Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Isaiah 58: 1-12, Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
Ash Wednesday is a “jump start” for our Lenten journey to Jerusalem. This outer geographic journey is often in the desert,/ calling us also to look at the inner desert part of our lives. It is best not to journey alone in the desert. That is why we huddled together at St. Mark’s on one of our church’s major fast days. Our typical Lenten journey entails fasting from food or drink or a favorite dessert, which may not be what we need nutritionally on a desert journey. Today in Matthew and Isaiah, God tells us precisely what fasting means to God.
The writer of Isaiah enters into an amazing conversation with God and the Restoration era Israel, a nation passionately seeking God, just as we at St. Mark’s today passionately seek God. The Israelites have returned from exile in Babylon and are working tirelessly to build a new Jerusalem. They insist they have been fasting and humbling themselves, but God has not seemed to pay attention to their efforts.
“God, we fast, but you do not seem to see us? We humble ourselves, but you do not seem to notice?” Whoa! Right from the start, we have a hint there is a problem here. “We are humble, but you do not seem to notice our humility.”
Our folly continues.
A typical conversation in spiritual direction begins with, “Where is God in your life?” A frequent answer is, “I don’t hear or feel God anymore.” So, we try to pray another way or try another spiritual practice, and often exhausted, we may give up altogether because God seems more stubborn or more distant./
God’s silence can be stunning. And during Lent, we try even harder to make God hear us by making more noise, more prayers, more fasting.
Barbara Brown Taylor says in God’s perceived silence, we learn about our illusions about God’s presence. This sacred presence is not something we demand, and God’s agenda may be quite different from ours.”1 So today, God, maybe also exhausted, comes right out and says he has a different “fast” or practice in mind for us.
God replies, “If you cannot hear me, you have strayed too far from my voice. I am not far from you, but you are not following me to where our prayer time together leads.”
God gives us specific directions on how to return to the road less traveled and walk with him to Jerusalem.
God continues: “This is the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, to share our bread with the hungry, to recognize our connection to all humankind.”
Our disillusionment is that God’s presence is not always where we think. We all have moving experiences of God’s presence when we pray, attend services, fast, and study scripture. But the God of both Isaiah and Matthew tells us to then, get up off our knees, open your eyes, take off our sackcloth and ashes, and fast differently.
God visits us at our prayer desks, but God does not live there permanently. God spends more time at our food pantry, sitting with us with the homebound and the dying, teaching special education classes, listening and sending books to those in prison, hearing the stories and dreams of those with mental illness and addiction, holding our children in his arms, sitting in waiting rooms, feeding homeless veterans. God is not permanently enthroned in our churches, waiting for us to stop by for an audience. At every service, God sends us out into the world! God spends more time in our crowded emergency departments and hospitals, at the employment office, in the lobby of the police station, not only to comfort, but to remind others of their birthright, their nobility, that they are the long-lost sons and daughters of heavenly royalty, meant for more extraordinary lives.
God continues on a roll in his homily to the sackcloth and ashes crowd, “This is the fast I choose. When you see the naked, cover them and do not hide yourself from your own kin.” We can not serve God without serving our neighbors.1 Our relationship with God is intimately connected to our relationship with others, especially the least of all. That hope to keep our faith as a private matter between God and us is an illusion.
God is interested in human relationships and, in particular, dissolving those illusions that keep us apart from one another. We forget we are kin, related to one another. We falsely believe that some people are simply destined to be winners and others to be losers, and that there is no way to change, so we build walls, install security systems, and relocate neighborhoods to keep one from spilling over into the other.
This Lent, God calls us to ANOTHER way, a pathway as old as Isaiah and as up-to-date as the evening news. God calls us to surrender our illusions of separateness, safety, and superiority. We can leave our sheltered sanctuaries and seek God where God lives: with the homebound, in prisons, hospitals, treatment centers, nursing homes—trying to figure out how to untie the fancy knots of injustice and how to take the yokes of oppression apart. We can pool our resources so that the hungry have bread, the homeless have houses, and the naked have something to cover them. Above all, we can learn to recognize all those in need as kin, part of our community, asking them their NAMES, telling them our own, and refusing to hide from them anymore.
Then lovingly, when we return from where we have strayed off a side road and gotten lost, God never mentions any punishment, only blessings. Then,” Isaiah tells us, “The Lord will guide us continually, our healing shall occur quickly, our depression will be no more, we will be cared for when we become spiritually dry. We shall cry for help, and he will say,/ Here I am.” /
Anne Lamott reminds us that we are never punished for our sins but by our sins. God’s silence has been suffering enough. 2
This Lent at St. Mark’s, say your prayers, but when you hear the dismissal to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord at the end of our service,” Go, and:
Participate generously in our Kiva Lenten Mite Boxes ministry, giving small business loans to people all over the world.
Call Celia Martin that you want to help with the dinner for homeless veterans at St. Francis House on March 16th.
Call Tricia Peacock to serve at the Food Pantry. They need help every weekday to prepare for Thursdays.
Go to the monthly workday at Camp Mitchell on the second Saturday of every month to prepare for summer camp for all children. Give scholarships for those in need.
Tell Michael you want to go to the next Eucharist for men in prison at Wrightsville in the Pathway to Freedom Program.
Tell Tandy Cobb Willis you want to help send books to women and men in prison.
Call Janet Woodell that you would like to be a part of a medical mission trip to Guatemala.
Tell Jan Hart and Patricia Matthews you would like to visit the homebound.
Tell Helen McLennon you would like to take them Eucharist.
This is just a start. We’ll talk more./
If God seems silent, it may be because we are not SPEAKING God’s language,/ but don’t give up. God teaches us how to break the silence and even gives us the words./ “HERE I AM.” These are the words WE long to hear, but they are also the words GOD longs for us to SPEAK—to stand before another sister or brother, and say to them, “Here I am.”
When we hear ourselves speaking these words to our brothers and sisters, we will hear an echo in the air--- not silence anymore./It is the very voice of God, saying, “Yes./ Here/ I am. Here/ I am.”1
1Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Silence of God,” Gospel Medicine (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995) 67- 71.
2Anne Lamott, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014) 43.