Sermon: The Fast God Chooses

 

First Presbyterian Church

February 18, 2026, Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

 

The Fast God Chooses

 

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

It’s one of those phrases that is so familiar, we assume by default it must be in the Bible, but it’s not; it’s from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, dating at least back to 1662.  It is part of the burial service, reminding those in attendance that all of us are subject to the same finality as the deceased.  Not surprisingly, a phrase about ashes pops into the mind of many when the subject of Ash Wednesday comes up.  

Ash Wednesday is not an inappropriate time to consider our own mortality.  It marks the beginning of the season of Lent, the culmination of which finds us at a crucifixion site outside Jerusalem, where even our Savior tasted of the pain and indignity of human death.  It is not inappropriate for us to keep in mind our own finiteness, the knowledge that our days are numbered, and that we don’t know exactly what that number is going to be.  At the end of this service, you will be invited to take up a Lenten discipline and to come forward and receive a mark on your forehead or hand, a cross of ashes, and you will hear the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is not at all inappropriate to remember and reflect upon our finiteness on this day.  The challenge is: what will we do with that knowledge?  How will that reflection affect us?

There are good ways to be affected, and there are bad ways.  There are positive ways to carry forward that realization, and there are negative, even damaging ways.  

Matthew cautions us against some of those negative ways.  In these verses Jesus warns his followers against the kind of piety and fasting that damages.  Matthew records Jesus’s warnings in the context of three different kinds of pieties; giving alms, praying, and fasting.  In each case Jesus weighs in against the kind of giving, praying, or fasting that exists mainly to be noticed by others.  As crazy as it sounds, an influential person might well have had a trumpeter at hand to “announce” his gift before the public.  (Today that person would just hire publicists or spin doctors for the same effect.)  Likewise, it wouldn’t have been unusual to see such a person out on the street praying in a particularly ostentatious manner.  (We have “prayer breakfasts” for that now, I guess.)  And a person on a fast might well go about with a face pulled down into a frown, all the better to provoke others to ask “oh, dear, what’s wrong?”

Note that Jesus is not warning against giving alms or praying or fasting; in fact Jesus presumes his followers will give alms and pray and fast – “whenever you give alms,” “whenever you pray,” “whenever you fast.”  But the heart of the matter is why his followers pray or give or fast; is it to receive the praise of others?  To check off a couple of boxes on the Official Good Person Scorecard?  Or is it to give honor to God?  

Isaiah adds a slightly different dimension to the question of practicing pieties like prayer and fasting.  For Isaiah, it’s not just a matter of the public nature of the piety; it’s also about whether the whole life matches up to that public piety.  For example:

If you sit down to your meal, but those who labored to make that meal possible are living in poverty or abuse despite their labor, is that the fast God chooses?

If you pray and sing and make all sorts of joyful noise in worship, but turn a blind eye when others of whatever faith cannot worship in peace without being harassed or even killed, is that the fast God chooses?

Short answer: no.

To the degree that we do not pursue justice in all its forms, to the degree that we tolerate or even profit from oppression or exploitation, to the degree that we assume hunger or homelessness or poverty or lack of educational opportunity or any of the conditions that plague women and men and children around us is "their fault," our fast is pointless or worthless.  It is no service to God whatsoever.  

This is how our mortality, our knowledge of our finitude and limited time, is to move us; to refuse to live with the way things are, to refuse to live in ease because of the oppression and exploitation of others, to loose the bonds of injustice, to set free the oppressed, to share our bread with those in need of bread and on down the list that Isaiah gives us, that is the fast God chooses.  This is our rightful service.  This is what goes hand in hand with the right-minded piety Jesus teaches in Matthew 6.  The piety that comes from our deepest longing, the piety that cares only to be seen before God, the piety that changes the world: this is the fast God chooses.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #166, The Glory of These Forty Days; #---, You teach us 

Message: Be Reconciled

Grace Presbyterian Church

March 1, 2017, Ash Wednesday  A

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Be Reconciled

This is a great shirt, isn’t it? (Note: see below) Upon receiving it from Mabel Tuma on Sunday I knew it was the coolest piece of clothing I’ve ever owned. Direct from Cameroon.

I am forced to confess that before coming to this congregation and meeting the Tuma family, I didn’t really know a lot about Cameroon, and didn’t really think much about it. When I did notice it, it was mostly around the quadrennial World Cup in soccer, if their national team (the Indomitable Lions – that is an awesome team name, people) made a run in the competition.

As a result, I was never particularly aware of the country’s nearness to the ongoing struggle against the violent group Boko Haram, kidnappers of young girls. I certainly knew nothing of the increasingly strained relations between the country’s French-speaking and English-speaking populations. No clue.

Cameroon would hardly be the only country of which this was, and still is, true for me. I know there is internal conflict in Myanmar, but next to nothing about it. There is also ongoing conflict, with acts of terrorism, in Peru, and Colombia is trying to work out a fragile peace with paramilitary rebel groups in its own borders. Ukraine is dealing with pro-Russian rebels, ongoing civil war in South Sudan, drug war in Mexico...if it isn’t in the Middle East, we can pretty easily ignore it. And we certainly don’t want to look at acts of violence in this country, including that shooting too near my old hometown back in Kansas a few days ago, that we would call terrorism if they happened anywhere else in the world.

We could talk about “white privilege” here – we good Americans don’t have to be concerned with these things, because, well, we’re good Americans. We could talk about a lot of things, but I wonder if we need to be listening to Paul here, and concerning ourselves with being reconciled to God.

This is how this reading from Paul begins – “be reconciled to God.” That’s pretty straightforward, or so it seems. But the context for this instruction is anything but. Paul, a founder of this church in Corinth, had found himself tossed aside as that body fell under the sway of fancier, more uppercrust self-proclaimed evangelists who filled the ears of the Corinthians with something like a first-century equivalent of prosperity doctrine, who presented themselves as classier, more sophisticated, more erudite, more elite leaders than Paul. That had to hurt.

Having earlier in the letter vented his frustrations at the Corinthians, Paul now turns to the crux of the matter, and he has enough wit to know that before charging off to try to patch things up with the Corinthians, it was necessary to remind them of the indispensible and irreplaceable thing; to be reconciled to God, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Of course, Paul then goes right to making his case before the Corinthians as to how he and his colleagues had conducted themselves in their work in Corinth.

But being reconciled to God, really being the righteousness of God because of Christ’s work on the cross, changes us – not just in individual personal ways, but us as a body of believers, us as the body of Christ. When we are seeing the world through the righteousness of God we see all the world, no longer obliterated by our more immediate concerns. We are reconciled to all God’s children, not just the ones in this place or the downtown church or the church out in the county.

We feel with God the grief or the sorrow for warfare, conflict, injustice, and oppression in all places where they happen, not just the ones that show up on our nightly news. Our compassions don’t stop at the city limits or county limits or state line or national borders. We see the world as God’s, and we realize the world’s mortality is our mortality, the world’s suffering is our suffering, the world’s cry for justice becomes our cry for justice.

No, this isn’t your usual Lent theme about ashes or giving something up, except in the sense of perhaps giving up our insular mindset or tunnel vision. Being reconciled to God means everyone matters, and that’s not an easy thing to learn. But perhaps that might be the kind of Lenten fast that would make a difference in our world fraught with conflict and strife. To be so reconciled to God that we see the world as God sees it, we see each other as God sees us all: now that is a challenge for Lent. To live as though Cameroon and Peru and Ukraine and Olathe, Kansas matter; there is a worthy fast.

For real, genuine, eye-opening reconciliation with God, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#165 The Glory of These Forty Days

#421 Have Mercy, God, Upon My Life

#166 Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days

The shirt in question. Best garment I have now.

Ash Wednesday meditation: Truth In the Inward Being

Grace Presbyterian Church

February 10, 2016, Ash Wednesday C

Psalm 51:1-17

Truth In the Inward Being

We don’t like to look at ourselves too closely.

It’s uncomfortable to look inside of our own minds, or especially our own souls. It’s dark in there.

Far easier, in the modern world, to distract attention from the darkness and fallenness of our own person. Easier to point and blame. Look at that person. Look how awful they are. Even better if that other person is famous somehow – a celebrity of some sort; singer, actor, athlete, politician. That way we can all gang up on them safely, without fear of being called, and especially without fear of having to look inside ourselves, examine our motives, see our own darkness.

The author of this psalm must have been in agony.

In most Bibles Psalm 51 carries a heading suggesting it was “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan had come to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” While the heading is certainly evocative, and the situation it mentions certainly is in keeping with the content of the psalm, there are two main problems with it. Historically, the heading doesn’t seem to have come with the psalm, originally; it seems instead to have been added at least four hundred years later, well after David was dead. That doesn’t necessarily mean the psalm wasn’t associated with David, but it’s a little troubling.

The bigger, more theological problem with the heading is that it surreptitiously encourages us to think that we don’t need to engage in the self-examination and repentance portrayed in the psalm unless we’ve just committed one big whopper of a misdeed.

And that’s a tremendous problem. We all have “fallenness” in common. Our need to cry out with the psalmist, as in verse 5, that we have been sinners since before we can remember is not dependent on having just been caught in a major infraction. We can and should always be able to acknowledge that, as verse 3 says, “my sin is ever before me.”

God sees this in us. As much as God loves us and longs to draw us ever closer, God never see us without that sinfulness in us, no matter how the psalmist might beg in verse 8. Because God loves us so, God wants us to see in ourselves what separates us from all that God is and wants us to have and to be. Thus, the psalmist cries out to God to be cleansed – no, more than cleansed; to be purged, to be purified, to be “de-sinned” – to have all that horror show of fallenness and separation extracted from us once and for all. But that can never happen until we see it; thus in verse 6 – a wholly remarkable verse – the psalmist hits upon this: “You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” That’s a curious phrase – “secret heart” – and the word actually used here warrants an explanation. We Americans are likely to see “heart” as a metaphor for the source of love, particularly aided by that other holiday coming up on Sunday. Hebrew thinking, though, understood the heart as the center of will, or of decision-making. The psalmist is asking to be made wise in the inmost and deepest part of himself or herself in order to live rightly, wisely, and truthfully – as in that earlier phrase “truth in the inward being.”

“Truth in the inward being.” God desires us to be truthful – not merely in the sense of distinguishing facts from falsehoods, although that’s always a good thing, but in being true. Living true. The word goes much deeper than even such words as “faithfulness”; living in complete coherence and inseparability with the Source of all our living.

And then, when we have learned truth in the inward being, when we have been purged and “de-sinned” and made clean and had a “new and right spirit” put within us, then we will live in the joy of salvation, we will be the ones who show others how to live – not merely with words but with our lives – and we will sing our praise to God in a way that transcends even the most noble of sacrifices. The “broken” spirit – the one no longer hinged on our pride but on that truth in the inward being – is the sacrifice God loves.

But it starts with that “truth in the inward being.” It starts with self-examination and repentance of our fallenness, and of the way we cling to that fallenness. And sometimes that means we have to stop with the pointing fingers at others without looking into the darker corners of our own souls.

I’m not much for telling people they have to “give up something” for Lent. If we’re not careful it doesn’t necessarily help, and can even become a source of self-righteousness that accomplishes exactly the opposite of what we need in a season of self-examination and repentance. But here’s something I plan to do this year, and maybe some of you might find it helpful too. I’ve got verse 6 written down on a post-it note. It’s going to be on or beside my laptop at all times. I might also post it in my car somewhere (when I have one again), or any other places where I might be tempted to lash out at some other figure caught in public approbation. With any luck I’ll be challenged to engage in the self-examination and repentance I know I need in this season first.

If it works out, I may not have much time or energy to lash out at others. And maybe there will be something more like “truth in the inward being” and “wisdom in my secret heart.”

For the pain and cleansing of repentance, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns "O For a Closer Walk With God" (PH 396); Psalm 51 (PH 196); "Jesus Knows the Inmost Heart" (GtG 427)

Ash Wednesday Sermon: The Fast God Chooses

Grace Presbyterian Church

February 18, 2013, Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 51; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The Fast God Chooses

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

It’s one of those phrases that is so familiar, we assume by default it must be in the Bible, but it’s not; it’s from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, dating at least back to 1662.  It is part of the burial service, reminding those in attendance that all of us are subject to the same finality as the deceased.  Not surprisingly, a phrase about ashes pops into the mind of many when the subject of Ash Wednesday comes up. 

Ash Wednesday is not an inappropriate time to consider our own mortality.  It marks the beginning of the season of Lent, the culmination of which finds us at a crucifixion site outside Jerusalem, where even our Savior tasted of the pain and indignity of human death.  It is not inappropriate for us to keep in mind our own finiteness, the knowledge that our days are numbered, and that we don’t know exactly what that number is going to be.  In a few moments you will be invited to take up a Lenten discipline and to come forward and receive a mark on your forehead or hand, a cross of ashes, and you will hear the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is not at all inappropriate to remember and reflect upon our finiteness on this day.  The challenge is: what will we do with that knowledge?  How will that reflection affect us?

There are good ways to be affected, and there are bad ways.  There are positive ways to carry forward that realization, and there are negative, even damaging ways. 

Matthew cautions us against some of those negative ways.  In these verses Jesus warns his followers against the kind of piety and fasting that damages.  Matthew records Jesus’s warnings in the context of three different kinds of pieties; giving alms, praying, and fasting.  In each case Jesus weighs in against the kind of giving, praying, or fasting that exists mainly to be noticed by others.  As crazy as it sounds, an influential person might well have had a trumpeter at hand to “announce” his gift before the public.  (Today we just hire publicists or spin doctors for the same effect.)  Likewise, it wouldn’t have been unusual to see such a person out on the street praying in a particularly ostentatious manner.  (We have “prayer breakfasts” for that now, I guess.)  And a person on a fast might well go about with a face pulled down into a frown, all the better to provoke others to ask “oh, dear, what’s wrong?”

Note that Jesus is not warning against giving alms or praying or fasting; in fact Jesus presumes his followers will give alms and pray and fast – “whenever you give alms,” “whenever you pray,” “whenever you fast.”  But the heart of the matter is why his followers pray or give or fast; is it to receive the praise of others?  To check off a couple of boxes on the Official Good Person Scorecard?  Or is it to give honor to God? 

Isaiah adds a slightly different dimension to the question of practicing pieties like prayer and fasting.  For Isaiah, it’s not just a matter of the public nature of the piety; it’s also about whether the whole life matches up to that public piety.  For example:

If you sit down to your meal, but those who labored to make that meal possible are living in poverty or abuse despite their labor, is that the fast God chooses?

If you pray and sing and make all sorts of joyful noise in worship, but turn a blind eye when others of whatever faith cannot worship in peace without being harassed or even killed, is that the fast God chooses?

Short answer: no.

To the degree that we do not pursue justice in all its forms, to the degree that we tolerate or even profit from oppression or exploitation, to the degree that we assume hunger or homelessness or poverty or lack of educational opportunity or any of the conditions that plague women and men and children around us, our fast is pointless or worthless.  It is no service to God whatsoever. 

This is how our mortal days, our knowledge of our finitude and limited time, is to move us; to refuse to live with the way things are, to refuse to live in ease because of the oppression and exploitation of others, to loose the bonds of injustice, to set free the oppressed, to share our bread with those in need of bread and on down the list that Isaiah gives us, that is the fast God chooses.  This is our rightful service.  This is what goes hand in hand with the purification the psalmist sings in Psalm 51, and with the right-minded piety Jesus teaches in Matthew 6.  The piety that comes from our deepest longing, the piety that cares only to be seen before God, the piety that changes the world: this is the fast God chooses.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Hymns (PH ’90): “The Glory of These Forty Days” (87); Psalm 51 (196); “Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days” (81)

Ash

I am a bit depleted today.  Nothing major, but the cough I keep thinking is gone keeps coming back.  It's almost spring break here, which means the last mad push to get stuff done before then.  We had a seventy-degree day Sunday, followed by a couple of inches of snow on Monday with temperatures getting down around eleven degrees that night, and now warming somewhat again.  I had an eye exam yesterday morning, which involved having my eyes dilated, and I always forget how debilitating that is to me until it happens.  It's only a three-hour drive home but I couldn't do it with the bright sun reflecting off all that snow.  Chapel this morning involved singing Allegri's Miserere, not that difficult a work but rather long and involved.  So yeah, "depleted" is a good word for today.

It's probably just as well I got "ashed" twice today -- at chapel on campus this morning and at church this evening.  I don't know if the psalmist of Psalm 51 had any concept of being "depleted" among all the talk about a "broken" and "contrite" spirit, but I'm going to go with it as fitting.

But my mind wandered, as it often does.  Ashes are an interesting symbol to have smeared cross-like upon one's forehead.  The saying about "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is typically invoked to point to the ashes as a reminder of our finiteness and mortality, and theologically that's all fine and good.

I can't help but think of ashes in other contexts, though, contexts that have more to do with our need to repent.

Lac-Megantic, Quebec, July 2013

Ashes, of course, come from fire.  Something is consumed, and ashes are what remain.  In many traditions historically, and even today, ashes are the final condition of the human body.  Hence the reminder of our mortality.

Other things, of course, are burned to leave ashes.  For the Ash Wednesday observance, tradition dictates that the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday observance provide the ashes for this year's Ash Wednesday.  

Ashes are also sometimes the product of burning for other purposes -- a log in a fireplace, for example, to warm all those around.  

Or sometimes ashes are the result of human folly.  Because of our all-consuming need to consume, we go to greater and more destructive extremes to find fuel for our consumption.  We fail, though, to see how destructive that fuel can be, and assume we need no greater caution with stuff that turns out to be even more flammable.  And so, a train derails and explodes (so powerfully that it was visible from space), and destroys most of a town in Quebec.  

Then it happened in Alabama.

Near Aliceville, Alabama, November 2013

And North Dakota.

Casselton, North Dakota, December 2013

And in New Brunswick (that's in Canada, for those geographically deprived about Canada.)

Near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, January 2014

For a change, here's one that didn't explode or burn.  That's the good news.  The bad news is this was smack in the middle of Philadelphia.  Too close for comfort to millions of people.  Potentially an awful lot of ashes.

Over the Schuylkill River, January 2014

It doesn't have to come from an oil train, or even a pipeline (they've been blowing up too).  Maybe it's acres upon acres of Amazon rainforest, burned off to clear land for cattle grazing.  Maybe its a Salem witch trial.  Maybe it's acres of wildfires destroying homes that had no business being built in a wildfire zone.  Maybe it's Auschwitz.  

So much destruction, intended or carelessly encouraged.  Ashes.  Signs of our fallibility.  

Ashes remind us of our mortality, that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  Maybe ashes should also remind us of our own need to repent.  Not merely confess, but repent.  Change.  Stop doing what we're doing.  

Our fires don't seem to purify, do they?  All too often they do seem to hasten our mortality, instead of merely reminding us of it.