A Reflection for Ash Wednesday All Saints Church,
Southern Shores, NC February18, 2015 Thomas
E Wilson, Rector
This is Ash Wednesday and the Gospel lesson for
Matthew has the warning about making a relationship. Jesus seems to strike a sad note as he sees religious
people make a display of their religiosity as they miss the point and waste
their energy. Life is too short to waste on that temptation. T.S. Eliot in his
play, Murder in the Cathedral at the
end of the 1st Act has his protagonist, Becket; say after being
tempted by four temptations:
Now is my
way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this
kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest
treason:
To do the right deed for the
wrong reason.
The question, or the temptation, to ask is how are
we planning to keep a holy Lent? We have choices on how to observe Lent. The
way I was taught when I was growing up was that Lent was the time to strengthen
one’s will power to follow Christ; therefore I should give up something so that
I might make a sacrifice - as Jesus fasted for forty days in the wilderness so
we were to fast with something like chocolate, or meat. It was a time of
separation from a sensual pleasure so that I might prove worthy of God’s love
and to prove that I was ready for duty as a Christian soldier in Christ’s army.
I grew up during the time of the Cold War in which my area of very conservative
Upstate New York saw itself in a spiritual battle for “Christian” values,
like Free Market Capitalism, against Godless Communism. It was a time in which
there was always an enemy out there somewhere as well as an enemy that was in
our soul. Lent was all about making me into a “good American” Christian. It was
a path of moral self-improvement. Every day during Lent I longed for chocolate
or meat or, later, liquor. I saw Lent as a kill joy time and resented God for
putting me through it, figuring God owed me Big Time.
Later on I started to learn another way of building
my soul and that was to engage in behavior that would help me to learn how to
die to myself by reminding myself what a sinner I was I would go through a practice of making new
resolution for living a better life and humble myself by remembering my sins.
It turned into a way of mentally beating me up so that I would have already
paid for my sins. It was a path of self-mortification
Later on I learned there was another way of
observing Lent and it was a purging of my appetites and life to a simpler
lifestyle. I would look at all my luxuries and excesses compared to the poverty
of others. I would fast in order to set aside money to feed, clothe and house
the less fortunate. The motto was to “live simply so that others may simply
live.” It was about the saving of my soul by helping my neighbor. It was a path
of societal self-improvement. The problem with that was that I kept looking at
others who were not following that path and I became very judgmental. It was
not an increase in love but in estrangement.
There was another way of building my soul and this
was not to give up something but to take on. This meant that instead of
watching movies during Lent I would do more reading of religious materials like
the Bible, theologians and mystics. Lent was about me being a more devout
Christian. It was a path of Spiritual
self-improvement.
There is nothing wrong with any of these paths, with
the possible exception that it was all about me; I was the center of my Lent. The lesson for Matthew has the warning about making
a relationship with God all about one’s self as if God were a an ATM Machine
that dispenses gold stars is you put in the right password.
This weekend, if the roads clear, Pat and I have
some friends who are coming for a visit and part of what we will do is clean up
the place a bit. The purpose is not to impress them with how good and neat we
are but to help them to feel more at home in our home. Feeling at “home” we
can relax and catch up on what is going on in our lives and we spent time
listening to each other without being distracted by so many things. They have
known us for years and have come to accept us as we are, not as we want to be -
but as we are. It is called love. I have come to the point of my life where
Lent is about cleaning up my spiritual; home so the Divine and I can truly
listen to each other and I am not so easily distracted,
So here are some of our choices for Lent:
1) Make a
sacrifice for discipline,
2) Become aware of and repent of sins in life,
3) Practice
simplicity,
4) Take on a regimen of deeper study,
5) Slow down and become more
aware of the presence of God in the space between yourself and all of God’s
creation.
Actually, looking at that list, maybe if we can turn
the spotlight off our own wants and desires to look good in our religion, maybe these are
the choices we need to do all the time and not just in Lent. Maybe we could use
the season of Lent as an excuse to start as a thanksgiving for all we have
received.
So what are you doing for Lent?
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