A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
St. Matthew 6:16-21
by William Klock
“When you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites,” Jesus said. “They make their faces quite unrecognisable, so that everyone can see they’re fasting. I’m telling you the truth: thy have received their reward in full.”
As I think about this, I have to admit that this probably isn’t our problem. I’m sure there must be some people who, when they fast, do make sure everyone knows about it, but I don’t remember ever meeting anyone like that. (Unless, of course, it was someone doing it as some kind of health-nut thing.) People in our culture, people in the modern Western church don’t fast. Even when it’s Lent, what do we do? We give up chocolate. We give up Coke. I saw a post on Facebook that encouraged people to eat one normal meal and then to eat less for their two other meals so that those two other meals equal one normal meal. A friend who was a missionary commented that the people he ministered to in Zambia ate less than that all the time, so it wasn’t really much of a fast. And that may be why we’re so often spiritually impoverished in our part of the world. We have too much and when you have too much, when you don’t know what it means to fast, well, we never really learn to trust God. And so to fast is to voluntarily put ourselves in a place of poverty, of need, of exile—a spiritual exercise to remind us what it means to trust in God.
Brother and Sisters, that’s the point of Lent. It’s not to look good in front of others. It’s to remind us to look to the Lord. So Jesus goes on and says, “No: when you fast, comb your hair and beard the way you normally do, and wash your face, so that others won’t notice you’re fasting—except your Father, privately. Then your Father, who sees in private, will repay you.”
Jesus says the same thing about prayer immediately before this: “When you pray, you mustn’t be like the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on street corners, so that people will notice them. I’m telling you the truth: they have received their reward in full. No: when you pray, go into your own room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is there in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will repay you.” But why? This is where we really need to hear what Jesus says.
He says: “When you pray, don’t pile up a heap of words! That’s what the gentiles do.” Remember the gentiles worshipped fickle, capricious, unfaithful gods who never spoke—gods who weren’t worthy of any trust. Jesus says, “The gentiles think that the more they say, the more likely they are to be heard. So don’t be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. So this is how you should pray.” Now, listen closely to what Jesus says. We pray the Lord’s Prayer so often that we don’t even think about it. So listen. “This is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven; may your name be honoured; may your kingdom come; may your will be done; as in heaven, so on earth. Give us today the bread we need now; and forgive us the things we owe, as we too have forgiven what was owed to us. And do not bring us into the great trial, but rescue us from evil.”
Notice how Jesus’ vision of God’s kingdom—of heaven coming down to earth—how it’s at the heart of everything he says. But that’s the heart of our prayer. On one hand prayer, like fasting, is simple, but there’s also a mystery to it. Sometimes when I pray I feel like my prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, but then I remember what Jesus says here: You’re heavenly Father is with you in that secret place. My prayers don’t have to get any further than the ceiling, because the Father is right there—right here—with me. He sees and he hears and he knows what’s in my heart. He hears the things I say and he hears the things I want to lay before him but struggle to put into words.
Over the years I’ve read quite a lot of books about prayer as I’ve tried to unravel the mystery, but none of them has every really helped. Instead, what has helped is simply to remember what Jesus says here. And to pray the psalms. To let Jesus and the inspired scriptures remind me that to pray is to remember that in him heaven and earth have come together and to pray is to recognise this reality, to put myself at the intersection of heaven and earth.
And if prayer is about heaven and earth overlapping in the here and now, it’s also about them coming together in the stuff of the world—and in the clay from which God has made us. To pray is to claim—now think about how amazing this is—to pray is to claim that the living God, enthroned in heaven, is making his home with us—even in us. And this is why Jesus says that to make a point of this, go into your room in secret and pray there. By all means pray in church, pray with other people, pray when you’re out in nature, pray in the temple, but sometimes it helps to take God seriously and to shut yourself up in your room, here on earth, and know that heaven—that the Spirit, and Jesus, and his Father are here with and in you.
And if we do this. When we pray and when we recall that in us, by the power of Jesus and the Spirit, that heaven and earth are meeting together—and if they’re meeting together in this little lump of clay that is me—or that is you—it’s going to transform me and it’s going to transform you. It’s going to change us in a lot of ways, but Jesus stresses first and foremost that it’s going to make me and it’s going to make you forgivers. This is where the kingdom begins. With the cross of Jesus. With the forgiveness of sinners. And as Jesus forgives us, that forgiveness spills out of us. We’ve all been hurt and wounded and sinned against by other people. How much more have we done that to God. But he hears us because, in Jesus he has poured out his grace on us, he has forgiven us, because in Jesus he has invited us into his presence where heaven and earth meet. The privilege of prayer is a constant reminder that because we have been forgiven, we ought to forgive others—to let God’s grace pour from us as it has been poured from Jesus. That’s the kingdom. That’s “on earth as it is in heaven”.
And in that Jesus’ great prayer comes together. So simple, but so powerful. So simple we can pray it as children, but so powerful that we never stop—not even the holiest and wisest of saints stops praying these simple worlds. Because we know that heaven isn’t far away; it’s where we meet the God whom we can address as “our Father”. To whom we can bring our needs, knowing that if he has given his son for our sakes, he will surely give us the bread we need for today and rescue us from evil.
Brothers and Sisters, prayer reminds us not only that God is trustworthy, it reminds us to trust in him. That’s why, after Jesus warns us about hypocrisy and reminds us what real prayer and fasting are all about, he says, “Nobody can serve two masters. Otherwise, they will either hate the first and love the second, or be devoted to the first and despise the second. You can’t serve both God and wealth.” The kingdom demands our all. If we’re going to pray “on earth as in heaven”, we’d better remember what that means: that the things of the old, evil age are passing away and that the new age, God’s new creation, his kingdom is being borne today through the power of the gospel and the Spirit and that we would be fools to divide our loyalty between the two.
Think on that as we begin another season of Lent: that when we fast and when we pray, when we say “on earth as in heaven” we’re not just saying empty words, but we’re actually in the place where heaven and earth already meet, that we’re already in the presence of God, because we’ve been forgiven by Jesus’ death, raised to new life by his resurrection, and been plunged into the Spirit to be made his temple. And then let us go out from our prayer and fasting to really be the heaven on earth people who fully trust in God, ready to carry his gracious mercy to everyone around us. Amen.