spiritual disciplines so other people will see us and tell us how good and caring we are. We quietly, from our hearts, offer our prayer, fasting and almsgiving in unseen ways, as our offering of love to God and our neighbors.
Prayer is a way we deepen our intimacy with God. How might you change the way you pray during this Lent… to deepen and expand your intimacy with God? Prayer is also a way we love our neighbors. The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has asked that we join with them in prayer on this Ash Wednesday in solidarity with the suffering people of Zimbabwe, especially the Anglicans of that country who are attacked, beaten and jailed if they try to enter any of the Anglican Churches in their country. How will you use your prayer time this Lent to lovingly pray for your neighbors and your enemies?
Fasting is a way to let go of consuming for ourselves, so that we can be more open to loving God and our neighbor. What might you stop doing or do less of during this Lent so that you can give more attention to loving God and your neighbors?
Almsgiving is a concrete way to love our neighbors in need. In what ways might God be inviting you to sacrifice your financial comfort to help someone in need in your circle of acquaintance or around the world during the forty days of Lent?
The Invitation to a Holy Lent that we will hear in a few moments adds an invitation to self-examination and repentance or change of life. How will you examine your life during this Lent in a way that leads to changed behavior? One gift for self-examination is the Litany of Penitence we will use in this service. Might using this Litany in your personal prayer every Wednesday or every Friday during Lent help your practice of self-examination?
We are also invited to read and mediate on God’ Holy Word during Lent so that we learn from the stories of our spiritual ancestors how the God who created us wants us to live in the world during our brief stay on this planet. How will you use the Bible during this Lent to help you learn how to increase your love for God and neighbor during these next forty days of Lent?
The God who rejoices that you are here to begin Lent with this community of faith and prayer…will be especially interested in what you do after you leave this service of worship. Will your presence in this service lead to any change in your behavior during Lent?
Let me offer a suggestion that can be a bridge from your desires in this service and your actions during Lent. Before you go to bed tonight, I encourage you to prayerfully write down a plan for how you will use the forty day gift of Lent to deepen your expression of love for God and for your neighbors. I ask you to write it down and then to read it every day until Easter, so that you can keep your desire before you constantly. Do not be discouraged if you fail. Just begin again the next morning to read your desired plan to deepen your expression of love for God and your neighbor during Lent…and ask for grace to live that plan in the coming day.
Let us take a few moments of silence now in which you can ask God to help you begin to formulate your plan for increasing your love for God and neighbor during this Lent…
Day by day, dear Lord, of Thee three things we pray: to see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, follow Thee more nearly, day by day. Come Holy Spirit and make it so for all of us this Lent. Amen