Rend Your Hearts - 14 February 2018 - Ash Wednesday

Welcome! At midnight tonight begins the Season of Lent, a time of forty days leading up to Easter. It is a time of prayer and reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ presence in our lives and in the world; a time to look within ourselves to see what needs changing and healing as we seek to follow Jesus more willingly and more completely.

In Bible times when people sinned and were sorry they would sometimes put ashes on their heads as a symbol for their sin, and as a way of saying they were sorry for doing wrong. Sin is when people act and think as if they don’t care about God or about themselves or other people or about God’s world.

Tonight, we too will use the symbol of ashes to express our sadness about sin. The ashes come from the palms we used last Palm Sunday as we welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. They remind us that Jesus is King and that we are God’s creation of the earth. They also remind us of new life, from which new plants grow and abundant life comes. The ashes are mixed with oil, which in Bible times was a sign of God’s favor and God’s healing. –– Sara Webb Phillips

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

There’s no evading the odd fact that Matthew 6:1–6 and 16–(18)21 seems to be an anti-Ash Wednesday text assigned for Ash Wednesday. The passage apparently warns us away from every kind of visible piety. In order to live out Jesus’ injunctions everyone should stop at a restroom on the way out of Ash Wednesday services and wash off those ashes. Matthew’s gospel more than any other is a manual for discipleship—piety is done secretly; charity is done openly. How do we relate the appropriate concern with liturgical faithfulness to the warnings against showiness and hypocrisy? –– David Bartlett

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

In the Hebrew Bible, fasting and repentance are often prescribed in times of suffering and danger or under threat of such concerns. Here the threat is not attack by a human army, but the “day of the LORD” and the destruction and terror it brings.

. . . Joel calls for fasting, but in a redefined form. He calls upon the people to return to God with fasting and repentance, but rather than rending their clothes as a sign of that repentance, they are asked to “rend your hearts and not your clothing.” –– Jonathan Lawrence

2 Corinthians 5:20b––6:10

Just as the psalmist pledged to “teach transgressors your ways,” Paul seeks to reconcile the Corinthians to God, serving as an ‘‘ambassador for Christ.’’ In many of the readings for today, it is not the act but the motivation that counts, the way we respond to God’s gifts. So too here, he urges them “not to accept the grace of God in vain.” He cites Isaiah 49:8 in its reference to an acceptable time, a day of salvation, which Paul says has arrived. –– Jonathan Lawrence

David Bartlett, an ordained American Baptist minister, is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and Lantz Professor Emeritus of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jonathan D. Lawrence, an American Baptist Church ordained minister, teaches Religious Studies and Theology at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York.

Sara Webb Phillips is a United Methodist minister serving North Springs UMC in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

Homily Service 39, no. 4 (2006): 2-12.

Remember Dust –– Ash Wednesday, Year A –– 1 March 2017

Ash Wednesday with its reminder that we are made of dust, adam, and will once again become dust when we die means to set the stage for deepened faith so that together with the three admonitions––fast, pray, give alms––we will really know the profundity of God’s life in our lives.

Three basic religious practices are to be done “in secret.” Charitable giving, prayer and fasting are all assumed to be standard, normative acts of piety. Jesus wants to make sure they are done for the right reasons and not for social approval.

The repetition of “in secret” is an exaggerated way to stress that God is the real audience, the one to whom such acts are really directed. . .

Jesus came from a world in which just about everything happened in public, where persons were rarely alone, and where religious life centered around what groups and families did together. There was a prophetic tradition of “rend your hearts, not your garments,” but even this depended upon a set of group mourning practices. Hearts were hung on sleeves for all to see. What people did and said in public was what they meant in private, simply because most of the time “private” did not exist.

Within that very public world, Jesus stakes out space for it. Private prayer, in “your room”? . . . This would be seen by no one but God? What a weird idea! ––Lucy Bregman 

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

 In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, prayer, fasting and almsgiving are considered practices of the faith. In this pericope, Jesus describes deplorable and ideal ways in which one can engage in these practices. . . He describes how each has been done while the doers are calling attention to their activities to other people. He then counsels the appropriate strategy to avoid attracting attention and the praise of other people.

A word must also be said about the fact that two of the three examples of hypocrites are associated with synagogues. There is no doubt that this reference has served to reinforce contempt for Jews on the part of Christians. Thus, it is essential to call attention to the fact that the gospel setting is first-century Palestine and the narrative presents an account of a teaching of the Jewish Jesus to his Jewish contemporaries, all of whom were associated with synagogues. The application of the story for Christians is to those who would be known in the churches for their philanthropy or who call attention to their ascetic practices. –– Regina Boisclair 

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

The [reading] opens. . . with the prophet's call to sound the shofar from Zion as warning of the impending darkness of day of the Lord's judgment. While this selection continues with the Lord's call to return, the reading ends without clear assurance. Although the selection eliminates the details of impending devastation (2:3–11), with the inclusion of 2:1–2, this reading retains an apocalyptic fervor (see Isaiah 13). –– Regina Boisclair

2 Corinthians 5:20b––6:10

Paul speaks of the. . . soteriological significance of the incarnation and death of Jesus—the sinless one who suffered so that through him sinners are enabled to enter a right relationship with God (5:21). Recognizing that his efforts work together with that of God, Paul begs his readers not to trivialize the beneficence they have received from God. –– Regina Boisclair

Lucy Bregman, professor of religion at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, is the author of several books including Beyond Silence and Denial: Death and Dying Reconsidered (WJK, 1999) and Preaching Death (Baylor Univ., 2011).

Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, teaches at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2007): 4-14.

Dust to Dust – 18 February 2015 – Ash Wednesday

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

            and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence,

            and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 

                                         (Psalm 51:10–11)

The day of dust and ashes. The day of blowing the trumpet but not beating our own drums to make a show of pious endeavors.

But why is it necessary to consider our piety?

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

It is hard not to ‘‘store up ... treasures on earth.’’ Even if those treasures are not actual goods, but rather the honors and recognition the world offers, those things are tangible in a way that heavenly treasures are not. So we cling to them and collect them and often find that our hearts are firmly attached to them. That is what the public piety is about, after all. We collect good opinions like treasures. Perhaps the worst hurt of all is to find that someone has withdrawn the good opinion they had of us.

. . .  All of these things, worldly goods, praise and honors, are perishable. God wants better for the children of God than dependence on things that will ultimately fail them. So the text for Ash Wednesday calls us to repent in the true meaning of the word: to turn around. In this context, repentance becomes freeing, even joyful.  – Judith Simonson

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

In the Hebrew Bible, fasting and repentance are often prescribed in times of suffering and danger or under threat of such concerns. Here the threat is not attack by a human army, but the ‘‘day of the LORD’’ and the destruction and terror it brings.  – Jonathan D. Lawrence

2 Corinthians 5:20b––6:10

Paul seeks to reconcile the Corinthians to God, serving as an ‘‘ambassador for Christ.’’ In many of the readings for today, it is not the act but the motivation that counts, the way we respond to God’s gifts. So too here, he urges them ‘‘not to accept the grace of God in vain.’’  

– Jonathan D. Lawrence

In order that we might have some actual pathways toward really grace-filled motivations for our actions and faith, Ash Wednesday focuses on three forms of faith expression: prayer, giving for others, and giving up something of our own.

The discipline of Lent allows the refocusing of our spiritual life. It allows us to see clearly once again the aim and goal of serving God, which it is a joy to attain.

It calls us to ask why we pray. Jesus, as a Jew, had a very high regard for prayer. Yet we know how easy it is for prayer to become formalized, how quickly it can be just words to be said, a formula to be repeated, a mantra to be spoken. It is easy to allow our prayers to slip from being honest conversation to words used to badger God into agreeing with what we want. . .

[This day is] an opportunity to examine why we give alms. It is our response to God’s generosity and our working out of our response to that generosity. . .

Fasting draws our attention to God, to prove that penitence is real. Yet it can be used to draw attention to self, just as Jesus points out. If it is used in that way—if it is something used to show that we are clearly keeping to the rules—we’ve had our reward already, in full.  

– Michael Beck

May the ashes we bear on our foreheads this day be a sign that we can be with those society so easily leaves behind. I think that in their faces we will see the Christ, the heavenly treasure that the scripture promises.  – Judith E. Simonson

Jonathan D. Lawrence, an American Baptist Church ordained minister, teaches Religious Studies and Theology at Canisius College, Buffalo, New York.

Judith Simonson is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Michael Beck is an Anglican parish priest in the Durham Diocese, UK, and serves as Formational Tutor for Reader Training in the Lindisfarne RTP.  

Homily Service 39, no. 4 (2006): 2-12.