Friends, I am glad to be with you tonight as we observe Ash Wednesday and enter the Lenten season. In this time of political turmoil, it is especially precious to step into a season that invites reflection, repentance, and the recognition that we depend on the mercy of God.
Tonight’s reading from the prophet Isaiah makes it abundantly clear that living in alignment with God’s purposes is crucial not only for us as individuals but also for how we live together in society. The passage resounds with moral clarity: a nation may pretend to practice righteousness; it may claim to be drawing close to God; it may try to cloak its acts of injustice under the mantle of religion, but if people are in fact serving only their own interests, if the economic system is unjust and oppressive, if people refuse to share food with the hungry or provide shelter for the unhoused, then society has lost its moral compass and is rebelling against God. By contrast, in a society marked by justice and by the readiness to satisfy the needs of those in need, then – oh, what beautiful words! – “your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly… [Y]ou shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail… Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt… [You] shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (Isaiah 58:8a, 11b, 12b).
Winter shadows, AshfieldRepairers of the Breach is a national organization that takes its name from this passage from Isaiah. Inspired by Isaiah and the whole prophetic tradition, Repairers of the Breach aims to “[train] moral leaders and [build] social justice movements” that uplift “our deepest moral and constitutional values.” I’m glad to say that this morning, Repairers of the Breach, led by its founder, Bishop William J. Barber II, gathered clergy and faith leaders at an Episcopal church in Washington, D.C., for an Ash Wednesday National Call for Repentance and Truth-Telling. They called on our nation to “turn away from injustice, apathy, corruption, and oppression and recommit to the path of righteousness, truth, justice, and love.” After lament and prayer, they held a procession from the Supreme Court to the U.S. Capitol. Now that’s a meaningful public way to launch the 40 days of Lent!
But Lent also has a very private and personal side. Because we want to be close to Jesus, this season is a precious time to look closely at our lives and to ask God to help us see where we have not been living in right relationship with ourselves, with our neighbors, with the living world around us, and with God.
I’d like to say a word about two impulses that can spur that vital inner work: guilt and desire. Guilt is that uncomfortable feeling we get when we recognize that we haven’t been true to our deep self. We haven’t allowed God’s love to flow freely through us. In one way or another we’ve blocked that flow, as if piling rocks in a river. It’s easy to see what happens when a society is overtaken by greed, hardness of heart, and the grab for power – we’re witnessing it right now. But what happens when these energies overtake us? Can we stop to look closely at what’s going on? Can we ask God to give us strength to amend our lives?
Facing ourselves in the intimacy of our hearts is interior, solitary, and sometimes painful work. As Jesus observes in today’s Gospel, our spiritual practices are not for parading “before others in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). When we give alms or fast or pray, we don’t look for admiration and praise and “sound a trumpet before [us], as the hypocrites do” (Matthew 6:2). Rather, in the secrecy of our hearts we come before God in our weakness and need, trusting in God’s mercy.
I have to say that, as difficult as it may be, there is something wonderful – even liberating – in acknowledging our guilt. Admitting one’s sin is a great relief to the psyche, for at last we are released from the exhausting effort to keep presenting ourselves to ourselves and to others in the best possible light. At last, we can stop working so hard to shore up our self-image and can instead admit to ourselves, to others, and to God that in some ways we’ve failed, we’ve blown it. We are mortal, we are fallible, we have limits, and we’ve made mistakes, even dreadful mistakes. The more we grow in spiritual awareness and maturity, the more we will likely become even more sensitive to the darkness within ourselves. Teresa of Avila suggested the image of a glass of water held up to the light: when the light is bright, the motes of dirt in the water can be seen clearly. In the light of God’s presence, we can see more clearly how we’ve not been acting in loving ways.
But if Lent is motivated only by our failings, then we risk becoming increasingly self-hating, self-rejecting, and self-absorbed. Dwelling only on our guilt can slide us into a kind of depressive swamp, in which we become tempted to self-centeredness and despair. That’s why in some circles Lent has gotten a bad rap as nothing more than a morbid season in which to beat ourselves up.
So, alongside guilt, I want to highlight the other great motivator of the spiritual quest: desire. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” Jesus tells us tonight, “but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . For where your treasure is, there your hearts will be also” (Matthew 6:19a, 20a, 21). Jesus is speaking here in the language of desire. What is most precious to you? What do you love most? To what, to whom, do you ultimately want to give your life? Jesus is seeking to arouse desire is us, to make us restless with the puny identity that our culture gives us: consumers who want only to be entertained, distracted, well-fed, and comfortable. Jesus longs to generate in us a kind of holy impatience, a longing for real transformation. Deep down, something in us wants to awaken, to come alive, to fall in love with life and with the divine Source of life. Something within us wants us to grow. Sin is sometimes defined as the refusal to grow, as the stubborn insistence on staying the same and on separating ourselves from the love that is always available to us.
I invite us to take hold of these forty days as a gift to strengthen and support our journey of transformation. Some Lenten practices directly address guilt: we can ask God to guide us in fearless, honest self-examination. We may want to make a sacramental confession and to make amends. Yet some Lenten practices may be better framed in terms of desire. From a yearning to draw closer to God, many of us will renew our intention to set aside time for daily prayer. To sharpen our desire for God and to open ourselves to the flow of God’s love, some of us will fast, since every pang of hunger can remind us of our deeper hunger for God. Of course, fasting can take many forms, such as fasting from gossip or complaining, from carbon or from single-use plastic.
Some of us in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts will carry out a particular kind of Lenten fast this year, inspired by the work of Walter Brueggeman, who is one of today’s most influential Old Testament scholars. In his book Sabbath as Resistance, Brueggeman critiques a society in which production and consumption define our lives. So, our plan is to step out of that production-consumption economy every Wednesday in Lent and to fast from food, media, and finance.1 Maybe you’d like to join us.
God loved us into being and God longs to draw us close. When guilt or sorrow spur us to repentance: Thanks be to God. When desire for fullness of life pulls us forward: Thanks be to God. And for the God whose love embraces us every day of our lives and who will gather us home at our journey’s end: Thanks be to God.
