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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.
Every Ash Wednesday there is a part of me—and maybe there is also a part of you—that struggles to understand properly Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel Reading, words that at least on the surface seem to speak against the imposition of ashes that we carried out earlier in the Divine Service. Indeed, in this whole section of Jesus’s so-called “Sermon on the Mount” that we heard, with its teaching largely unique to St Matthew’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account, Jesus could be taken as calling His followers to practice their righteousness—their piety, or their quality of being religious—not publicly but privately. However, tonight as we consider primarily the Gospel Reading, we realize that Jesus is speaking about “Public and Private Piety”.
At least some of the Jews of Jesus’s day did not practice their righteousness, their piety, as they should have. Their religious discipline—such things as their giving to the needy, praying, and fasting—was supposed to be something that flowed from and enhanced their relationship with God and something that marked the Jews as distinct from the Gentiles in a positive way. But, based on Jesus’s criticism in the Gospel Reading, apparently the Jews were giving to the needy, praying, and fasting hypocritically, thinking that doing so made them righteous before God and in order to be seen as holy and praised by other people, when in fact their hearts were unholy and deserved at least God’s, if not also the other people’s, condemnation.
To be sure, you and I also do not always practice our righteousness, our piety, as we should, publicly or privately. We may do something such as receive the imposition of ashes or even just come to church in order to be seen as holy and praised by other people, when in fact our hearts are unholy and deserve at least God’s, if not also the other people’s condemnation. Or, maybe we do not want to repent publicly at all, not wanting to appear to be different from the people and society around us that are okay with whatever goes, or not wanting to raise any questions that might require on our part either a confession of faith or an answer to the hope that we have. We may be rending our garments, as it were, and not our hearts; we may be not truly repenting of all of our sin but hanging on to favorite sins that we like to keep repeating; or we may be harboring resentment over other people’s sins against us and not intending or even wanting to forgive, much less forget.
As our Sunday Adult Bible Class’s study of Romans has reminded us recently, sin and so also death may have come into the world through one man and spread to all people because in that one man we all sinned, but we each on our own also sin and fall short of the glory of God. Created from the dust of the ground, on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we return to dust. As the Committal service, without endorsing cremation, puts it: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Best is that before our death we first answer the Lord’s call through His ministers to return to Him with all our hearts, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. Now is the favorable time; now is the day of salvation. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. When we so return to the Lord, then He forgives us. The Lord forgives our sinful nature; the Lord forgives our sin related to public and private piety, and the Lord forgives all our other sin, whatever our sin might be. The Lord forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
You may recall that in Jesus’s so-called “Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector”, the Pharisee, having stood in a prominent place at the Temple, in his prayer boasted of fasting twice a week and giving tithes of all that he got, but the tax collector, having stood at a distance, confessed his sinfulness and pleaded for God’s mercy, and Jesus said that the tax collector went home justified, forgiven (Luke 18:9-14). Indeed, the highest form of worshipping God is seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’s sake in the ways that God promises to give forgiveness. What we do does not earn us a reward of eternal life from God, but, out of His great love and mercy, God graciously gives us eternal life as a free gift for Christ’s sake. For our sake, God made Jesus, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. True God in human flesh, Jesus took our sin to the cross and there died for us in our place. And, three days later, He rose from the dead, showing that God the Father had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. The Lord knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust; and He shows compassion to us who fear Him with repentance and faith. From Him we receive full pardon and forgiveness.
We receive that full pardon and forgiveness through His Means of Grace, His Word and His Sacraments, preached and administered through the ministry of reconciliation that God established, with His ministers serving as His ambassadors of a sort. The ashes we use as outward signs of our inner repentance are connected to the Old Testament water of cleansing that points us to the water of Holy Baptism. At the Font we usually first receive the sign up the cross upon our foreheads and hearts to mark us as those redeemed by Christ the Crucified. Then, when sins particularly trouble us, we seek out our pastors to confess those sins privately for the sake of individual Holy Absolution. And, so absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us and thereby give us the forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation.
For the Sacrament of the Altar, fasting and other bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training, but we are truly worthy and well-prepared to receive Christ’s Body and Blood and the forgiveness that comes with it by having faith in His Words, “given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins”. Some may go a short time without any food or drink before receiving the Sacrament of the Altar, or we might go a longer time, such as the forty days of Lent without some particular food or drink before celebrating the Sacrament at the Resurrection of Our Lord on Easter Day. Whether such fasting or giving to the needy or praying, all such spiritual disciplines properly flow from faith and the forgiveness that we receive through faith, and all such spiritual disciplines properly enhance our relationship with God and so serve us and our neighbors. We may be sorrowful, but we also are always rejoicing. We know that God, out of His great love and mercy and grace, has laid up for us a great treasure in heaven, of far greater value than any human approval that we might receive here and now, so we look forward to fully experiencing that treasure there and then.
Whatever struggle to understand properly Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel Reading that we might have had, we realize that the dichotomy between public or private piety is false, and that Jesus, in saying “when you fast” in fact, expects us to fast, sometimes publicly and sometimes privately, and that Jesus does not prohibit us from using external signs of repentance such as ashes in a limited way that does not completely disfigure our appearance. May God bless our “Public and Private Piety” flowing from our faith in Him to the glory of His Holy Name and for the building up of both ourselves and His Kingdom in this place.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +