Sermon Illustrations for Ash Wednesday (2016)
Illustration
Object:
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Nobody actually likes the idea of repenting. It’s hard to admit when we have sinned, injured someone with our words or actions, lost our way, and become hateful or judgmental instead of loving and compassionate. Joel reminds us that we are called not just to admit our failings, flaws, and sins, but to proclaim them with a trumpet, with fasting, with ash cloth, with weeping and mourning. Are we celebrating our sin? No, we are celebrating the mercy of a steadfast and loving God who shows us mercy.
Repentance is about turning around, returning to God, proclaiming our kinship with God through our faithfulness in God’s character -- even when we can doubt our own. Repentance is about taking a chance to become transformed and different than we have been -- to use the grace, gifts, and blessings of God to become more the person God is calling us to be. And whether or not we like admitting we have sinned, becoming more and more the person God created us to be is worth celebrating.
Bonnie B.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Some are more worried about jihadists than others. They want to spend much more time and money on the military to prepare for that terrible dark day -- if it ever comes. But God’s word to us about preparation for disaster is a bit different. It sounds like we should prepare by turning ourselves over to him and praying that he will spare us if we turn back to him. Before we join his army, we should be looking at our sins more than the other guy’s sins!
The message for Ash Wednesday and all of Lent is that we should turn back to the Lord from all the distractions we have in life. Use this season to list all the things that separate us from our spiritual life, the things that keep us from putting the Lord first in our lives -- including spending more for military support. No, we should not ignore those issues, but they should not be first in our lives.
Almost every day the newspaper and the television are filled with dark gloom that alarms us. Instead, we should be looking for the day of the Lord’s coming. Without him, we are just making more trouble for the future.
When I think of the response of most people of all nations and faiths, it is a vicious circle of revenge. We feel that first we must somehow get even with the evildoers by fighting back when they hurt us. But doesn’t that go on and on? When we take revenge, then the ones we take revenge on will only fight back -- taking their revenge on us, and making the cycle start all over again. Look at history and see if that is not a terrible reality.
The only answer is to come to the Lord with tears in our eyes for putting all our fears on the earthly things and failing to look for the only one who can solve our problems once and for all. So look for his coming first! Prepare yourself so that you will let God take care of you, and only weep if you are failing to give yourself to him!
This is usually preceded by preparation, which means deep inner examination and sorrow -- so much sorrow that we may even need a Lenten fast!
Bob O.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Can you really go back home? She was 17, headstrong and rebellious. She lived with her parents just north of Traverse City, near the cherry orchards. She had two older brothers who were married with kids of their own. She was the unexpected baby of the family. She bristled at what she thought were her dad’s “old-fashioned” rules and they had several arguments. On one particular day the “disagreement” escalated and he made the statement that many parents do: “As long as you live here, you’ll do as I say!” She took him up on that. Instead of going to the church for youth meeting that night, she went to the bus station and hopped a bus for Detroit. Her parents were beside themselves with worry, but didn’t know where to look. She thought she’d found freedom and a good time.
You can guess by now that it was anything but “freedom” and fun. She ran out of money quickly. She met a guy who seemed nice. He would help her “make” money. She didn’t want to do what he told her to, but she had no choice. It was terrible. One day, after being beaten by the “nice” man, she decided she’d had enough. She tried to call home, but couldn’t get anyone to answer. Finally, she just left a message. She’d be on the bus. When it stopped at Traverse City, she’d get out. If she could still come back, would someone please be there. If not, then she’d go on to Canada. You know by now what happened. When she got off in Traverse City and turned the corner to the lobby, she saw her dad, mom, brothers, sisters-in-law, and nieces all there waiting for her and welcoming her home.
Do you recognize that one? It’s a modern-day version of the “prodigal son.” Philip Yancey shares it in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace. It is a powerful story that resonates with us. We want to be able to go home again after all of our mistakes, wanderings, and sin. In this passage in Joel the call is made for Israel to go home again to God. Recognize sin. Call it for what it is. Repent and return to the Lord. Don’t you sometimes just want to go home?
Bill T.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
This lection from the prophet Joel begins with a classic reversal or turnaround, the stuff of jokes, which we would laugh about if we weren’t the butt of Joel’s barbs! The passage begins with a call to celebration -- blow the trumpets, get ready for the Day of the Lord! Who wouldn’t want to celebrate that? However, in the next verse we discover that if our hearts aren’t ready for Day of the Lord then it’s going to be a time of gloom and despair for us.
According to Graydon F. Snyder’s scholarly article “Sayings on the Delay of the End” (Biblical Research 20 [1975], pp. 19-35), pretty much all the Day of the Lord sayings have an out -- we are warned that we’re in for it, but then we’re reminded that there is still time for us to repent and avoid the doom that seems to await us.
A good resource is John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 7,” in which he imagines how glorious the end of the world will be, then asks God to hold off blowing the trumpets long enough for him to repent before it happens:
At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter’d bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst seal’d my pardon with thy blood.
Frank R.
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Carl Sandburg’s brief poem “Limited” (1916) speaks to a key theological theme for Ash Wednesday. The poet tells of riding the Limited Express, the fastest and most expensive form of land travel a century ago. A thousand financially comfortable passengers hurtle across the prairie in a haze of blue smoke. As they laugh and socialize, the poet ponders that the time will come when those steel railroad cars will be reduced to rusty scrap and all the passengers will return to dust. Then the poet asks a passenger where he is going. The man responds, “Omaha.”
That fellow is not totally wrong. He may very well stop in Nebraska’s largest city. That visit, however, can never be more than a brief stop on the longer journey to dust. As the faithful are reminded with the imposition of ashes, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” No matter how much a person accumulates or does not accumulate of the world’s treasure, everything must all be left behind when this journey concludes.
In this reading, Paul outlines accumulating a different sort of treasure by living reconciled to God. When we do this, we take our journey “having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (6:10b).
R. Robert C.
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Dorothy Davis, a nurse, was appointed as a Nazarene missionary to Switzerland in 1939. Because she was so proficient in training the women of Switzerland to be nurses, she became known as “the Mother of Swiss Nurses.”
Application: We are asked by Paul to have a good ministry, a ministry in which “no fault may be found.”
Ron L.
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Charlton Heston was right: “Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?,” he once said. God works in surprising ways. Ash Wednesday is all about this, as we take ashes, reminding us of our sin and path to the grave, and find them pointing us to hope and eternal life. The very nature of God’s ways, of the Christian faith, is hidden, Martin Luther says: “And universally our every assertion of anything good is hidden under the denial of it, so that faith may have its place in God, who is a negative essence of goodness and wisdom and righteousness, who cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of all our affirmatives” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 25, p. 383).
Luther goes on to say that even the Christian life is hidden: “...he [the Christian] does not see his holiness and virtue, but sees in himself nothing but unholiness and vice” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 31, p. 411). We need the ashes to remind us of our unholiness, to be sure we see them so that the holiness we have remains hidden. That makes it ever clear to us that when God thinks we’re great and loves us it is a surprise. We need to become brave sinners, the Reformer says: “...be not a false but a real [brave] sinner; not only in works but in reality from the heart acknowledge yourself worthy before God of his wrath and eternal punishment, and bring before him in truth these words, ‘me a poor sinner...’ ” (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/2, p. 367).
Only if we are brave in our willingness to confess our sin will we feel the full surprise that God loves us anyway. And then we will be able to experience in our faith lives what Russian poet Boris Pasternak has said, that “surprise is the greatest gift which life can grow.” Or better yet we will also experience in our lives what British-American anthropologist and humorist Ashley Montagu has observed, that “The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise, it is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” There are even scientific grounds for this conclusion. The novelty of surprise seems to be good for the human brain and is pleasurable. Research conducted by Oscar Arrias-Carrion and Ernest Poppel indicated that the pleasurable, good-feeling brain chemical dopamine is secreted in greater quantities when a reward is greater than expected (Acts Neurobioliae Experimentalis [2007], pp. 481-488; cf. Stefan Klein, The Science of Happiness, pp. 35-37, 56-58, 107).
Mark E.
Mathew 6:1-6, 16-21
Don’t pray in public and make yourself a spectacle. Don’t proclaim your fast by appearing downtrodden and dim. I wonder how many pastors who are called upon to pray in public wish they could quote Matthew 6:5 about praying in public. Now, I know that the purpose of Jesus’ admonishment is for those who preen with their public prayers and use them more to show off than to pray earnestly to God, more to be seen as pious rather than to be really sincere.
There are so many instructions and expectations for faithful people to follow. The world has expectations. Our denominations have expectations. Our parents, priests, Sunday school teachers, friends, youth group members all have expectations. Yet the important expectations come from God through Jesus.
I think the expectation Jesus has of prayer is that we will be in personal, intimate contact with God, professing our praise, sharing our gratitude, revealing our sins, opening ourselves to grace and direction. That requires some private time -- some intentional seclusion and quiet. The expectation Jesus has for our fasting is that we will know our fast, but the rest of the world will not see it. We fast for our improved relationship to God. So this Ash Wednesday I am fasting and I am praying, but no one will know it but God and me. How about you?
Bonnie B.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
There is an old joke that has made the rounds that goes something like this. A rich man was very concerned with all of his money and possessions, and he wanted to be sure that he didn’t lose any of them. As he got older, this passion for his wealth grew even more fervent. He got to the point that he converted all of his wealth to gold bars. He had specific instructions for his family too. When he died, he was to be buried with all the gold bars. It was going to go with him! That’s just what happened. He died, and his casket had to be guarded because it was filled with gold. When the rich old man got to heaven, he was happy to see that his kids had followed his orders. Gold bars were in his pockets and all around him. He approached Peter at the gate, and it took a while as he had to make several trips to stack the gold bars. He finally got them all and stood proudly before Peter. As he waited, an angel approached Peter, took one look at the man and the gold, and asked, “Who is this guy and why did he bring up so much pavement?”
Humorous, maybe just a bit, but it does remind us of a stark truth presented in this passage. The things that we think have great value may not. The things that we think may not be worth much might just be worth a lot. Heaven is a place of reversals. It doesn’t operate as things do on earth. Heaven is a place where the streets are gold. What do I think is important and valuable? Do I see it through the eyes of God?
Bill T.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
If you watch television, you often see blazoned on the screen the names of the wealthy who have contributed support for the station. It looks like they have their reward. Does your church put out a list of all contributors? I don’t see a problem with that, unless the amount they pledged follows their name.
I was reading an article by a famous actress who dreaded all the attention she received from media and fans. She was constantly harassed and just hoped for a little privacy and peace. There are others who love all the attention!
Then there are the candidates for president who proudly proclaim their virtues and accomplishments, looking for praise (and election!). I like the ones who would rather spend their time telling what programs they support and what plans they have if elected.
And then there are the kids who brag about the grades and how much better they are doing then their classmates.
Should I mention the pride of us pastors who may brag (without saying a word) about how good and righteous we are? Do we wear our fancy collars to proclaim our advanced standing in the community? I am not saying we should not wear our collars, which help us get to see our members in the hospital.
We must give generously to the world’s needs, but don’t wave a flag over your giving (IRS credit is enough). That poor lady who humbly gave her last few cents in the offering was praised more than all the other 1% by Jesus himself. Where is our treasure?
Whatever we do for the Lord and his work, let us not be looking for praise from others -- because we want the greatest reward of all: from our Father in heaven.
Bob O.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
I’m not sure it takes a brainiac to figure out the intent of this gospel passage typically reserved for Ash Wednesday. When you fast, when you pray, when you go without, when you give (generously or otherwise), don’t blow your trumpets. Don’t make a big deal about it. These attitudes can be as natural as breathing -- and most of the time we never think about the fact that we’re breathing.
It is said by some that the boxes where alms were collected at the temple had trumpet-shaped openings. Since no one gave paper money or checks -- since typically money was in the form of precious metals minted into coins -- larger coins made a bigger noise. People couldn’t help but guess exactly how much cash you were giving to the temple just by the clatter and crash it made. Jesus encourages us to avoid fuss.
Actually, joy is the default setting for the festivals that come from the Hebrew scriptures. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, calls for fasting, but all the other festivals call for feasting. While the Lenten season calls for reflection and confession, it doesn’t hurt for us to remember we’re on the winning team. Historically, even when someone gave up something for the season of Lent, Sundays were exempt. We are about to engage in the great drama that ends in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. This may be cause for some solemnity. But this drama really ends with the resurrection! There’s a happy ending, what J.R.R. Tolkien called the “eucatastrophe” of history. The word, which he seems to have invented, adds the Greek prefix eu, meaning good, to the familiar word “catastrophe.” This is the good turning point, the good catastrophe. So receive ashes -- but recognize what lies beyond.
There is of course a time for fasting, and for doing without. There’s a quote from the Narnia novel The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis in which the king explains to his son what it means to be a king -- and that includes being the first to tighten one’s belt in a time of famine, and laughing about it the loudest.
Joy.
Frank R.
Nobody actually likes the idea of repenting. It’s hard to admit when we have sinned, injured someone with our words or actions, lost our way, and become hateful or judgmental instead of loving and compassionate. Joel reminds us that we are called not just to admit our failings, flaws, and sins, but to proclaim them with a trumpet, with fasting, with ash cloth, with weeping and mourning. Are we celebrating our sin? No, we are celebrating the mercy of a steadfast and loving God who shows us mercy.
Repentance is about turning around, returning to God, proclaiming our kinship with God through our faithfulness in God’s character -- even when we can doubt our own. Repentance is about taking a chance to become transformed and different than we have been -- to use the grace, gifts, and blessings of God to become more the person God is calling us to be. And whether or not we like admitting we have sinned, becoming more and more the person God created us to be is worth celebrating.
Bonnie B.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Some are more worried about jihadists than others. They want to spend much more time and money on the military to prepare for that terrible dark day -- if it ever comes. But God’s word to us about preparation for disaster is a bit different. It sounds like we should prepare by turning ourselves over to him and praying that he will spare us if we turn back to him. Before we join his army, we should be looking at our sins more than the other guy’s sins!
The message for Ash Wednesday and all of Lent is that we should turn back to the Lord from all the distractions we have in life. Use this season to list all the things that separate us from our spiritual life, the things that keep us from putting the Lord first in our lives -- including spending more for military support. No, we should not ignore those issues, but they should not be first in our lives.
Almost every day the newspaper and the television are filled with dark gloom that alarms us. Instead, we should be looking for the day of the Lord’s coming. Without him, we are just making more trouble for the future.
When I think of the response of most people of all nations and faiths, it is a vicious circle of revenge. We feel that first we must somehow get even with the evildoers by fighting back when they hurt us. But doesn’t that go on and on? When we take revenge, then the ones we take revenge on will only fight back -- taking their revenge on us, and making the cycle start all over again. Look at history and see if that is not a terrible reality.
The only answer is to come to the Lord with tears in our eyes for putting all our fears on the earthly things and failing to look for the only one who can solve our problems once and for all. So look for his coming first! Prepare yourself so that you will let God take care of you, and only weep if you are failing to give yourself to him!
This is usually preceded by preparation, which means deep inner examination and sorrow -- so much sorrow that we may even need a Lenten fast!
Bob O.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Can you really go back home? She was 17, headstrong and rebellious. She lived with her parents just north of Traverse City, near the cherry orchards. She had two older brothers who were married with kids of their own. She was the unexpected baby of the family. She bristled at what she thought were her dad’s “old-fashioned” rules and they had several arguments. On one particular day the “disagreement” escalated and he made the statement that many parents do: “As long as you live here, you’ll do as I say!” She took him up on that. Instead of going to the church for youth meeting that night, she went to the bus station and hopped a bus for Detroit. Her parents were beside themselves with worry, but didn’t know where to look. She thought she’d found freedom and a good time.
You can guess by now that it was anything but “freedom” and fun. She ran out of money quickly. She met a guy who seemed nice. He would help her “make” money. She didn’t want to do what he told her to, but she had no choice. It was terrible. One day, after being beaten by the “nice” man, she decided she’d had enough. She tried to call home, but couldn’t get anyone to answer. Finally, she just left a message. She’d be on the bus. When it stopped at Traverse City, she’d get out. If she could still come back, would someone please be there. If not, then she’d go on to Canada. You know by now what happened. When she got off in Traverse City and turned the corner to the lobby, she saw her dad, mom, brothers, sisters-in-law, and nieces all there waiting for her and welcoming her home.
Do you recognize that one? It’s a modern-day version of the “prodigal son.” Philip Yancey shares it in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace. It is a powerful story that resonates with us. We want to be able to go home again after all of our mistakes, wanderings, and sin. In this passage in Joel the call is made for Israel to go home again to God. Recognize sin. Call it for what it is. Repent and return to the Lord. Don’t you sometimes just want to go home?
Bill T.
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
This lection from the prophet Joel begins with a classic reversal or turnaround, the stuff of jokes, which we would laugh about if we weren’t the butt of Joel’s barbs! The passage begins with a call to celebration -- blow the trumpets, get ready for the Day of the Lord! Who wouldn’t want to celebrate that? However, in the next verse we discover that if our hearts aren’t ready for Day of the Lord then it’s going to be a time of gloom and despair for us.
According to Graydon F. Snyder’s scholarly article “Sayings on the Delay of the End” (Biblical Research 20 [1975], pp. 19-35), pretty much all the Day of the Lord sayings have an out -- we are warned that we’re in for it, but then we’re reminded that there is still time for us to repent and avoid the doom that seems to await us.
A good resource is John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 7,” in which he imagines how glorious the end of the world will be, then asks God to hold off blowing the trumpets long enough for him to repent before it happens:
At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter’d bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst seal’d my pardon with thy blood.
Frank R.
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Carl Sandburg’s brief poem “Limited” (1916) speaks to a key theological theme for Ash Wednesday. The poet tells of riding the Limited Express, the fastest and most expensive form of land travel a century ago. A thousand financially comfortable passengers hurtle across the prairie in a haze of blue smoke. As they laugh and socialize, the poet ponders that the time will come when those steel railroad cars will be reduced to rusty scrap and all the passengers will return to dust. Then the poet asks a passenger where he is going. The man responds, “Omaha.”
That fellow is not totally wrong. He may very well stop in Nebraska’s largest city. That visit, however, can never be more than a brief stop on the longer journey to dust. As the faithful are reminded with the imposition of ashes, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” No matter how much a person accumulates or does not accumulate of the world’s treasure, everything must all be left behind when this journey concludes.
In this reading, Paul outlines accumulating a different sort of treasure by living reconciled to God. When we do this, we take our journey “having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (6:10b).
R. Robert C.
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Dorothy Davis, a nurse, was appointed as a Nazarene missionary to Switzerland in 1939. Because she was so proficient in training the women of Switzerland to be nurses, she became known as “the Mother of Swiss Nurses.”
Application: We are asked by Paul to have a good ministry, a ministry in which “no fault may be found.”
Ron L.
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Charlton Heston was right: “Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?,” he once said. God works in surprising ways. Ash Wednesday is all about this, as we take ashes, reminding us of our sin and path to the grave, and find them pointing us to hope and eternal life. The very nature of God’s ways, of the Christian faith, is hidden, Martin Luther says: “And universally our every assertion of anything good is hidden under the denial of it, so that faith may have its place in God, who is a negative essence of goodness and wisdom and righteousness, who cannot be possessed or touched except by the negation of all our affirmatives” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 25, p. 383).
Luther goes on to say that even the Christian life is hidden: “...he [the Christian] does not see his holiness and virtue, but sees in himself nothing but unholiness and vice” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 31, p. 411). We need the ashes to remind us of our unholiness, to be sure we see them so that the holiness we have remains hidden. That makes it ever clear to us that when God thinks we’re great and loves us it is a surprise. We need to become brave sinners, the Reformer says: “...be not a false but a real [brave] sinner; not only in works but in reality from the heart acknowledge yourself worthy before God of his wrath and eternal punishment, and bring before him in truth these words, ‘me a poor sinner...’ ” (Complete Sermons, Vol. 2/2, p. 367).
Only if we are brave in our willingness to confess our sin will we feel the full surprise that God loves us anyway. And then we will be able to experience in our faith lives what Russian poet Boris Pasternak has said, that “surprise is the greatest gift which life can grow.” Or better yet we will also experience in our lives what British-American anthropologist and humorist Ashley Montagu has observed, that “The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise, it is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” There are even scientific grounds for this conclusion. The novelty of surprise seems to be good for the human brain and is pleasurable. Research conducted by Oscar Arrias-Carrion and Ernest Poppel indicated that the pleasurable, good-feeling brain chemical dopamine is secreted in greater quantities when a reward is greater than expected (Acts Neurobioliae Experimentalis [2007], pp. 481-488; cf. Stefan Klein, The Science of Happiness, pp. 35-37, 56-58, 107).
Mark E.
Mathew 6:1-6, 16-21
Don’t pray in public and make yourself a spectacle. Don’t proclaim your fast by appearing downtrodden and dim. I wonder how many pastors who are called upon to pray in public wish they could quote Matthew 6:5 about praying in public. Now, I know that the purpose of Jesus’ admonishment is for those who preen with their public prayers and use them more to show off than to pray earnestly to God, more to be seen as pious rather than to be really sincere.
There are so many instructions and expectations for faithful people to follow. The world has expectations. Our denominations have expectations. Our parents, priests, Sunday school teachers, friends, youth group members all have expectations. Yet the important expectations come from God through Jesus.
I think the expectation Jesus has of prayer is that we will be in personal, intimate contact with God, professing our praise, sharing our gratitude, revealing our sins, opening ourselves to grace and direction. That requires some private time -- some intentional seclusion and quiet. The expectation Jesus has for our fasting is that we will know our fast, but the rest of the world will not see it. We fast for our improved relationship to God. So this Ash Wednesday I am fasting and I am praying, but no one will know it but God and me. How about you?
Bonnie B.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
There is an old joke that has made the rounds that goes something like this. A rich man was very concerned with all of his money and possessions, and he wanted to be sure that he didn’t lose any of them. As he got older, this passion for his wealth grew even more fervent. He got to the point that he converted all of his wealth to gold bars. He had specific instructions for his family too. When he died, he was to be buried with all the gold bars. It was going to go with him! That’s just what happened. He died, and his casket had to be guarded because it was filled with gold. When the rich old man got to heaven, he was happy to see that his kids had followed his orders. Gold bars were in his pockets and all around him. He approached Peter at the gate, and it took a while as he had to make several trips to stack the gold bars. He finally got them all and stood proudly before Peter. As he waited, an angel approached Peter, took one look at the man and the gold, and asked, “Who is this guy and why did he bring up so much pavement?”
Humorous, maybe just a bit, but it does remind us of a stark truth presented in this passage. The things that we think have great value may not. The things that we think may not be worth much might just be worth a lot. Heaven is a place of reversals. It doesn’t operate as things do on earth. Heaven is a place where the streets are gold. What do I think is important and valuable? Do I see it through the eyes of God?
Bill T.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
If you watch television, you often see blazoned on the screen the names of the wealthy who have contributed support for the station. It looks like they have their reward. Does your church put out a list of all contributors? I don’t see a problem with that, unless the amount they pledged follows their name.
I was reading an article by a famous actress who dreaded all the attention she received from media and fans. She was constantly harassed and just hoped for a little privacy and peace. There are others who love all the attention!
Then there are the candidates for president who proudly proclaim their virtues and accomplishments, looking for praise (and election!). I like the ones who would rather spend their time telling what programs they support and what plans they have if elected.
And then there are the kids who brag about the grades and how much better they are doing then their classmates.
Should I mention the pride of us pastors who may brag (without saying a word) about how good and righteous we are? Do we wear our fancy collars to proclaim our advanced standing in the community? I am not saying we should not wear our collars, which help us get to see our members in the hospital.
We must give generously to the world’s needs, but don’t wave a flag over your giving (IRS credit is enough). That poor lady who humbly gave her last few cents in the offering was praised more than all the other 1% by Jesus himself. Where is our treasure?
Whatever we do for the Lord and his work, let us not be looking for praise from others -- because we want the greatest reward of all: from our Father in heaven.
Bob O.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
I’m not sure it takes a brainiac to figure out the intent of this gospel passage typically reserved for Ash Wednesday. When you fast, when you pray, when you go without, when you give (generously or otherwise), don’t blow your trumpets. Don’t make a big deal about it. These attitudes can be as natural as breathing -- and most of the time we never think about the fact that we’re breathing.
It is said by some that the boxes where alms were collected at the temple had trumpet-shaped openings. Since no one gave paper money or checks -- since typically money was in the form of precious metals minted into coins -- larger coins made a bigger noise. People couldn’t help but guess exactly how much cash you were giving to the temple just by the clatter and crash it made. Jesus encourages us to avoid fuss.
Actually, joy is the default setting for the festivals that come from the Hebrew scriptures. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, calls for fasting, but all the other festivals call for feasting. While the Lenten season calls for reflection and confession, it doesn’t hurt for us to remember we’re on the winning team. Historically, even when someone gave up something for the season of Lent, Sundays were exempt. We are about to engage in the great drama that ends in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. This may be cause for some solemnity. But this drama really ends with the resurrection! There’s a happy ending, what J.R.R. Tolkien called the “eucatastrophe” of history. The word, which he seems to have invented, adds the Greek prefix eu, meaning good, to the familiar word “catastrophe.” This is the good turning point, the good catastrophe. So receive ashes -- but recognize what lies beyond.
There is of course a time for fasting, and for doing without. There’s a quote from the Narnia novel The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis in which the king explains to his son what it means to be a king -- and that includes being the first to tighten one’s belt in a time of famine, and laughing about it the loudest.
Joy.
Frank R.
