Bible Text: St Matthew 6:16-21 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Ash Wednesday and Lent are about repentance, and repentance is a matter of the heart, not of the body. Repentance is first contrition – that’s true sorrow over sin, not sorrow that we got caught and not sorrow that other people know about it, real sorrow that we’ve done wrong and offended our God. And second Repentance is faith, trust, in Jesus, not wishing, not hoping, but being certain that Jesus Christ has taken that sin away, off of you and onto Himself on the cross, so that God truly, completely, and forever forgives your sin and will not and cannot hold it against you. And this, this contrition and this faith, this is, obviously, very obviously, a matter of the heart – which is why Jesus closes our Gospel for Ash Wednesday with the words, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
It’s about your heart. But it’s called ash Wednesday, and ashes aren’t simply a matter of the heart, are they? They’re by definition external. And Jesus talks about fasting in our Gospel lesson, which again, is not internal, it’s external. But body and soul, external and internal aren’t so easily separated. God hasn’t separated them. He made us body and soul. And that means what happens to the soul affects the body and what happens to the body affects the soul. We’ve all experienced this. You get anxious and you can’t eat. You don’t even want to fast, but you’re forced to, because your nerves won’t let you get anything down. What happens to your soul affects your body. But it’s also true that what happens to your body affects your soul. You get sick, the flu – which has been going around a lot this (non)winter – and that’s external, it’s a disease of the body, but it affects your soul also, it depresses you, you feel low and dirty and no good. What happens to the body affects the soul.
And that’s the principle behind ashes and fasting both. It’s why Jesus assumes you will fast, expects that you will give up external things that affect your body. He doesn’t say “if you fast,” He says, “when you fast.” Because by giving them up – food, alcohol, sugar, social media – by giving them up you’re making yourself uncomfortable, and that discomfort is supposed to show you your spiritual condition – you are a sinner, mortal, you’re going to die, dust you are and to dust you shall return.
The tradition of putting ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday has been around for a good thousand years. But probably a more appropriate custom wouldn’t be just to put ashes on the forehead, which you can do pretty comfortably, but to dump ashes on the head. Because that would make you very uncomfortable. This happens to me sometimes when I’m grilling, the wind picks up, and it sends the ashes into my face, and in my hair, and down my shirt, and it makes me feel dirty inside, because I’m dirty outside and itchy and gross.
That’s what the people of Nineveh did in the time of Jonah. They put on sackcloth, and that scratched against their skin, they sat in ashes and heaped them on their heads, because when you feel dirty on the outside, you feel dirty on the inside too.
And that’s what we need to know. We are dirty in the inside. It’s not just that we are dust and to dust we shall return, it’s not just this sad reality that we’re going to die – everyone has to deal with that, Christian or no. It’s that the death I have to face is my fault, the reason God said in the first place, “Dust you are, and to dust you will return,” is in you. The wages of sin is death, and you’ve earned those wages a thousand times over, and it’s your fault. It’s not someone else’s. It’s not Adam’s fault or Eve’s fault or whoever else you like to point the finger at and blame for your woes and your sorrows, it’s your fault. That’s repentance.
Jesus insists that when you fast, you do it in secret. So no walking around with ashes all over your face and sackcloth on, no telling people about your fasting. He says, wash your face, anoint your head with oil, make it look to everyone else that you haven’t fasted at all or mourned at all. Why?
Because repentance is between you and God. And it is very easy to make it about you and other people. This is why the outward discipline of fasting isn’t the point, because you can do it, you can fast, and instead of it showing you that you are a sinner, you can use it to show that you’re better than others. That’s what the Pharisees did. Look at me, I’m fasting, I’m holy. And you can do the same thing with your fast. You can start judging your fellow Christian because you gave up drinking and he’s still having his beer. You gave up TV and she’s still binge watching the Office. You can point the finger at the flabby guy over there because he clearly isn’t fasting. You can make the outward discipline into a show that pits you against your brother so you look better. And that is the opposite of repentance.
So Jesus says, do it in secret. Because repentance is between you and God. It’s not that you are ashamed of what so and so thinks of you. It’s not that you are scared that so and so will judge you and say bad things about you. All those things pale into insignificance, when you allow yourself to stand before the holy God and admit who you are and what you’ve done. All I can offer from my life is stained with sin. If I offer God my heart, why would he take it, it’s so filled with selfishness and evil desires. I have spent another year striving to live as His child and I have failed Him too many times to count. I have nothing, no good work, no accomplishment to brag about with Him. Even if others praise me – because men will praise you when you do well for yourself – the eyes of God penetrate to what only He and I know, and He knows it far better than I, and I cannot stand His gaze.
We’ve gone through five points about repentance that I want to go over before I get to the last point in this sermon: first, repentance is contrition, real sorrow over sin. Second, it’s faith, trust in Jesus, to take that sin away. Third, it’s between you and God alone. No comparison of you with others. That’s childsplay. You have to measure yourself against the perfect standard, and that’s God, and you fail every time. Fourth, bodily discipline is good, fasting is good, Jesus wants you to do it, because it can help you realize how helpless a sinner you are. And fifth, when you practice bodily discipline, when you fast or give something up, keep it a secret or at the very least don’t judge yourself better than others because they’re not doing what you’re doing.
Now Jesus says, when you’ve done this, your Father in heaven will reward you in secret. This isn’t a reward for fasting, obviously. It’s the reward of repentance. And what is that reward? Why does God give it? It’s not because we’ve been sufficiently sorry and the perfection of our sorrow has moved God to forgive. No, you’d never get there, you’ll never be sorry enough. Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone, thou must save and thou alone. God rewards, literally He gives back to repentance, because He loves poor sinful wretches like us. He loves us. He loves us so much that the lowest depths of our sin, the dirtiness and the filth that no amount of fasting or ashes could make us feel sufficiently, Jesus Christ, the eternal God, and our Brother, bore and felt in His mortal body, made mortal, made subject to death for us. He died, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, because He took on our dust, and with it every sin that stains our souls. And He paid its punishment. And He pays back the reward to you, double for all your sin.
So Jesus says, Treasure for yourselves treasures in heaven. That’s your reward. In heaven the angels aren’t mourning. They haven’t given up singing alleluias or Glorias in heaven. They rejoice over one sinner who repents more than ninety-nine that need no repentance. They see the Lamb slain for sinners, ruling and reigning over all things. That is our treasure. And it is not a treasure we put off till Easter. If we fast now, if we concentrate for a time more intensely on our sins and our fate as sinners during this Lenten season, if we see more clearly that we are dust and to dust we must return, it is only so that we can lock our eyes on Jesus who replaces our death with life and our sin with righteousness, who was laid into the dust and rose triumphant over our death, and who is ours now and forever. Treasure in the Greek has on-going aspect, it is an everyday thing. Because this is our life, to focus on during Lent, and then live out every day of our life, I have nothing to offer God except my death and my sin, but He gives me back every single time, every day, the life and righteousness of His Son. Praise His name forever. Amen.