Gifts

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
March 2, 2022 

Ash Wednesday

Mario and I began talking about Ash Wednesday and Lent almost two months ago.  Our concern was how to observe a holy Lent in a time when people feel stretched to the breaking point by the wilderness of the pandemic.  I, personally, found it hard to even think about Lent when we were once again masking up, not offering the chalice at communion, and had suspended coffee hour.  Was all that not denial enough?  And, as it turns out, we begin the holy season of Lent as pandemic restrictions ease, but as we enter the wilderness of war and a new time of great uncertainty.  How might Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent give us insight and even strength in the current circumstances?

          We tend to think of Lent as a time of spiritual discipline, of focusing on our mortality, and of repentance as we prepare for Easter.  And Lent is certainly all of those things.  We think of what we might take up or give up as a Lenten discipline.  On Ash Wednesday, however, Jesus gives us three gifts.  Those gifts are almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.  In a service in which we confess a whole host of ways we fail to live as God's children, it is easy to assume that almsgiving, prayer, and fasting are, if not punishment for our sins, at least our way of making things up to God, or earning a little forgiveness. We are also tempted to understand fasting as just about giving up food, prayer as just about talking to God, and almsgiving as about putting a few more dollars in the offering plate.  On Ash Wednesday, however, we are reminded that forgiveness is God's job, and that what Jesus offers us this day are gifts, not punishments.

          The first gift Jesus mentions is almsgiving.  Almsgiving is not just a matter of denying ourselves so that we have some extra money to give to the poor.  Almsgiving is about acknowledging that all of humanity is connected and that when one person suffers from lack of food, clothing, or shelter, lack of medical care, or lives in fear, we are all responsible for that.  The global pandemic has brought this home in a whole new way, and the current war in yet another way.  The litany of penitence, which we will pray in a few minutes, gives us a whole host of ways that we fail to live as if we are connected to our fellow human being: not loving our neighbor as ourselves, our dishonesty in our daily life and work, our exploitation of other people, and blindness to human need and suffering.  Jesus offers us the gift of almsgiving as a way to reconnect and be reminded that God made us all from the dust of the earth and that we are all connected.

          Jesus' second gift is the gift of prayer.  The world tells us that we should fill our lives with activity, and the one who accomplishes the most, wins.  From sun up to sun down and beyond, we are busy to the point that busyness has become competitive sport.  Jesus' tells us to stop.  Stop and make room for God.  Be still and feel the connection not only with each other but with the God who created us.  That is prayer.  In our Litany of Penitence we also confess the ways we fail to make room for God: filling our lives with our self-indulgent appetites and ways, our negligence in prayer and worship, our pride, hypocrisy and impatience, and our love of worldly goods and comforts.  Jesus offers us the gift of prayer as a way to empty ourselves of that which clutters our souls and make room for the God who creates in us a new and contrite heart.

          Jesus' final gift is the gift of fasting.  Fasting is usually and historically associated with abstaining from food.  In a world that tells us that the one who dies with the most toys wins, fasting can have a broader meaning.  We fill our lives with possessions, people, food, all kinds of things in order to make ourselves feel full.  Jesus calls us to a different kind of fullness.  Jesus calls us to a life that is full and rich because it is centered in the richness of God's Spirit.  Again, in the Litany of Penitence we confess the many ways we try to make ourselves feel less empty by relying on material things rather than God for that sense of fullness: our self- indulgent appetites and ways, our intemperate love of worldly goods, our waste and pollution of creation.  Jesus offers us the gift of fasting so that we may know God as the source of our contentment and fullness.

          In the reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul entreats us to be reconciled to God.  Lent is a time to live into that reconciliation and to learn how to better live as the children of God we were created to be.  Jesus does not leave us to our own devices to figure out how to do that, but instead gives us almsgiving, prayer, and fasting as gifts to help us on that journey.  In a few minutes, we will be anointed with ashes in the form of a cross, just as we were anointed with oil at our baptism in the form of a cross.  Both the cross made of oil and the one made of ashes are reminders that we are children of God, not the world, and that without God, we are empty.  On this Ash Wednesday, Jesus offers us the gifts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, not to make us suffer for our sins, but so that we may deepen our relationship with the God who created us. May this Lenten time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving be a holy time that breathes life into the weary dust of our being.

                                                                             Amen.