Today marks the beginning of Lent, the time of preparation before Easter. This year, SLMF is going to be going through a series of spiritual disciples linked up with each week's scripture focus. I'm going to use this blog to outline these disciplines, posting information on their history, various ways to practice them, and at least one post on child friendly spiritual disciplines. I hope you enjoy.
Also, I preached this evening as part of a South City Eccumenical Ash Wednesday service this evening, and I thought I might share that sermon here for you.
Greetings, I’m pastor Samuel Voth Schrag, from the Saint Louis Mennonite Fellowship. For those of you who don’t know where we are, the Saint Louis Mennonite Fellowship is down on Chippewa, one block west of Grand. For those of you who don’t know who we are, Mennonites are Christians who believe that the Bible calls committed adult believers to join together in a focus on peace, justice, and witness, that the gospels-the story of Jesus’ life-are the core of the Christian message, and we are a denomination that carries on the Anabaptist tradition of simple living and pacifism dating back to the Protestant reformation.
It is good to gather with you this Ash Wednesday, thank you for welcoming me here.
We mark this evening, the beginning of the season of Lent, the annual time of fasting and self-reflection before the celebration of Easter.
In the early church, Lent was the final stage of catechism, with baptisms being done on Easter, and people preparing for Baptism fasting in preparation for their life shaking commitment to the church for the 40 days before the big event. Over time, in solidarity, the Lenten fast became a program for all Christians, not just those coming into the faith, and it developed into the formal rituals that are familiar today-Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, the day before (and now the weekend before) Lent, when the last excesses are gotten out of the system before a time of fasting begins, the tradition of giving things up for lent-often meat-the patterns of Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday these are the spring traditions of the Christian year.
It is in this tradition then, that we meet this evening, coming together to mark the beginning of the time of preparation, where we examine our souls for the challenges we face, looking within for the hypocrisy, bitterness, or pride that marks our own walk with the Lord.
And thus, we have before us, today’s passage from Matthew. This passage falls in Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount-in fact it forms the very central part of the sermon, the core of the sermon if you will, so it is in the context of the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule, and ‘you have heard it said, but I say unto you’ sayings that we should hear the scripture this evening, this text, teaching us how to give, and how to pray, and how to fast.
I want to begin by noting the irony, for us to gather here, to pray publicly, (to collect an offering?) to begin a time of fasting with the sign of the cross that we will wear out into the world, when the most obvious reading of this text suggests we ought not to pray in public, with fancy words, nor proclaim to our faith communities that we are going to be fasting.
If you’d like to read this text as a commandment to give only anonymous donations, to notice with grief the number of things in this world named for rich and powerful benefactors, to critique the ways in which our very churches have been structured to provide worldly acclaim to those who demonstrate their piety and faithfulness most publicly, and in response, to commit to pray simply and quietly in private, and to fast without public accountability, I think you would be well within a safe reading of the text.
But I do gather here this evening, with all of you, and I will bear the mark of the cross in ashes today, because I think that the deeper message of this passage is both more challenging and a little less condemning of our public acts of faith.
Jesus throughout the gospel, but particularly here in the Sermon on the Mount invites all people to a level of humility and self reflection that acknowledges the complex and real motivations for all of our actions, and the ways in which we are all susceptible to sin, and in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, he focuses his attention on those who are caught up in the competition to be most pious, noting that religious systems tend to develop entrenched power structures that have many tangible benefits to give to those who serve, both social and financial. We publicly honor our pastors, commend our Sunday School teachers, celebrate those who dedicate their lives to service. We can rank churches based on their size, evangelists by how many people they’ve brought to Christ, and Christians by their public piety, such that they receive great blessings in this world for their actions. but Jesus attacked those power structures of his religious institutions just as firmly as he attacked the economic system of his day that allowed landowners to dominate the poor.
So as we listen to his sermon today, I hope it invites us to do more than just avoid the public perception of humility-it is quite possible to anonymously donate millions of dollars to a cause, and feel proud of having fulfilled Jesus' commandment to not let the right hand know what the left hand is doing.
Reinhold Niebuhr writes in his An Interpretation of Christian Ethics “There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people. If any one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the righteous.” Jesus consistently tells us that those who know their status in relationship to God are more likely to do the real deep soul work required to become transformed in the image of God-the woman who anointed his feet with oil, who loved much because she was forgiven much-Lazarus, whose sores were licked by the dogs of the rich man, the Samaritan woman, who had five husbands, and was living with a sixth man who was not her husband, these are the people that Jesus touched, because they were the ones who most fully knew they needed the redeeming hand of God in their lives, and he was hardest on the most righteous-the Pharisees who had avoided corruption from both the Roman occupation and the influence of centuries of Pagan religion, and were proud of their status as those who preserved the traditions of God.
And so too, do we need to be reminded of this dichotomy-that at our most sinful, we are holy beloved children of God, and at our most faithful, we are fallen creatures of dust, continually wrestling with pride and privilege, condemned by the words of Jesus himself.
That is the core, I think of the prayer that rests at the center of the scripture text today, the prayer that Jesus taught us. In the Lord’s prayer, we orient ourselves correctly towards God and towards one another, acknowledging our sins, asking for the simple necessities of life, and acting first of all towards the kingdom of God, aligning our benefit with that of creation.
We gather today on Ash Wednesday to remember all the things that are dust-from dust they came, and to dust they will return. The atoms of our very bodies will be recycled by the next generation, our names will be forgotten in the mists of time, our wealth is just so much paper, our accolades fleeting moments of joy. It is in that context, then, that Jesus invites us to store up real treasure, and as you receive the mark of Ashes on your forehead this evening, and as we go together into the season of Lent, may this be first in your heart and your mind, so that you might pray with all integrity the prayer that Jesus taught us.
Will you join me in those ancient words? (and lets go with debts and debtors)
Our father…
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