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Sermon – Matthew 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YC, March 5, 2025

18 Wednesday Jun 2025

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If I were to say to you that there are two services that attract the most non-members each year, which two services would you guess?  Christmas and Easter?  In part, you could be right – there are definitely a lot of guests at Christmas and Easter.  But proportionately, when talking members and non-members, I notice we get more guests at Blue Christmas and Ash Wednesday – especially if we include Ashes to Go in our Ash Wednesday count. 

So what about Blue Christmas or Ash Wednesday is so appealing to someone who doesn’t regularly attend church?  Having just been a part of Ashes to Go in our parking lot with lots of guests, I think there is something very real, honest, and vulnerable about services on Ash Wednesday that do not always happen on a Sunday or especially on festivals like Christmas and Easter.  On Ash Wednesday, the church gives us permission to bring our real, broken, hurting, mortal selves to a space, to acknowledge our fragility and hurt, and to bless the fullness of our selves – the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Now to some, this may feel a little too self-centered.  As we impose ashes, the choir will chant from Psalm 51 tonight:  “Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.  And so you are justified when you speak and upright in your judgment.”  Perhaps that is the appeal of this day – the opportunity to take a moment for the self and really ponder where we are with God and this life.  Those ashes will be grittily spread on my forehead, the penitence and fasting are my work to do, and death is mine alone to face.  Everything about today is about my own journey with God.

Stephen and I were just debating about this reality for Lent in general.  We are making plans for Holy Week and we have a service with gospel songs and meditations.  I was excited about the possibility of the service and Stephen quipped, “It’s a little self-centered, don’t you think?  What about worrying about others and the rest of the world?!?”  The truth is, the season of Lent that we start today and end on Good Friday is sort of a both-and experience.  This is a season we are called into self-examination and repentance.  AND, this is also a season where we examine the sinfulness in the world in which we are complicit.

That both-and experience is what Jesus was worried about in our gospel lesson today.  Jesus talks a great deal about personal piety and not showing off in front of others – to not to let others seeing you give alms, pray, or fast.  But as I studied Matthew again this year, I reread something that brought me up short.  All those warnings Jesus makes, “Beware of practicing your piety before others…whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet…when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites…whenever you fast, do not look dismal…”, all of those warnings are not in the singular.  They are actually in the plural.[i]  So the words are more like, beware of practicing you all’s piety.  Or maybe in southern speak, “when all ya’ll pray…” Jesus is not criticizing or singling out you or you or me.  Jesus is singling out the community of the faithful.

That may sound like semantics, but there is something quite dramatic about Jesus speaking in the plural versus the singular.  Every week in Sunday services, we confess our sins.  But we confess them communally.  Communal confession is an extraordinary event.  While we may feel lost or despondent about our inability to live in the light of Christ as individuals, when we communally confess, a room of voices is saying with you, “Me too!”

One of the things I grieved during the pandemic was our inability to gather in person.  I loved that we had and continue to have an online community – especially for our homebound, our busy members, or for those meeting Hickory Neck for the first time.  But our necessary isolation during the pandemic naturally led to a pattern of looking inward – sometimes so much so that we forgot we are not alone – that there is a whole community of faith who is walking this journey with us and struggling just as we are.  There is something quite powerful about listening to the voices of the 7-year-old next to the 77-year-old – the person who looks so put together next to the person who is clearly struggling – the dad with children next to the widow – all confessing together.  Week in and week out, those myriad voices remind us we are not alone.

Tonight’s service very much calls us into reflection and repentance.  But our invitation tonight as we enter Lent is to remember that the act of reconciliation and redemption does not only happen alone.  We all are invited into a holy Lent.  We all are invited into prayer, fasting, and alms giving.  We all are invited to remember we are dust.  In person, online, and hybrid together, we are not only invited into solo, parallel journeys.  But also, our journeys are strengthened and made possible through the companionship of community.  You are not alone.  We are in this together – all y’all.  And Jesus lights the way for us all.  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, as described on the podcast, “Sermon Brainwave:  #889: Ash Wednesday –Rebroadcast from February 22, 2023,” February 25, 2025, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/889-ash-wednesday-rebroadcast-from-february-22-2023 on March 4, 2025.

Sermon – Mt. 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YB, February 14, 2024

21 Wednesday Feb 2024

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This morning, I got a fun text from a friend.  “Happy Ash Valentine’s Day!” she exclaimed.  I have seen all sorts of humor about the confluence of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday this year.  From questions about whether the clergy might be making the sign of a heart instead of the sign of a cross with our ashes tonight (sorry to disappoint those of you who were hoping that wasn’t just a rumor); to a meme from the National Church that says  “You can’t have VaLENTines with the LENT”; to actual candy conversation hearts that say “U R Dust,” “Ashes 2 Ashes,” or “Repent” instead of the traditional “Be Mine,” “True Love,” or “Kiss Me.”  Even my own daughter petulantly asked me, “Do we always have to celebrate Ash Wednesday on Valentine’s Day??”

Though the humor has been fun, what lurks under the surface is a discomfort with talking about death – especially on a day meant to be for celebrating the happiness of love.  But part of my job as a priest is to bring a certain sobriety about death to the world – no matter the day.  That is not to say that I am a party pooper or that I don’t like a good box of chocolates myself, but my role as a priest is to name the truth about what happens in death – earthly death and reunion with our Lord in eternal life.  In fact, the Church is one of the few places left in the world that openly and regularly talks about death.  In a world that encourages anti-aging treatments, who has desensitized us to death as we have moved away from an agrarian lifestyle, and whose medical advances have extended life much longer than before, we learn that death can be conquered and should be fought at all costs.

Pushing against this secular understanding of death, the Church gives us Ash Wednesday – even on Valentine’s Day.  The Church looks at our flailing efforts to preserve life and as we humbly come to the altar rail, rubs gritty ash on our heads and says, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  There is no, “Don’t worry about death; you’ll be fine!”  Instead, those grave words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,” echo in our heads, haunting our thoughts.  Every year the Church reminds us of the finite amount of time we have on this earth – even on a day seems like we should be talking about love and life.

This is why I love Lent so much.  The Church dedicates forty days to a time where we cut to the chase and honestly assess our relationship with God.  We take a sobering look at our lives, a sobering look that could be reserved only for the time of death, and we discern what manifestation of sinfulness has pulled us away from God.  Our Prayer Book defines sin as “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.”[i]  Lent is the season when we focus on repentance from our sin – not just a feeling guilty about our sinfulness, but eagerly seeking ways to amend those relationships and turn back toward resurrection living.  What most people get only at the time of death, we are given every year at the time of Lent:  a time of sobering realignment. 

This is why we get Matthew’s gospel lesson on Ash Wednesday.  As we begin our sobering Lenten journey, the gospel lesson names disciplines and practices that can help us along the way.  Jesus names those ancient practices that have brought people back to God for ages – giving alms, praying, and fasting.  Each one of these practices has ways of bringing us closer to God by shaking up our normal routines.  Of course, any Lenten practice can have the same effect.  Giving up caffeine, reading a daily devotional, or reconnecting with nature are equally valid ways to shake up our routines enough to notice the ways in which we have become more self-centered than God-centered.  Although Jesus names the disciplines of alms giving, prayer, and fasting, the actual discipline itself is not the issue for Jesus.  The issue is our intentions in our practice. 

This is why we hear Jesus labeling so many people as hypocrites in our gospel lesson today.  Jesus is less concerned about what disciplines we assume and is more concerned about the authenticity behind those disciplines.  Jesus is not arguing that private acts are authentic and public ones are inauthentic by nature.  What matters is the desire and motivation behind these practices.  We have all seen this in action.  One of my favorite comediennes jokes about this very behavior in one of her shows.  She talks about how people sometimes use prayer requests as a means of gossip.  In one of her jokes, she has the gossiper of the church inviting people into a prayer circle so that they can pray for someone in the church who just got pregnant, even though the news was supposed to be private.  We all know the kind of hypocritical behavior Jesus is addressing.  This kind of behavior will never get us to the sobriety we need to right our relationship with God and others.

Of course, any kind of practice we take up this Lent can be corrupted.  The giving up of a particular kind of food can be more for weight loss than a connection to God.  The taking up of a volunteer activity can be to fulfill a requirement for something else.  Whatever we do this Lent, that deprivation or incorporation is meant to help us restore our relationship with God, other people, and all creation.  So, when we give up a food, instead of glorying in the fact that we lost a few pounds, we can see how that food has become an emotional crutch that keeps us from leaning on God and others.  When we take on a new prayer routine, we slowly begin to see how little time we give to God in our daily lives.  Whatever our practice, Jesus is concerned that authenticity be at the heart, so that we can more readily prepare for Good Friday and Easter.[ii] 

And so, in order to shake us out of our self-centered, sinful, distant ways, especially on a day for love, Ash Wednesday gives us death.  Ash Wednesday grittily, messily, publicly reminds us of our death, and then leaves us marked so that we can humbly enter a Lenten reconnection with God.  Ash Wednesday throws death in our faces so that we can wake up in a world that would have us keep striving for longevity of earthly life or superficial happiness instead of striving for intimacy with God here and now.  This Ash Wednesday, our ashes are the outward reminder of the sobering journey we now begin, because only when we consider our own death can we begin to see the resurrection glory that awaits us at Easter.  My prayer is that our journey this Lent is not one of painful guilt or loveless deprivation, but instead one of glorious reconnection with our creator, redeemer, and sustainer.  Amen.      

[i] BCP, 848.

[ii] Lori Brandt Hale, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 24.

Sermon – Mark 6:1-6, 16-21, Isaiah 58:1-12, AW, YB, February 17, 2021

24 Wednesday Feb 2021

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I have always thought the Ash Wednesday liturgy offers a strange contrast.  We engage in the very visible sign of having ashes spread across our foreheads.  And yet, our gospel lesson this day speaks very clearly of not showing your piety publicly.  But this year, the contrast of Ash Wednesday feels even more pointed.  Typically on this day, we talk about giving things up for Lent, fasting, and entering into a season of contemplation about not just our mortality, but the sinfulness that separates us from God.  But we have spent the last eleven months fasting – fasting from social gatherings, fasting from touch and uncovered faces, even fasting from receiving the sacred meal.  And for a large portion of those months, we have been in deep contemplation about the exponentially rising death all around us, the brokenness of our common life, the sin of oppression and racism.  The last thing I want to hear from the church today is how I need to give up more.

I think that is why I love the text from Isaiah this year so much.  God offers a mirror to God’s people.  On first glance, God’s people are certainly doing the things that are expected – in fact, the “things” that are often of Lent.  They are fasting and lying in sackcloth and ashes.  They are doing the work of penitence.  But the acts are not the problem – the motivation of the acts are the problem.  They are doing acts of contrition as sort of an exchange:  fasting so that God will give them favor; Sure, their behavior may end in the oppression of others, but they are doing the manual action called for in this moment. 

But God is having nothing of hollow spiritual practices.  If those practices are not leading to the loosening of the bonds of injustice, or the undoing of the thongs of the yoke, or the freeing of the oppressed, they are meaningless.  If the people of God are not sharing their bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into their homes, covering the naked, and caring for their own kin, then fasting is little more than act in futility, an action done without reflection, intention, or love of neighbor. 

So what do the words of Isaiah have to do with living in month eleven of a pandemic?  I am going to say something that might be a little controversial, but here you go:  the church is not asking you to fast this Lent.  Now, in a few moments, I am going to say these very words, “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, …by…fasting, and self-denial…”  But you have already fasted for a whole year.  You have already been in a season of self-denial.  The ashes you will impose on your head later are not a reminder that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  You know that reality all too well now.  Instead, we are going to take a cue from Isaiah tonight.  You have already done the manual acts of Lent.  Now your invitation is the “so that” part of the action.  Our work this Lent is to reflect upon what has been a most difficult year and to ponder together what this past year of fasting is inviting us into.  How has this season of fasting, this season of struggle, this season of brutality transformed our sense of purpose and identity – a people focused on God’s work loosening the bonds of injustice, freeing the oppressed, and sharing our bread?  How has the sobering nature of death, grittily rubbed onto our foreheads tonight, changing our resolve to lean into God, lean into this Christian community, lean into the work of sharing God’s love with those who do not know that love?

The rest of the invitation I will read in a moment says this, “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer…and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  You have done the rituals of fasting and self-denial long enough.  As we look forward to these next forty days together, our work is to spend time with God, scripture, and one another and answer the question, “So what?”  What are we going to do now?  What are we going to claim and what are we going to let go?  How is the grit of ash this year not the sensation of defeat, but of invitation.  I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.  Amen.

Sermon – Isaiah 58.1-12, EP5, YA, February 5, 2017

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

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In about three and half weeks we will gather in the Historic Chapel for Ash Wednesday services.  In the liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the priest invites us into the “observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  I don’t know about you, but this invitation always makes me a little nervous.  The truth is, I am terrible at fasting.  I have often blamed the issue on low blood-sugar.  But really, I just hate the way not eating makes me feel.  I get cranky, I cannot focus on work, and I just want to crawl into bed.  And what makes fasting worse is that we get scriptural passages that warn us about grimacing while fasting – that we should go so far as to put oil on our faces so that we look shiny and happy during our fasting.

Knowing my utter sense of failure at my inability to engage in the most holy of spiritual practices, I confess that I was secretly pleased to read our text from Isaiah today.  The people of Israel have become quite good at fasting and pious worship.  We are told that day after day the Israelites come to God in worship, delighting to know more about God, and fasting like righteous followers of God.  They even bow down and lie in sackcloth and ashes.  They are the epitome of penitential Lenten worshippers.  Except for one small, teeny, tiny problem.  Despite their devotional fasting and their fervent prayers, God is angry with the Israelites.  You see, while the Israelites are piously engaging in reverent, penitential worship, their hired hands are working under their oppressive orders.  While they have been perfecting reverential bows, there are hungry, homeless, naked, impoverished peoples just outside their doors.  Oblivious, the Israelites complain to God, “Why do we fast, but you do not see?  Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”  God’s response is a brutal question:  Why are you here?

In polite Episcopal circles, we do not often ask that question:  Why are you here?  We might ask a visitor a much softer version of that question, “What brings you to Hickory Neck?”  But we almost never ask a regular or long-time church member, “Why are you here?”  I think part of why we do not ask someone else that question is because we are afraid someone will ask us that question.  We are afraid to be asked that question because the question feels like a trick.  If I say I am here because I want peace or comfort, does that make me a passive, self-serving Christian?  If I say I am here because I enjoy the community, does that mean my church is more like a country club than a church?  If I admit that I do not know why I am in church this morning other than a strange longing somewhere deep inside me, does that mean that my worship is superficial or doomed for ambiguity?

The scary part about our anxiety around that question, “Why are you here today,” is that God has a very clear response before we or the Israelites can even answer the question.  God says that if we do not come to worship to be changed, we are doing something wrong.  As one scholar argues, Isaiah’s words today tell us that, “Worship without justice has no value in the eyes of God.”[i]   For Isaiah, a gap has formed between the faithful’s seeking God and God’s ways and their actual way of life.  What Isaiah wants the people to know is that fasting, prayer, and worship are all well and good, but without some connection to the other 167 hours of their week, their worship, their fasting, their relationship with God is hollow.  Now, God is not telling us that worship is inherently bad or self-serving.  As another scholar points out, “worship is the most important thing we do together.  It is the place that forms us into the people of God.  It is the place where we inhale God’s love and grace, so that,” and here comes the important part, “so that we can be sent forth to exhale God’s love and grace in a broken world in need of redemption.”[ii]

One of the things that attracted me to Hickory Neck was the wide variety in styles of worship.  On any given Sunday, I can pray the Prayer of Humble Access in the midst of a quiet Rite I liturgy; I can belt out a praise song that is so familiar I don’t need to look at the words; I can chant the Eucharistic Prayer while the Choral Scholars respond with beautiful, precise, haunting harmonies; or I can sing a version of the Lord’s Prayer that my seven-year old daughter has learned by memory.  I love the variety of expressions of worship here, and love our unique gift that is rare in most parishes.  But variety can be dangerous.  Variety means bringing together people who don’t necessarily revel in the differences.  There will be people who only come to our early service because they find music to be a distraction.  There will be people who only come to the late service because anything other than traditional Anglican music interferes with their worship.  And there will be people who only like the middle service because they can let their hair down and be themselves.  Slowly, what is meant to be the gift of variety becomes a competition for the best – the most holy, most reverent, most relatable, most “of God.”  But what all that comparison leads to is not deeper relationship with God.  That comparison leads us to focus on the worship as an end unto itself, instead of as a means “right relationship.”[iii]

In order to get to the point of fasting or worship, God tells the Israelites to redefine fasting.  Instead of abstaining from food or drink, the fast God desires, “is outreach to those in need, which involves not only feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and caring for one’s own, but also addressing the attitudes and structures responsible for injustices.”[iv]  In the Episcopal Church, we have codified this redefinition of fasting in our dismissal.  We take all of our prayers, all of learning, all of our confessions, and all of our feasting and we say, “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”  In other words, we give ourselves the beauty of worship, and then remind ourselves of the point of that worship – right relationship with God and our neighbor.  I have often thought the church needs the words of the dismissal painted above the Narthex door, so that as each of us departs this space, we can jump up and slap the words – much life a sports team entering the arena who slaps a slogan or the team name.  Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Now some of you may be thinking about this radical redefinition of fasting and this question of why we are here in worship, and be wondering, “Can’t I just give up some food and call it a day?!?  Can’t I just sit in worship and not worry about why I am here?!?”  You may know well that righting relationships with God and neighbor is a lot harder than a day’s worth of sacrificing food or just showing up on Sunday.  But before you get too anxious, listen again to Isaiah’s words about what happens when we enter the kind of fast God prefers, “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.  Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”  God’s work is never too difficult – exhaling God’s love and grace in a broken world in need of redemption is as easy as breathing in the love and grace we inhale every Sunday.  The promise of God’s blessing is waiting – we just need to breathe.  Amen.

[i] Carol J. Dempsey, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 314.

[ii] Andrew Foster Connors, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 316.

[iii] Dempsey, 316.

[iv] Dempsey, 316.