Ash Wednesday March 2, 2022
Isaiah 58:1-12 Ps.103
1 Cor. 5:20b-6:10 Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21
Lectionary Link
On this day we begin the season of Lent, a penitential season, not because any of us feels any more sinful or inadequate to good living now than at other times of the year, but as a reminder that our greatest sin is when we live and act like we don't need God and each other.
Lent is not about my sin or your sin; it is about our separatistic individual ways of living in denial about communal responsibilities. It is also about our fearful individual ways when we allow our communities to act in harmful ways against the common good and feel absolved because "I am not responsible that people in my community do not have enough to eat or have places to live." Lent is a time to confront our own communities about where we are failing the common good, taking absolution in the "majority that rules made us do it" excuse.
The readings from Isaiah and Matthew remind us that being religious is not a matter of individual performance in public of religious acts without the attending deeds which bear out the truly religious virtue of loving one's neighbor as oneself. Dividing the practice of religious acts from the actual practice of loving our neighbors is the dilemma that we must confront and if we don't, we make Lenten observances simply more individual performance in public of religious pieties.
Lent is a time of confronting ourselves with the question: Do we practice pieties and religious behaviors as a way of justifying ourselves as we actually avoid doing the hard religion of performing the justice of loving our neighbors?
What good is our fast, when so many in the world have the involuntary fast of being hungry? We can treat fasting as an intermittent diet regime for improving our individual health (which is true) and leave our fasting unconnected from the practice of denying ourselves excess so as to share more with people who do not have enough. Lenten fasting is not about our individual diet program; it is about a reorientation of our life assets for the common good.
Lent is about understanding our lives being communally connected. Yes, it is good to practice some intentional deprivations so that we are better prepared when actual and unplanned deprivations are forced upon us. What did St. Paul learn about all the forced situations of deprivations that came to him? He interpreted them as his communal connection with the people to whom he ministered. Lent may be a time for us to learn the interpretation of living intercessory lives. We don't live unto ourselves; we don't suffer unto ourselves; we don't experience joy or success unto ourselves; we do it in community in a very shared way. If we can learn the intercessory secret of living, we don't have to be people who are people bitter about being picked on by God with bad luck. We don't have to be people who feel better than other people because of our good luck. Rather, we can always feel together with other people who do experience the same things, and this intercessory insight gives our prayers a poignant relevance, because we're always walking in the shoes of someone who is going through a similar experience.
Today as the ashes are applied as the fast-forward presentation what our bodies will eventually be, let us cherish our lives in our bodies now by validating our religious piety with the necessary love of our neighbor, so that our piety isn't fraudulent. And let us learn the secret of the intercessory life; our lives are deeply connected. We matter to each other because our lives are always sharing common experiences. The intercessory secret is to know that we are sharing common experiences which enables us to find significant ministerial matches in our prayers and in the gifts that we share with others.
In this Lent, let us leave fraudulent piety by making sure that we are loving mercy, doing justice, and walking humbly before God. And let us learn the secret of intercession; we are deeply connected with others in human experiences so let us pray with authenticity and minister with graced timely sensitivity. Amen.
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