St.
Alban's Episcopal Church
Austin, Texas
|
Austin, Texas
|
|
From the Pulpit:
Piety is a word we don’t use all that much these days. Actually, I wonder how many of us have used it at all within the last year. Is it something that comes up in our everyday conversations? Probably a lot less than the price of a gallon of gas or milk or what our crazy weather is going to do. If somebody tells you that someone you’re about to meet is really pious what do you think? I don’t want to put ideas in your head, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little bit of a red flag, and that you might think that that person was so religious that it would be the first thing you noticed about them like a really huge cross they wear around their neck or Jesus stickers all over their car – stuff that lets you know right up front that they are holier or at least more observant than you are. Most people I know, and this includes most people who go to church, are at least a little bit insecure about being faithful enough. I’d like to do what I can to dispel that insecurity, if it applies to you. In our reading from Matthew, Jesus is talking about just exactly that ostentatious kind of piety. He talks about people who blow a trumpet before they give money to a poor person so that everybody’s attention is drawn to them to admire the good works they do. He talks about hypocrites who stand up in the front of the congregation or even out in the world on street corners and pray loudly and with lots of theological language or maybe even babble away in tongues so that everybody will see them. And then he talks about the people who fast but who go around in public with scrunched up faces looking miserable so that everybody can tell they’re hungry. They’re all just listening to hear somebody say, “Oh, wow! That guy is really pious!” And Jesus says they’re getting it all wrong. Ash Wednesday is unique in the church year. We come together at odd times on a weekday, and the congregation who gathers is self-selected as well. This is not the regular Sunday crowd. Actually, we usually have some people who come to church on Ash Wednesday who don’t come to church on a regular basis. By definition, you are here because you are pious. Now I don’t mean holier-than-thou. I mean that you have been called in your hearts to be here to receive the imposition of ashes, which symbolize both our mortality and our humility. We come today with penitent hearts, and I want to say that penitence is not about beating ourselves up but about being honest with ourselves. We are here today because we know we need to be here. We are at the threshold of the season of Lent, and we want to make our hearts ready. Jesus suggests that the way to be truly pious is to keep it to yourself. When you pray, he says, go into your closet and close the door. Pray to God where nobody can see or hear you but God. When you give alms, do it secretly. And when you fast, look to all the world as if you just got up from a steak dinner at Outback. What counts is not what the world sees, but what you know in your heart. I repeat what I said last year about the ashes. If you’re the kind of person who wants everybody to see the smudge on your forehead and to know that you’ve been good and gone to church, you probably ought to wash them off. But if you think you’re going to be self-conscious and embarrassed about them, then you probably ought to leave them on. Prayer, fasting, and the giving of alms. Not only are these the spiritual practices Jesus talks about, but they are exactly what our Ash Wednesday prayer invites us to. You might say they are the Holy Trinity of practices that prepare our souls during Lent to renew our Baptismal Vows at the Great Vigil of Easter. Of the three, I imagine we are most familiar with prayer. I heard it said once that they would never be able to outlaw prayer in schools so long as there are math tests. Anne Lamott says there are only two kinds of prayers: the one that says, “Help! Help! Help!” and the one that says, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” They do cover a lot, but they are not all. Prayer is nothing more than our open channel to God. Sometimes it is in words and ideas, but it can be silence as well. For people who have trouble praying or are self-conscious about the content of their prayer it has been suggested that you simply find a peaceful activity you enjoy – walking your dog, sitting by the fire, sipping tea while you watch the birds at the feeder – and do it with awareness of God’s presence, God’s contented company. On behalf of the church, I invite you to a prayerful Lent. The practice of almsgiving is the exercise of generosity. It is how we cultivate the awareness of how much we have been given and the joy of sharing with others. It is like casting a net of God’s goodness to connect us with other people. It makes us sensitive to people who do not have what they need to live. It makes us aware that the treasure we take for granted has the power to change lives. It grows compassion in our hearts. On behalf of the church, I invite you to a generous Lent. The practice of fasting is perhaps the least familiar of these. Our culture has taught us since we were young that hunger is a dangerous thing that must not be tolerated. I remember a commercial that said we ought to eat a Snickers bar every morning at eleven o’clock to keep ourselves from getting hungry. When we allow ourselves to endure some hunger we express our solidarity with the millions of hungry people in the world, and the food we eat tastes better when we are not continually satiated. And fasting can be about other things than food. How do we deal carefully with the world’s resources? What can we easily do without? On behalf of the church, I invite you to the practice of fasting during Lent. The ashes we receive on our foreheads are symbols of our brokenness. Do you remember the children’s rhyme that we all used to sing holding hands and running around in a circle. Ring around a rosie pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down. We do all fall down. In Lent we are aware of our fallenness and our need to be as close to God as we can get. Or rather, I should say, to let God get as close to us as we will allow God to be, for God’s will is always to be with us, closer than our breath and the beat of our hearts. The ashes on our foreheads are more, though, than reminders of our fallenness and our brokenness; they are our assurance that although we do fall down, we do not remain on the ground. The smudged crosses are visible tracings of the indelible cross that was drawn in oil of chrism on our foreheads at our baptism. They are the sure and certain signs that we are marked and destined for eternal life. The Christ who died for us lives for us. I invite you, during these forty days, to dare to be pious, to slowly savor the time of preparation, and to give yourself to the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in order to open your souls to the God who made you and who loves you and who gave his life to save yours. Amen.
|
05/16/2008 | ||||||
.jpg)
The
Rev. Margaret Waters