It’s become popular to refer to us Christians as “Easter People,” and of course that’s what we are . . . we’re people living in the promise of the resurrection, in the sure hope of redemption and the coming Kingdom of God. After each worship service, as we go out into the world, we are witnesses, signs pointing to that coming new reality – that through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sin and death have been vanquished, and creation is being made new. As usual, Paul said it best – “Listen!” he says, “I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed . . . the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised . . . and we will be changed . . . "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"” As Easter people, we live that promise, we live that hope, that anticipation of ultimate victory.
But . . . let me tell you another mystery . . . it’s not here yet! The Kingdom of God on earth, unstoppable, like a freight train, has not yet completely arrived. That final trump has yet to sound, our resurrection has yet to occur, the saints have yet to come marching in. Paul knew that only too well – he was forever warning his congregations not to live as if they were already resurrected. It’s all in the future tense for Paul, all yet to come, yet to be. He knew that the Christian life isn’t all fun and games, isn’t all sweetness and light, that it doesn’t protect us from calamity and catastrophe . . . In our scripture from Corinthians, he details hisheartache and persecution for the faith . . . he says he’s endured “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger . . .” It’s hardly the stuff of TV preachers, hardly the “something Good is going to happen to you” school of Christianity. If you just turn your life over to Jesus – and send in a check for nineteen-ninety five plus postage and handling – your troubles will be over. You’ll live a life of victory, God will bless you ten-fold, and all your taxes will get paid on time. You mean that hasn’t happened to you? Well, you must not be trying hard enough, or praying long enough, or hard enough . . . Because God will bless you if you just let him.
That’s a siren song for new converts, and it gets them through the doors, and into the pews. It can grow churches faster than weeds . . . but it neglects one thing. In all its proclamation that we’re bound for glory, all that stuff about the coming resurrection, all that talk about Easter People, it forgets that we’re also Crucifixion People, we’re also People of the Cross. We’re the people for whom Jesus Christ, righteous and blameless and spotless before the Lord, was spiked to a tree and hung up to die. We’re the people of the crucifixion, people for whom God emptied himself of God-hood, took the form of a slave and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. We are Crucifixion People, People of the Cross, every bit as much as Easter People, and we can never let ourselves forget it. Without the cross, there can be no resurrection, without death, there can be no life, without Good Friday there can be no Easter morning.
During Lent we remember all this, all the sadness, all the heartache . . . we remember the human condition, and meditate on our frailties and lapses, on our sins of omission and commission, and the fact that often – but not always – we just can’t seem to get it right. Once again, Paul says it best . . . “I do not understand my own actions,” he says, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” And during Lent, we look at all this unflinchingly, clear-eyed . . . and through the ages, the church has developed spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines, to help us do that, to help us meditate and spend time in prayer and quiet reflection . . .
In our reading from Matthew, Jesus gives us a catalog of spiritual practices . . . giving alms to the poor . . . praying . . . fasting . . . but more than that, he details how to do it right: He says: "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" and that's pretty cold, isn't it? I mean, its pretty cut and dried – f you run around showing off, if you do these things in order to be seen, to be on the Six-O'clock News, or written up in the Curry County Reporter, you won't be rewarded by your Father in heaven – and I don't know what that means, exactly, but it can't be good . . . and then he goes ahead and explains just what he's talking about – Whenever you give alms, don't be like the hypocrites . . . whenever you pray, don't be like the hypocrites . . . whenever you fast, don't be like the hypocrites . . . those hypocrites must've been pretty bad . . . elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus calls them "white-washed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth." Ouch! You don't want to be like them . . . to Jesus, hypocrites were folks whose worship was empty, who did it for the wrong reason, who said great and flowery things, who preached one thing and did another, who practiced the letter of the law, but neglected its heart.
When you give to the poor, don't blow a trumpet for Pete's sake, don't be like the hypocrites, for they've found their rewards right here on earth . . . rather, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing . . . and when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, who never met a press-conference they didn't like, who stand up close to the microphone in church and out on the street corners . . . they've got their rewards . . . go into your room and shut the door, pray in secret, and God'll see you anyway, and will reward you . . . and when you fast, you don't have to look like it, all hang-dog and everything, all down-cast and droopy-faced like those hypocrites, who after all have their rewards right here on earth . . . when you fast, spruce yourself up, put some gel in your hair and wash your face . . . and God, who sees in secret, will reward you.
And note that Jesus doesn't say if you fast, or if you pray, or if you give to the poor, he says when you give, when you pray, when you fast. We're expected to pray, fast and give to the poor – we have no option. It’s given that we do them. What Jesus is concerned with here is the right way to do these things, so they call attention to God, not us. So that God gets the credit, not us. So that God is exalted, not us. It’s a warning against empty worship, against hollow words, against becoming white-washed sepulchers, pretty on the outside, but on the inside full of bile.
It's the same thing over in Isaiah, in the chapter we read earlier . . . the prophet is told to shout out, not to hold back, to announce to God's people their rebellion . . . even though day after day they seek God, day after day they delight in God's name . . . God ignores them, God does not reward them, and they ask God "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why do we humble ourselves, when you do not notice?" The people worship and fast and pray, but God does not favor them . . . and they are perplexed. They don't understand . . . And in Isaiah's poetry, God answers them: Look! you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look! you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist . . . Such fasting will not make your voice heard on high!" Their worship is hollow, it's centered around themselves, not God . . . they worship, they pray, they fast but it's only for their own interests, for their own glory, not God's. It's the same rap Jesus has for the hypocrites. They serve their own interests, they build themselves up, they do it for their own egos and pleasure and delight, but not for the glory of God.
And that brings us back to good old Paul, and our reading from his second letter to Corinth – the people in that church was living as if they’d already arrived, as if their resurrection was complete, They lived as Easter people, but not also as people of the Cross. And he reminds them, right up front, of what was done for them – God “made him to be sin who knew no sin . . ." Through the cross, Jesus Christ, the son of God, embodied sin, he took it all on himself, even though he was blameless, even though evil had not touched him . . . he became sin itself, incorporated it into his being . . . for Paul's sake, and the Corinthians' sake, and for our sake . . it was nothing the Corinthians did, nothing Paul did, nothing we have done . . . and if it's nothing we have done, there's nothing to be proud of, no reason to boast . . . and that's the function of Lent, isn't it? That's why we talk so long and loud about contemplating our sinfulness, about focusing on the cross before we move on to celebration. It's why Lent lasts 40 days, longer than Advent or Christmas, and second in length only to Easter. Without it, we're in danger of self-satisfaction, of smugness, of assuming that we've arrived rather than we're just on the road. The recognition of our role in the salvation equation, and just how high a price was paid to balance the books, helps guard against empty worship, against self-fulfilling ritual. It helps keep us from being whitewashed tombs.
And so here we are . . . Ash Wednesday 2014, the beginning of Lent, the beginning of the forty days, a time of prayer and giving and fasting, a time when we give up things dear to us to remind us of another sacrifice, to help us to remember whose we are, and what price was paid . . . when we recall that we are not to be exalted, only God. In a few minutes, I'll place the ashes on your foreheads, as a sign that we are earth, the stuff of the ground, animated with the breath of God, given all we have, all we will ever get, by our maker. We will remember where we came from, that we are only flesh, only dust, only ashes of the Earth, dust to dust and ashes to ashes, and to ashes we shall return. Amen.
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