The lectionary texts for this week are as follows. There are two alternate Old Testament texts and if you were in church yesterday you most likely did not hear both of them. You may not have heard either of them! However, since I used both of them in preparing the sermon I'm listing them here for your enjoyment and reference.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 51:1-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Here we are – starting another Lenten season. Another Ash Wednesday with smudges on our foreheads, visible indicators of a counterintuitive, countercultural, counter-all-reason faith that promises what the world can never give.
Here we are – on this day when the prophet Joel declares “the day of the Lord is coming – it is near.”
Here we are – listening again to the words of the Apostle Paul when he follows on Joel’s prophecy by saying the day is not longer near, it is here: See! NOW is the acceptable time! See! NOW is the day of salvation!
Here we are. The time is here. Jesus has lived the life of a human being as it was always intended to be lived so that we may all be saved when we fall short.
Jesus has lived the life of a human being as it was always intended to be lived so that we are freed in this acceptable day of salvation to love each other.
Not for our own benefit – Jesus never loved for his own personal benefit – but to carry one another gently and with great hope.
It is the Jesus who lived life as it was intended who calls out those who “love to stand and pray in the synagogue and at the street corners” – the ones who seem to have some self-centered purpose.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t pray, however! Quite the contrary, Jesus assumes prayer:
WHEN we pray – do it in secret. Because prayer is meant to be the most intimate of conversations between each person and God.
And it is not IF, but WHEN we fast that we are supposed to just go right ahead with it, as a private and intimate opportunity to experience God.
It’s hard to pray without being in touch with God but fasting is a big of a tricky thing. To eat or not to eat – even those who care nothing for God eat. Or sometimes they don’t eat for very worrisome reasons like eating disorders, or chronic illness, or anxiety so severe that food is unthinkable. To not eat is no guarantee of being close to God.
Isaiah relays that message from God to the Israelites – not eating can be many things that have nothing to do with God. And if a person is going to fast for the wrong reasons – for their own personal gain, or for reasons of illness or pain or anxiety, then it is better to eat. Eat the food and go do what Jesus did: love the people as God loves the people.
God, through Isaiah, tells us that a fast is a day acceptable to the Lord – whether we eat or not.
So if we are not fasting because we want or need to eat, or because fixation on food misses the point, then what else makes a day acceptable to the Lord?
According to Isaiah there are lots of things:
Humbling oneself
Loosing the bonds of injustice
Undoing the thongs of the yoke
Setting the oppressed free
Breaking yokes of every kind
Sharing our bread with the hungry
Bringing the homeless poor inside
Covering up people who are naked
Putting ourselves out there to be vulnerable before those who know and love us best
Because if you fast, and feel superior, but oppress others – then the fast is worse than nothing.
When we quarrel and fight, offer heated, angry, unkind opinions on facebook, gaslight your friends, and deny the humanity of your human siblings… that, according to God through Isaiah, “will not make your voice heard on high.”
And lest we get complacent and think that was only true pre-Resurrection, and this is now, notice what Paul, that great preacher of the Resurrection, says:
NOW is the acceptable time!
NOW is the day to
* Humble ourselves
* Loose the bonds of injustice
* Undo the thongs of the yoke
* Set the oppressed free
* Break yokes of every kind
* Share our bread with the hungry
* Bring the homeless poor inside
* Cover up people who are naked
* Put ourselves out there to be vulnerable before those who know and love us best
Because Jesus has opened the door to intimacy with God, we can stop acting out of fear and anxiety and harsh, impossible standards.
Because Jesus has opened the door we can live as we were create to live. We can live to love one another.
And in the coming Lenten weeks, and all the other weeks, when it feels dry, and dusty, confusing, and just too hard to continue, we can remember the cross that did not hold Jesus. We can know that death (and the death-dealing things we do when we forget to love each other) can no longer hold us.
So in this Lenten season, pray. Yes, for sure. Pray. But don’t pray to impress people, pray to get closer to God.
Fast, if you feel so moved to do so. But don’t fast because you should or you think it will make you somehow more worthy. Fast to get closer to God.
And when you eat, be nourished in body mind and spirit to
* Resist the temptation to be arrogant or self-serving, and instead act with humility
* Resist the temptation to insist on every letter of the law and seek higher justice
* Free those who are oppressed because they fear your anger, or fear that you will not forgive them
* Break anything that binds your freedom to love and know God
* Share your bread, and peanut butter and fruit, and cheese, and meat, Vienna sausages and ravioli, with those who are hungry
* Work that every homeless person may have safe shelter
* Show grace to those who are exposed and vulnerable, protecting them from pain and ridicule
* Put yourself out there to be vulnerable before those who know and love us best
Not because it is required, but because you know the love that frees you to be wholly you:
Broken.
Loved.
Redeemed.
Empowered to love others.
Amen.
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