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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Uses promptos facit: “Practice makes perfect”. Or, so goes the old saying, reportedly traced back at least to the sixteenth century. Perhaps some of you have more recently used that expression or had others use it on you. But, have you or they ever thought about how one’s practicing something improperly makes one imperfect? The improper practices of the Jews of Jesus’s day are behind His words in tonight’s Ash Wednesday Gospel Reading, in which He speaks to His disciples and to us about “Practicing Your Righteousness”. And so, the theme for this sermon is “Practicing Your Righteousness”.
For tonight’s Gospel Reading, we have returned to the so‑called “Sermon on the Mount” in St. Matthew’s divinely‑inspired Gospel account. Jesus’s words tonight about “practicing your righteousness” come right after those we heard two Sundays ago about our needing to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. That Sunday and the two Sundays before, Jesus contrasted the Jews’ incorrect doctrine (or teaching) with Jesus’s own correct teaching, as tonight we heard Jesus contrast the Jews’ improper practice with Jesus’s own proper practice. Specifically, Jesus speaks about giving to the needy, about praying (with His condemning babbling in prayer and His teaching the Lord’s Prayer in the intervening verses), and about fasting (that is, eating little to no food for a period of time for religious reasons). The three are sometimes regarded as a Lenten discipline.
Who does not like impersonations done in good fun, when a good actor or comedian copies the way someone speaks or behaves in order to make people laugh? Such impersonations are behind one of the Greek terms Jesus in the Gospel Reading uses to describe the Jews. The term can mean “impersonator” or “actor” but in the Gospel Reading and other such contexts, the term is usually translated rightly as “hyprocrite”. In short, as Jesus describes the problem in each of the three cases, the Jews’ improper practice is that they give to the needy, pray, and fast not because they genuinely want to give to the needy, pray, or fast, but rather they give to the needy, pray, and fast in order to be seen by other people, like a spectator watching a parade go by.
What about us? Do we give to the needy, pray, or fast in order to be seen by other people? Or, do we give to the needy, pray, and fast because we genuinely want to give to the needy, pray, and fast? No doubt too often our motives are no better than those of the Jews of Jesus’s day, and certainly our motives are no better than theirs by nature. By nature we are sinful and unclean, sinning against God and one another by thought, word and deed, by what we think say, and do and by what we do not think, say, and do. We each know ourselves and our own sins well, which give us plenty of reason for guilt and shame, but God knows us and our sins even better, and, apart from His help, there is no escaping His righteous wrath.
Three times in the Gospel Reading—once after each example: giving to the needy, praying, and fasting—Jesus says that those who have done such things in order to be seen by others already have their reward. Like an invoice stamped “paid in full”, no further payment or service follows that close of the transaction. What such people deserve from the Father in heaven is righteous wrath, and they and we will get it, unless they and we repent: turn from our sin in sorrow, believe God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, and want to do better than keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever it might be, for Jesus’s sake.
To be sure, Jesus practiced what He preached. Not to be seen by others but because He genuinely wanted to, Jesus gave His very life to the poor, to all of us. Jesus prayed, for example, to the Father to forgive all of us, who were responsible for His death on the cross. And, Jesus fasted, for example, for the 40 days in the wilderness when He was tempted by the devil, which period is partly behind our 40-day season of Lent. Really, only because of Jesus’s righteousness do we have any righteousness to practice at all. In His baptism, Jesus took on our sin in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), and only by our taking on His righteousness in our baptisms does our righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). When we seek first the Kingdom of God and the righteousness that with it comes to us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, then the forgiveness of sins and all the other things we need are added to us (Matthew 6:33). Forgiveness, life, and salvation are not a “reward” like “wages” that we earn, but they are a free gift of God, our Heavenly Father (Romans 4:4; 6:23).
God our Heavenly Father gives us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation through His Word in all its forms. For many of us, the first time we know for sure that we received those free gifts of God is at the Baptismal Font. There, God’s Word combined with the water works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation. The ashes many of us received tonight are related to Baptism through their rich Old Testament background, which includes ashes of a red heifer making water of cleansing (Numbers 19). In the New Testament the water of Baptism cleanses from sin those who repent and believe. (And, you might note well that even nursing infants were included in the repentance rites of tonight’s Old Testament Reading [Joel 2:12-19]). When we who are baptized know and feel sins in our hearts, we privately confess them to our pastor, who individually absolves (or forgives us) as validly and certainly as if Christ our dead Lord dealt with us Himself, for through our pastor He is dealing with us Himself. And, instructed, examined, and absolved, we who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5: 6) come to this rail to receive both bread that is the body of Christ given for you and for me and wine that is the blood of Christ shed for you and for me, and, so receiving Christ’s body and blood, we receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
Following the ancient philosopher Aristotle, people can wrongly think that someone becomes righteous by doing righteous things. After all, people say such things as, “Practice makes perfect” and “Righteous is as righteous does”. However, we might better say, “Righteous does as righteous is.” When we are made righteous by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, then, by virtue of our redeemed nature, we will do righteous things. We will give to the needy—not sounding trumpets before us in the synagogues or streets in order to be praised by others—but we will give to the needy in secret, that so our left hand does not know what our right hand is doing. We will pray—not standing in the synagogues and at the street corners in order to be seen by others—but we will pray in secret, having shut the door to our room. And, we will fast—not looking gloomy, with our face disfigured so extensively by ashes in order that others may see our fasting—but we will fast in secret, although to be sure, we may use a few ashes as an external sign to ourselves and others of the genuine repentance and faith we have received from God.
In such things as sports, music, and maybe modern medicine, proper practice may make close to perfect, but not with “Practicing Your Righteousness”. Practicing our righteousness does not make it perfect, but receiving Christ’s perfect righteousness from God does lead to our proper practice of it. And, our proper practice of Christ’s righteousness gives witness to our Father in Heaven, where our treasure and heart are now, and where, on the Last Day, our resurrected bodies will be also.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +