February 14, 2024, What Is a Holy Lent?, Isaiah 58:1-12 and Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ February 14, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Today is the first day of Lent. Our liturgy for this day issues an invitation to us: “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

We’ve all lived through dozens of Lents in our lives; it comes around every year. But it’s always worthwhile to stop and think about things, especially the things of our faith, no matter how familiar they are. So I wanted to ask the question this evening, “What does it mean to observe a holy Lent?”

I grew up in the Roman Catholic church, so my understanding of Lent began from that perspective. As a little Catholic girl my impression of Lent was that “Lent is about giving up something I really like, because God is happiest with me when I am a little bit unhappy.” And the flip side of that coin is that “giving up something good makes me a holier person.” And to be fair, that seems to be the mentality of more than just little Catholic girls. Very often we seem to think people who are really holy are people who don’t indulge in too much pleasure.

In the past, Christians would sometimes wear a horrible, scratchy kind fabric next to their skin as a sign of penitence. They called it “mortification of the flesh,” and they imagined it would bring them closer to God. Episcopalian Christians aren’t so big on mortification, but we do fast, or at least we give up the nice parts of our meals during Lent, and we genuinely intend to please God (and maybe lose a little weight) by making our little sacrifices of meat or ice cream or candy.

But is that what Lent is about, really? How are we supposed to do Lent? The invitation mentions a lot of good and useful tools we can use to help us observe a holy Lent: self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting, self-denial, reading and meditating on the Bible. But what is the big picture? What is the goal of all those things?

1. I’d say one of the first and most obvious things is that it’s not a religion thing. God isn’t really interested in religion. In Amos chapter 5 God says,

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

And then God goes on:

But – here’s what I love, God says – let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

God isn’t looking for us to be religious people – he is looking for us to be like him, people who care about the things he cares about, things like justice, and righteousness.

2. The second thing, and one we should be very sure about, is that he doesn’t want us to be miserable.

“Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?

Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?”

He doesn’t want us to be miserable – he wants us to have compassion. He wants us to grieve when we see people in misery – because he does, too. He wants us to hate it when we see injustice – because he does, too. And not just to grieve and be angry, but he wants us to do what we can, whenever we can, to relieve misery and to oppose injustice.

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

And who is our kin? We know what Jesus says about that. It’s the kid across the street who doesn’t have a good coat in the middle of winter and the woman sitting alone in the hallway at the nursing home – it’s the people of Gaza, and it’s the people of Israel – it’s the black mother who is afraid to let her child walk to the store, and it’s the gay child who is afraid to tell their own family who they are – it’s the parent who has to choose between buying groceries and paying the electric bill, and it’s the immigrant who walked hundreds of miles to find a place of safety for their child. It’s our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world and it’s our brothers and sisters right next door.

3. And the third thing is, God doesn’t want us to make an outward show of worshiping him. Jesus tells us not to be like the hypocrites, by which he means the Pharisees. When we use the word hypocrite, we we mean someone who says one thing and does another. But in Jesus’s time the Greek word “hypocrite” was just the word for an actor. When we pray or fast or make our donations, who is our audience? If we want the admiration of the people around us, that’s what we get. End of story.

But if your audience is the Father, and only him, then you can always be sure that he sees you and you can always be sure that he hears you. “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you,” Jesus promises. You can be sure that no kindness, no sacrifice, not the least effort that you make, ever goes unseen by your Father: your Father, who is pleased with you; your Father, who delights in you.

God is not looking for a good performance. That should be good news to us. He just wants to be with you; he just wants to meet with you in the intimacy and the honesty of your heart.

Lent is not for show. And Lent is not for being miserable.

Lent is for doing justice. And Lent is for loving kindness. And Lent is for walking humbly, in the excellent company of our God.

That is how we observe a holy Lent. +