Scripture: Matthew 6:1-6; Matthew 6:16-21; Isaiah 58:2-11 Series: 2021
An Ash Wednesday sermon preached during the February 2021 Texas ERCOT blackout. Pruitt sets Matthew 6’s teaching on secret almsgiving, prayer, and fasting alongside Isaiah 58’s vision of the fast God chooses—freeing the oppressed, sharing bread, sheltering the homeless. He argues Lent’s purpose is not guilt or self-improvement but freedom in Christ from enslavement to sin and self-centeredness. Drawing heavily on Schmemann, he frames fasting as liberation from the dictatorship of flesh, mercy/forgiveness as the breaking of sin’s division, and patience (even through repeated failure) as the divine virtue on the road to holiness, so the heart may soften toward communion with God.
Illustrations: texas-ercot-blackout, hot-water-to-neighbor, orthodox-staged-fast, brothers-keeper
Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2021
“Be careful that you don’t practice your religion in front of people to draw their attention. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Whenever you give to the poor, don’t blow your trumpet as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may get praise from people. I assure you, that’s the only reward they’ll get. But when you give to the poor, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that you may give to the poor in secret. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you. “When you pray, don’t be like hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners so that people will see them. I assure you, that’s the only reward they’ll get. But when you pray, go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is present in that secret place. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you. “And when you fast, don’t put on a sad face like the hypocrites. They distort their faces so people will know they are fasting. I assure you that they have their reward. When you fast, brush your hair and wash your face. Then you won’t look like you are fasting to people, but only to your Father who is present in that secret place. Your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
It is cold outside
For those in Texas, our lives and comfort are being dictated by ERCOT. Some have power who waste it, or others turned their heat to 55 and have lost power for three days. To paraphrase Jesus, blackouts fall on the just as well as the unjust.
Today is Ash Wednesday. A day that begins the season of lent, a season of prayer and fasting and mercy.
My normal ash Wednesday message talks about different ways to fast and not be conformed to the world.
Today we are all surviving a confluence of extreme situations. How are we responding?
I will get back to Matthew 6, but I want to read a good chunk from Isaiah 58 which spoke to me deeply this morning.
They seek me day after day, desiring knowledge of my ways like a nation that acted righteously, that didn’t abandon their God. They ask me for righteous judgments, wanting to be close to God. 3 “Why do we fast and you don’t see; why afflict ourselves and you don’t notice?” Yet on your fast day you do whatever you want, and oppress all your workers. 4 You quarrel and brawl, and then you fast; you hit each other violently with your fists. You shouldn’t fast as you are doing today if you want to make your voice heard on high. 5 Is this the kind of fast I choose, a day of self-affliction, of bending one’s head like a reed and of lying down in mourning clothing and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? 6 Isn’t this the fast I choose: releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke, setting free the mistreated, and breaking every yoke? 7 Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into your house, covering the naked when you see them, and not hiding from your own family? 8 Then your light will break out like the dawn, and you will be healed quickly. Your own righteousness will walk before you, and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard. 9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here.” If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the wicked speech; 10 if you open your heart to the hungry, and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted, your light will shine in the darkness, and your gloom will be like the noon. 11 The Lord will guide you continually and provide for you, even in parched places. He will rescue your bones. You will be like a watered garden, like a spring of water that won’t run dry.
Our faith, any righteousness we have or love we’ve felt is not for us alone. When we see our faith as performance for others or an excuse to be cruel or selfish. When tough times come and we fixate on ourselves and refuse to think of those near by us in need, when we have power and our neighbor does not, and we think to ourselves, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
I walked a mile and a half the other day to bring hot water to a neighbor whom I knew did not have a camping stove, but I could have done more. Did God’s light shine in me? Or, like the people, did I ask for righteous judgments from God only to excuse my selfishness?
The entire season of lent is an opportunity to be free in Christ as we prepare for Holy Week. The point is not guilt but freedom in Christ. But the journey to freedom in Christ means letting go of our slaveries to the pridefulness of the world. We cannot control what happens to us. We can buy a generator and be prepared, but we can’t control the weather and the power forever. We can’t control how people act.
Lent is the liberation of our enslavement to sin. Sin is the prison of the world. Sin which centers us on ourselves and justifies any action we do no matter how harmful or hurtful, no matter how divisive or destructive. We need freedom. The Gospel lesson from Matthew sets the conditions for that liberation.
Jesus starts by discussing fasting.
Fasting is the refusal to accept the desires and urges of our fallen nature as normal, the effort to free ourselves from the dictatorship of flesh and matter over the spirit.
The point of a fast is not the what but the why. You can fast from candy or beer or like the Eastern Orthodox, give up meat one week, and the dairy the next, and then even oil. “What then is fasting for us Christians? It is our entrance and participation in that experience of Christ Himself in which He liberates us from the total dependence on food, matter, and the world. (96)
The next key tool for lent is mercy: The triumph of sin, the main sign of its rule over the world, is division, opposition, separation, hatred. Therefore, to first break through this fortress of sin we must forgive. We must forgive the people who could have helped but didn’t. We must forgive the people we blame for everything going wrong. Forgiveness is not the evasion of accountability but the reorienting of our heart. To forgive is to put between me and my “enemy” the radiant forgiveness of God Himself. (28)
The lenten fast is not a cleanse diet or an attempt at self-actualization. The goal is not to improve yourself but to grow closer to Christ as Christ’s body.
We should not ignore the challenges of fasting nor speak glibly of it. And fasts aren’t just for some people. We do not fast for God as a sacrifice to him. God gives us the fast for our own benefit. We don’t earn our salvation, we experience grace.
After all this is said, one must still remember that however limited our fasting, if it is true fasting it will lead to temptation, weakness, doubt, and irritation. In other terms, it will be a real fight and probably we shall fail many times. But the very discovery of Christian life as fight and effort is the essential aspect of fasting. A faith which has not overcome doubts and temptation is seldom a real faith…Too many people start fasting with enthusiasm and give up after the first failure. I would say that it is at this first failure that the real test comes. If after having failed and surrendered to our appetites and passions we start all over again and do not give up no matter how many times we fail, sooner or later our fasting will bear its spiritual fruit. Between holiness and disenchanted cynicism lies the great and divine virtue of patience—patience, first of all, with ourselves. There is no short-cut to holiness. (98-99)
The purpose of lent is not to force on us a few formal obligations, but to “soften” our heart so that it may open itself to the realities of the Spirit, to experience the hidden “thirst and hunger” for communion with God.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen.