Ash Wednesday
March 6, 2019
Isaiah 58:1-12
Every minister has a “call
Scripture,” a bible passage that God specifically called them through and to
do. For me, it’s Isaiah 58, “is not this the kind of fast that I, the Lord,
have chosen?” I “discovered” this passage when I was doing my first master’s
degree in Philly and it convicted me. “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only
a day for people to humble themselves? … [Or] Is not this the kind of fasting I
have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the
yoke…?” When I was in 6th grade my mom began going on yearly medical
mission trips to Honduras and Guatemala. I begged to go, too, and my senior
year of high school I was allowed to. The team, made up of nurses, doctors, a
dentist, and support people, traveled around remote areas of Honduras, setting
up a clinic in a different village each day. Having already had five years of
Spanish by that point, I helped translate for my mom, who’s a nurse and ran
triage for the doctors. I saw a whole different side to the world than I had
previously seen: communities without running water, without access to medical
care, without paved roads. I’ve seen it a lot now, but that was the first time.
And on the plane ride home, after the layover in Miami, I overheard some
college students complaining, saying “It sucked that it rained all of spring
break.” My thought was, “Let me tell you what sucks. What I’ve just seen about
how some people live, that sucks.”
And it changed my trajectory. I was an elementary education major in
college and I made it a point to do my observations and tutoring and student
teaching in inner city schools. I continued that doing my master’s in education
in Philly, tutoring two days a week at an inner city school in north
Philadelphia. A couple of my students there invited me into their homes, which
were so different than mine, even though we lived in the same city. “Is not
this the kind of fasting I have chosen: …to set the oppressed free and break
every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the
poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to
turn away from your own flesh and blood?”
I had always been pious. I knew all
the answers in Sunday school. I still went to church every Sunday in college
(even if sometimes I fell asleep during the sermon because I went to bed late
Saturday night, er, Sunday morning). But these experiences in my late teens and
early 20s changed me, because it wasn’t doing good things for my sake, it was doing good things for
the sake and well-being of others and, even more importantly, doing the
specific good things that God called
me to do. Share your food with the hungry. Provide shelter to the stranger and
clothing to the person in need of warmth. Loose the chains of injustice and
untie the yoke of oppression.
Basically, your faith is not
all about you. A personal
relationship with Jesus Christ, yes, (although that idea is nowhere in the
Bible) and the reason why is so that you can then go out and love the people
Jesus loves. I’ll repeat that: the reason why is so that you can then go out
and love the people Jesus loves. You can help those who are hurting. You can
feed those who are hungry. You can welcome the stranger. You can work to end
injustice and oppression. That’s why. Your
personal salvation is tied up in the salvation of others. We are saved by
faith and not by works, yet if we have faith, it shows itself through our
actions. And Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, whether we know our neighbor
or not, whether we agree with them or not, whether we like them or not, whether
we have a lot in common with them or not. In John 13:35, Jesus says, “Everyone
will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Beloved, we have not loved one another. This is part of the prayer of
confession. We have failed to love God with our whole heart and we have failed
to love our neighbors. We have not heard the cry of the needy. In the
Anglican/Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the prayer of confession says “we
have sinned… by what we have done and by what we have left undone” (p. 360).
There are times when we actively fail to love our neighbor. When we hear
they’re sick and we don’t call or visit. When we see someone on the side of the
road who needs help and it’s within our power to help, yet we keep on driving. When
we use words that tear down and belittle and ridicule. Then there are times
when we passively sin. We leave things undone. A friend says something racist
and we don’t call them on it. A family member excludes someone from the table
and we want to stay at the table, so we don’t go comfort the person who’s
hurting. We could have said a kind word, but we keep our mouths shut and heads
down instead. We see other people as objects instead of as people, and then
hurt them in order to justify to ourselves how we’re treating them. This is
what we see in our country’s politics and what we saw at our denomination’s
General Conference last week. O Lord, we repent.
There is an Advent song called
“Waiting for You” by The Many. And yes, I know we’re beginning Lent today, not
Advent. The bridge of this song says, “Let us be a sign of hope, let us be your
arms of love. Let us be the ones that say, ‘there is another way.’” It’s a song
of lament, that things are not as they should be and we are waiting for Jesus
to come so that we can sing, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.” We’re waiting. And while
we wait for the redemption of all creation, “let us be a sign of hope, let us
be your arms of love. Let us be the ones that say, ‘there is another way.’”
If you have not yet chosen a
discipline for this Lenten season, I encourage you to pick one that is not
about you but about helping others. Instead of giving up a food, donate food to
a food bank, say one item a day. Instead of giving up TV or social media, take
the time to go volunteer, maybe three hours a week. Instead of giving up buying
new clothes, give away your old ones that you don’t wear anymore. We even have
bags here for you to donate one item each day of Lent.
And it’s human nature to say, hey,
what do I get out of it? Well, Isaiah 58 has an answer for that, too. If you do
the kind of fast that the Lord has chosen, “Then your light will break forth
like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness
will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you
will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say:
Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger
and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and
satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and
your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he
will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You
will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your
people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old
foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets
with Dwellings.”
You’re going to hear more about this
“Repairer of Broken Walls and Restorer of Streets with Dwellings” during this
Lent. On Sunday mornings we’re going to be talking about restoration and rebuilding.
Our call to worship will come from Nehemiah, whose heart broke when he learned
about the ruins of Jerusalem. He first prayed and confessed his and his
people’s sins to the Lord. And then he set about the work of rebuilding the
walls. St. Francis from the early 13th century is another one whose
work was to rebuild Christ’s church, which had fallen into disrepair in the
Middle Ages. Think selling indulgences and all that mess. St. Francis was from
the upper middle class in Assissi and started by caring for lepers. From there,
it became a whole movement. The Order of the Franciscans has three vows:
poverty, to live simply; chastity, to love everyone and remain celibate; and
obedience, to God, to the community, to the Church, and to self.
This
is the kind of fast that the Lord has chosen: not one day to humble yourself, but
loosing the chains of injustice, untying the cords of oppression, feeding the
hungry, giving clothing to those without, welcoming the stranger, showing love
and grace to those Jesus came to save, which is everyone. When we serve, when we pray, when we help and love and
act, we should do so recognizing that the person we are serving is a beloved child
of God and we are not called to judge them. We’re called to help break their
bonds of whatever’s holding them back, poverty, injustice, lack of education,
lack of medical care. That’s what we
do, regardless of their skin color or their sexual orientation or their legal
status or their economic status. That’s
the kind of fast that the Lord has chosen. And then “Your people will rebuild
the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called
Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” This Lent and
always, may we be about that work of
building up and feeding and clothing and setting free.
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