Fleshpots and Fetters

Propers: Ash Wednesday, AD 2023 A

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.

Two things I saw last week that made me laugh. One was a picture of a Mardi Gras parade down in New Orleans, in the midst of which stood a fellow holding up a banner which read: “Atheism. All of the Mardi Gras, none of the Lent.” The other was a bunch of hardcore Calvinists over on Reformed Twitter who kept tweeting, “Lent is pagan.” And this from folks who believe in Christian nationalism.

I think they’re both funny because they both miss the point. If indeed Lent is a time of suffering, sorrow, and self-abasement, then perhaps we would be better off without it. The atheist wanted to make clear that one needn’t grovel before God. And the Calvinist objections appear to be rooted in the notion that at Lent we attempt to earn God’s favor and forgiveness, as though Jesus’ grace for us were not enough. And so far as those objections go, they’re right. Or at least they aren’t wrong.

Lent is not about the public placation of deity. Indeed, that’s the very thing against which Jesus preaches in our Gospel reading this evening. Jesus’ big pet peeve is religious hypocrisy—what He calls “play-acting.” That is, people who like to look religious, who enjoy the respect traditionally afforded to the righteous, while ignoring the bedrock necessity of compassion, mercy, charity, generosity, and forgiveness, which undergird all true religion and true spirituality.

Tonight we receive ashes on our foreheads not in order to display our piety before God and man alike, but as a reminder of our mortality, a call for our humility, an admission of our utter dependence on the grace and love of God, who forgives the sinner, liberates the oppressed, and raises to life all the dead. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the Name of Christ we trust.

And here’s a funny thing about Ash Wednesday: it’s growing. Ash Wednesday observances, Lenten observances, are becoming more common throughout the Christian Church, not less—just the opposite of what we might expect. Denominations which have not observed Lent, historically or traditionally, are now beginning to do so because their congregants are asking for it. Evangelical parishes are inquiring of their liturgical siblings how to hold Ash Wednesday.

Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that strange? Why, of all things, would this be the tradition to which twenty-first century Americans find ourselves returning? I suspect that it’s because, deep down, the Spirit is speaking the truth. The Holy Spirit reveals to us that a tradition of fasting, of abstinence from certain indulgences, of confession and repentance, is not some added burden, is not some self-flagellation from which we must escape, but is in fact our liberation.

That’s right: Lent is about liberation. It has always been so. You may recall, as I’ve often said, that the 40 days of Lent came about as a time of preparation for Baptism. People seeking to join in the Body of Christ undertook a period of instruction, prayer, penance, and almsgiving, culminating in Holy Baptism as the Easter Vigil and immediate reception of Holy Communion, the Body and Blood of our Lord.

This wasn’t hazing, you understand. This wasn’t “prove yourself worthy of Christ.” None of us can do that. None of us can earn grace; it is entirely the glorious gift of God. Instead, it is death and resurrection. That’s what Baptism is, and so that’s what Lent is. We are joined to the death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we need never fear death again, and to His own eternal life already begun.

The Gospel is for slaves. The God of all reveals Himself in the Book of Exodus first and foremost as the God of slaves. That’s who He is. He liberates the oppressed. He sets the captives free. We may not be the Hebrews set to labor in ancient Egypt. But we are enslaved to subtler, more insidious things. We are bound in chains of debt, incarcerated in endless cycles of consumption and violence, addicted to ceaseless entertainments, ceaseless advertisements, to the point I cannot tell the twain apart.

And Lent—Lent—sets us free. Lent says, “No, we’ve bought enough. Now we must give some away.” Lent says, “No, enough of noise. God is waiting in the silence.” Lent says, “You are not to be enslaved to appetite and ego. You are children of God!” Lent lets us stop, lets us breathe, lets the still and silent soul subsist in love of God. It is not a command to do more. It is the proclamation that God is enough, that Christ is enough, providing infinitely beyond all that for which we could ask.

I don’t want you to give something up for Lent. I want Christ to set you free; for you to be able to say, “I don’t need this thing to be happy”; to say, “There’s more to life than stuff”; to say, “I can leave my stress to God and set my burden down.” We die to the world to rise in the Lord, to be a light unto the nations, a shining city upon a hill. Here the homeless has a home. Here our chains are broken off. And even in our suffering, even in our doubt, Christ is with us, our companion and our Way.

Fasting isn’t about unnecessary rules and regulations. Fasting is in fact the only thing that gives the feast its meaning. When everything is indulgence—all Mardi Gras, no Lent—then nothing is. And where’s the joy in that? A liberated person should be free to indulge, and free to refrain. And we aren’t, are we, generally speaking? That’s why we return to our Baptism, to Lent, to Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ is our salvation, and salvation sets us free.

So come, my brothers and sisters. Be liberated by Lent. Shuck off the fetters and fleshpots of Egypt and rise anew to life eternal. This road shall lead us to His Cross, and by the Cross He delivers all the world.

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