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A Sermon for Ash Wednesday Our Bible Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Pastor Tom Steers Christ the Saviour Lutheran Church, Toronto Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we begin a journey through the Church season of Lent. It starts on Ash Wednesday and ends with mid-day prayers Holy Saturday. This time invites us into the Gospel account of Jesus’ sacrificial death for our sins and His glorious resurrection for our justification. It’s a spiritual journey, these 40 days. We recall Christ’s 40 days in the desert prior to His temptation (Matthew 4:1-11), and the 40 years the children of Israel spent in the wilderness (Number 14:34). Lent is a time of repentance and reflection, one that has spiritual benefits, but also spiritual pitfalls. The central question we’re confronted with today is: how are we saved? Is it by what we do, or by what our Saviour Jesus Christ did for us on the cross? Is our salvation a ‘team effort’ with God, a collaboration between our Saviour and us – or is it, as the Bible tells us, a gracious gift given by God to us poor sinners through the cross of Jesus. The Apostle Matthew provides the words of our Lord that instruct on how we should repent, and how we should not. Jesus warns us to practice our piety in secret. We’re not to give to the poor, pray, or fast to please other people. Nor should we feel that through this work we’re redeemed. Instead, we’re to do these things in secret, knowing as Baptized believers it is Christ who does these deeds in and through us. (Galatians 2:20) Then Lenten private practices have a blessing for us and those we reach out to. Yet it’s easy to look on Lenten observances as things that ‘earn’ us rewards, the ‘frequent flyer points’ of spiritual life. We can easily foul up and think if we do well at keeping Lent, God is pleased with us that much more. If we don’t do well, if we make a mess of Lent, then we might think God is that much angrier at us. It's easy to see Lent this way, but to do this as Biblical, Lutheran Christians is to miss the point. What God sees in secret is something other than our achievement. Almsgiving, prayer, fasting, and Bible devotions are classic practices for Lent. There are others as well. Yet all of them lead us to the same place. We give alms, money, to help people in need or distress. Perhaps you donate to people suffering on the streets. Maybe your giving is expressed in action. You visit the sick, the lonely, those in hospital. But however it's done, ‘almsgiving’ brings us that much closer to the raw edge of human need. And what happens when we go there? We find out that human suffering is not a problem to be solved like a math exercise on a calculator. Instead, we give to others and find ourselves keeping company, directly or indirectly, with people whose suffering we’d rather not have to consider or deal with. We lose our innocence again about the state of the world, we trade our self-satisfaction, self-absorption, and peace of mind for the knowledge of those who suffer. Someone else is fed, housed or comforted, but we’ve seen their burden and lightened it for a while. As Martin Luther wrote, “it is our neighbour that needs our good works, not God.” We are led by the Holy Spirit, in this process called sanctification, to walk in the direction Christ calls us to – love of neighbour. We also generally pray more than usual during these 40 days. Perhaps we sit in silence before God for a certain period of time, read a daily devotion, or say a special prayer for ourselves and others. But as we practice these things it may begin to occur to us that our prayer is something poor, ‘dust and ashes’ before the majesty of God. The devotional practices we take part in may be eloquent, time-tested, even comforting, but the doing of them is often full of distraction, overshadowed by uncertainty, an exercise in which we always seem to be starting over. We pray, and what we may discover is the poverty of our prayer, the emptiness of our words, the shallowness of our requests. Perhaps we even doubt that our prayers are heard. But when we do this, we ignore the loving generosity of God who wants His children to come to Him, who gladly hears our prayers, who asks us to look to Him and draw closer. Once we may have thought our prayers changed God, convinced Him to accept our view of the world. Yet while our prayers may not seem to transform things during Lent, we find that through them God changes us, lets us recognize ourselves for who we are: -- that as sinners we need and depend on Him for everything, -- that He’s always there for us, -- that through Christ we will one day be with God forever. It’s in this way that the Father who sees in secret is rewarding us. Then there’s fasting. Maybe it's a meal regularly skipped, or certain kinds of food abstained from. People give up alcohol, television, perhaps even complaining, as part of their Lenten observance. But traditional religious fasting is not done to make us trim, though it may have that effect -- it’s done to make us empty. Because when we fast, we recognize our frailty, that our lives are made up of both the spiritual and physical. The fleshly hunger we feel when fasting reminds us of our spiritual need. Too often we try to fill this need with spiritual junk food of one kind or another. Hunger for God is our healthy state, yet so often our hearts are stuffed with only the things of this world, which don’t, on their own nourish us. This Church season of Lent is a time when we more closely consider the importance of the meal Jesus offers us, the Lord’s Supper – the meal of His own Body and Blood, given to you for the forgiveness of sins. It’s a meal Jesus directs us to have regularly as we come to Church each Sunday. We hear Christ’s words in our Divine Service every week in the Words of Institution found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Communion is not a suggestion from Jesus; we are instructed by our Lord to partake of the Eucharist. The Apostle Paul speaks to this in 1st Corinthians, Chapter 11. Though fasting from everyday food can change us, God reminds us that we’re defined not by our achievements or failures, but by our need for Him. We’re defined not by our hunger for bread alone, but by the bread from Heaven, our Holy Lord and Saviour who sustains us. The practices of Lent are good, but not if we see them as achievements, as our works meriting forgiveness. Instead, they are ways in which we become aware of our poverty, and see again the gifts of God. What we seek is not a successful Lent, a checklist of what we’ve done. What we pray for is recognition of our sins, worked within us through the Law of God, the Ten Commandments. After the Fall, God told Adam and Eve, our first parents: “for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is when we realize our completely helpless state, when we feel the terror of our sins, that we take true joy in the free, sweet gift of the Gospel. We give humble thanks to God who works faith in Christ as Saviour within us. God does this through His Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Through these precious means of grace, we receive salvation and eternal life. At this time of Lent, we reflect on and give thanks for the Biblical Lutheran understanding of God’s Law and Gospel. The Law shows us our sins. The Gospel shows us our Saviour. We are redeemed only through the cross of Jesus. Our hymn for this day is, “From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee” Lutheran Service Book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctBQw5vOYuw Words by Martin Luther (1483-1546) 1 From depths of woe I cry to Thee, In trial and tribulation; Bend down Thy gracious ear to me, Lord, hear my supplication. If Thou remembered every sin, Who then could heaven ever win Or stand before Thy presence? 2 Thy love and grace alone avail To blot out my transgression; The best and holiest deeds must fail To break sin's dread oppression. Before Thee none can boasting stand, But all must fear Thy strict demand And live alone by mercy. 3 Therefore my hope is in the Lord And not in mine own merit; It rests upon His faithful Word To them of contrite spirit That He is merciful and just: This is my comfort and my trust. His help I wait with patience. 4 And though it tarry through the night And till the morning waken, My heart shall never doubt His might Nor count itself forsaken. O Israel, trust in God your Lord. Born of the Spirit and the Word, Now wait for His appearing. 5 Though great our sins, yet greater still Is God's abundant favor; His hand of mercy never will Abandon us, nor waver. Our shepherd good and true is He, Who will at last His Israel free From all their sin and sorrow.