A Threefold Fast

 

Propers: Ash Wednesday, AD 2021 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Repent! And believe the Good News.

Lent is a season of repentance—which in the popular imagination makes it rather dour. When Americans think of Lent, assuming any of us do, I think it’s fair to say we conjure images of self-flagellation and of fasting. “I’m so sorry; I’m so sorry; I won’t eat meat on Fridays.” That sort of thing.

And I must confess a certain value in that. In a culture that’s all about you-do-you, in an economic system which cannot fathom forgoing an affordable indulgence, it can be refreshing, rebellious, and even liberating, to say, “No, I don’t think I will.”

Even so, repentance isn’t about beating yourselves up. Not really. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, it’s not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less. True repentance is about turning back to God—or rather, about being turned back—away from falsehood and ego and mindless consumption, back to first things, eternal things, real things. Lewis again: if we put heaven first we get earth thrown in, but if we put earth first then we end up with neither.

For us to repent is to stop letting false gods enslave us—gods of appetite, anxiety, and consumption; gods of entertainment and busyness and politics; gods of racism and militarism and environmental degradation. Turn away! Be turned back to the One who loves you, the One who holds you, the One who is beautiful and good and true. Believe the Good News of the victory of Christ, His ultimate defeat of sin and death and hell, and know now that you have been freed.

Repent like that, and the world will still be broken. The world will still be fallen. But by grace you shall be a little Christ within it; a little reflection of His own infinite Light shining brightly amidst the darkness, which the darkness cannot overcome. And your light and mine and all of ours shall spread until we become what we were meant to be, what we are tasked to be: a foretaste of the feast to come: a beachhead of the inbreaking Kingdom of our God, inaugurated in Jesus’ Passover from death to life.

And this Kingdom of Resurrection shall continue to spread until all of Creation is consumed in the unquenchable fires of God’s love. Then every wound shall be healed, every wrong set right, all the dead raised up from their graves, and God at the last shall be All in All. That’s what you are for the world! You are the dead raised up from the grave. You are the sinner sainted by the Spirit’s flame. You are the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord in the here and now.

That’s what Baptism makes you. That’s what God makes you. Repent, and believe it again!

Thus having seen, I hope, how Baptism and repentance are inextricably interlinked, it should come as no surprise that Lent began, and ends, as a season of Baptism. When people from outside the early Church desired to join us in the Body of Christ, we took that quite seriously. We rejoiced, of course, but we wanted them to know what they were getting into. We wanted them to understand that they were asking here to come and die.

So we set aside a time of preparation, a time of prayer and repentance and catechesis, which is instruction in the faith. The catechumenate—those preparing for Baptism—would worship on Sundays but leave after the passing of the peace. The second half of the liturgy, the Sacrament in “Word and Sacrament,” was reserved for the baptized, for those who had died to themselves and risen again in Jesus Christ.

After this period, if the catechumenate still desired to answer the Spirit’s call, they would be baptized, typically at the Easter Vigil, and given a spotless new white tunic—tunica alba—to wear to worship each Sunday, in order to remind us that we have all been cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb and put on Jesus Christ. That’s why those serving in the front of churches today still wear albs: as a reminder that all of us have been baptized into Christ, and wear such a garment invisibly.

Lent developed as the season of preparation for those who would be baptized at the Easter Vigil. It expanded to encompass the whole Church, those of us already baptized, so that we could stand together in solidarity with the catechumenate. Thus Christians in general, during Lent, return to themes of Baptism, repentance, catechesis, death and resurrection, culminating in the Sacraments of Easter.

Though the length of Lent has varied over the centuries, it eventually settled out into 40 days, not including Sundays, for reasons of biblical resonance. It rained for 40 days and nights in Noah’s Flood; the Israelites wandered the wastes 40 years; Jesus was tempted 40 days in the wilderness; and so on. Ancient peoples knew that it takes about 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. And so whenever the number 40 arises in the Bible, it represents a period of pain or travail—indeed, a period of labor—leading to new life and new birth.

Which brings us back once more to fasting. What is fasting? Why practice any form of self-denial? Fasting is universally recognized as having spiritual benefit. From Islam through Buddhism to Native American belief, fasting is a way to detach ourselves from worldly cares in order to focus on matters of greater spiritual importance.

But how might we best do that? By eating one meal a day, avoiding meat, frying fish? Keep in mind that one person’s sacrifice is another’s joyful indulgence. Some people prefer seafood to steak. Some would find the beer-only fasts of medieval monks to be a period not of deference but of debauchery—as admittedly did some of those monks.

On the one hand, giving up chocolate seems pretty pathetic, to be honest, especially when our forebears practiced the “black fast” of water, herbs, bread, and salt. Yet on the other hand, there are those who use strict fasting as an excuse for boastfulness or irritability, and that doesn’t do us any good at all. Truly anything taken to the extreme becomes its own opposite. This is especially true in religion.

So then what guidelines might a Lutheran pastor in postmodern America offer over to a faithful flock seeking out a meaningful, spiritual discipline for Lent? Well, let me begin by saying that if you want to give up something, go for it. Just make sure not to let it be a burden but a liberation for your soul.

Meanwhile, here’s the fast that I think Jesus would commend for us today. You ready? “Compassion. Simplicity. Humility.” That’s it. And honestly, that’s plenty.

Compassion, simplicity, humility: let these be our lodestones as we journey with our Savior through His Lent. Let us, with eyes fixed firmly on Jesus Christ, focus on reflecting His compassion, His simplicity, His humility, for our world. Approach each choice and challenge over these 40 days with these three in mind. Ask of every word and deed, “Is this compassionate? Is this simple? Is this humble?”

This shall be our Lenten fast; this shall be the sacrifice acceptable to God: to embrace compassion, simplicity, humility. Not for our own benefit, though it will surely bring health to body, mind, and soul. Not to earn the love or the promise or the forgiveness of our God, which are already ours by grace, already ours in mercy. But simply so that we can live out our Baptism, being Jesus, being “little Christs,” being temples of His own Holy Spirit, for a world still very much in need of Resurrection, a world still very much in need of Him.

Compassion. Simplicity. Humility. Here we will find repentance for our souls. Here we will find life for our world. For here we will drink from the wells of the Savior.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.