Ash Wednesday
By Derek Neal
ALL HUMAN LIFE is like grass. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We enact that great reminder as our foreheads are marked with the sign of the cross in ashes – a very powerful combination of death and life. We all will die, as Jesus himself died on the cross. On Ash Wednesday, we begin, ever so gradually, a journey with Jesus toward the cross. We make a turn in our path. The turn in our path is repentance: realizing where we are and how we have gone astray, and turning to put ourselves back on the right track with Jesus in clear view. That will place the cross in clear view too. Yet Jesus overcame death, and so the cross is a sign to us not only of death but of life. Our awareness of our mortality also is an awareness of our faith, that death is not the end. Because of Jesus we do not fear death, and so we face it squarely. We mark that confidence on our faces.
There is an ancient tradition of marking this time of Lent through penitential practices: actions that symbolize our recognition that we have not been as committed to the way of repentance as we might have been. In almsgiving, or charitable donations to help the poor, we repent of our lack of generosity. In fasting, seeking a simpler and lighter diet – even inviting hunger – we repent of our self-indulgence and over-consumption. In intentional prayer, setting aside more of our time to talk to God, we repent of having ignored God and neglected our relationship with him.
We’re accustomed now, quite often, to think of heightening these disciplines of fasting, prayer and almsgiving during Lent as exercises that deepen our relationship with God. They represent kinds of self-denial: refusing the satisfaction of food and seeking the satisfaction of God’s presence; giving up more of our time to spend it with God in prayer; giving away more of our money, not only to benefit others but to deepen our relationship with Jesus, who told his disciples not even to bring money when they went to proclaim the gospel. To the degree that we follow these traditions – and that is entirely up to us – we don’t do it because they’re good for us, like a fitness class. We follow them because they are a tangible means to live closer to the story of Jesus.
Penitence, of course, was an ancient practice in Israel’s history, as the prophet Joel shows us. Through Joel, the Lord calls Israel, an afflicted nation, to unite in a concrete demonstration of sorrow for its unfaithfulness: a consecrated fast, a sacred assembly, a great public gathering. This cannot be just show, however. The Lord calls through his prophet, in magnificent words, “Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning. Rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God” (Joel 2.12–13). The public ritual does not suffice in itself; it must be a sign of the people’s willingness to return to God. It must happen in the right spirit.
By Jesus’ time, similar practices had become part of individual devotion. Jesus’ words here in the Sermon on the Mount caution his followers to approach them in the right spirit. In Jesus’ own day, some people made particular religious practices something to draw attention to themselves. Jesus says that his followers are not to do so. Fasting, for example, is not something to show how tough or how holy you are. Neither is prayer. It is not a competition. Jesus never speaks of fasting as optional. Indeed, he assumes that his followers will do so: “When you fast…” he says, not if. But don’t make a big show of it; rather, act normally. It’s not your appearance before others that counts. It’s the intention, the spirit, behind the act.
In fact, Jesus’ remarks about fasting are only part of a longer concern with the problem of hypocrisy. In the Sermon on the Mount, he addresses all three penitential practices, fasting, prayer and almsgiving, in each case urging discretion: “When you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be seen by men” (Mt 6.2); “When you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets” (Mt 6.16). In every case Jesus says “Assuredly I say to you, they have their reward.” He does not deny that this attention-getting observance gets attention; the hypocrites get what they want. But he is calling his followers to something else – in every case he says “your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
Jesus is not enjoining us to hide our faith or be secretive about our observance of ritual, but rather to display our genuine faith in God by showing that we trust him to know we seek to please him, even if nobody else happens to recognize it. He is calling us to turn toward God, to face God at the true centre of our spiritual life, which is to say our everyday life. Our Father who sees in secret will reward us openly.
If, like me, you’ve gotten used to thinking of Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent as a time of self-denial and doing without, all the talk of rewards in the passage from Matthew may seem a little surprising. But in fact, every time Jesus criticizes the religious show-offs, he puts it in the frame of rewards. The hypocrites seek the reward of social recognition, given by other people. But, says Jesus, God the Father sees all, and he will reward those who pray, or fast, or give alms, in the right spirit, even (and especially) when no one else knows about it. The point is, there is a reward.
What is this reward? Jesus doesn’t seem to describe it in words, except to say that the Father will give it “openly.” But he turns this talk of rewards into talk of treasure. Just as the human body grows old and dies, and turns to dust, so the treasures of the world are perishable. They decay; they can be taken away. Treasure in heaven, on the contrary, says Jesus, never decays and cannot be stolen from you.
Heaven is where the treasure is and where the Father is, and the Father is the one who rewards openly. Could it be that the reward, the “open” reward, of a true relationship with God, a relationship cultivated through a humble spirit, through not seeking the approval of others – the reward is in fact that very same true relationship with God? What reward could be better? Whether we are in our earthly lives or that greater life we will live in the fullness of time, this reward will be “open.” It will be evident to everyone; how could it not be? How could the light of a heavenly reward not shine before others? This, in contrast to the false reward of social currency, is a way we should hope to appear to the world.
In Greek, “hypocrite” literally meant an actor, someone who pretends, and so in English it means someone who pretends to a degree of virtue they don’t actually live out. Jesus doesn’t deny that the hypocrites he addresses actually do make charitable donations, that they do pray, and that they do fast. But wanting the social recognition and respect, for Jesus, invalidates the virtue of the acts. It’s not enough to say, “Well, I gave enough to feed 50 people this Christmas, what difference does it make?” To Jesus it does make a difference.
We live in a very different culture than that of Jesus. In first-century Judea people’s gestures were bigger and blunter. So we might not think that these warnings against hypocrisy have much to do with us. We’re pretty discreet, after all, aren’t we?
If we think at the level not of the individual but of the Church, though, we might see it. There is a severe temptation for the Church to want social recognition and appreciation from the rest of society – or to feel that it once had those things and has lost them, and to, as it were, sound a trumpet about that, disfigure its face in complaining and self-flagellation. There is a temptation for every church community to expect payoff, results, tangible reward, for its ministry in the world, especially when it feels that that ministry has cost it dearly. What if, however, the reward is – at the community just as at the individual level – a true, honest, and rich relationship with God?
“Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” We often say that someone has “set their heart” on something, which is another way of saying they treasure it. To set our hearts on knowing Jesus better, following him more closely, listening to him more carefully – that is how we build up treasure in heaven. And that is because by doing so, we hold fast to the hope that is held out to us on Ash Wednesday: that even though the things of this world pass away, our real life lies beyond the grip of death, through the cross. TAP
The Rev’d Dr Derek Neal is Priest and Incumbent at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Témiscaming, Quebec and St Simon’s Anglican Church, Temagami, Ontario, Diocese of Algoma.
