Year A, Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
I have
often heard the liturgy (in traditions such as the Episcopal Church) compared
to theater. We have a stage and
props. We have a script (the BCP). We even have stage directions which we call
rubrics. We have stage hands who make
sure everything is in the right place and make sure our costumes are out (the
Altar guild). We have a program with the
cast and the different acts. Finally we
have the actors, who are the acolytes, lay Eucharistic ministers choir, ushers,
greeters, members of the congregation, and finally the clergy. Many people have adverse reactions to this
analogy. It makes us sound
insincere. I admit I had the same
reaction initially. But maybe we should
not be so hard on the theatre. Perhaps
there are some parallels.
In the Gospel for today, Jesus
tells us how not to be like the hypocrites.
There were three things that Jews were expected to do: give alms to the
poor, pray, and fast. The problem wasn’t
that people were not doing those things.
They were, but they were doing them for the wrong reasons. When they gave alms, they would make sure
that everyone knew they were giving money to the poor. Giving lots of money provided a certain
status because not only did it mean that you had a lot of money to give, but
that you were exceptionally good and generous.
When people prayed, they would not only do it in a public place, but
they would make their prayers as long as possible, so as to appear more
pious. Finally, while the Jews only have
one day (the Day of Atonement) where fasting is necessary, many of the Jews
fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. They flaunted
their piety by parading around in public looking dismal and hungry. Sometimes they would even whiten their face to
make themselves look more pale and underfed.
They wanted everyone to know that they were the holy ones, they were the
ones who were close to God. While these
actions should have made them closer to God, they were too focused on
impressing their peers, so it didn’t really work.
All of this sounds pretty foolish
to us. And it is awfully easy to sit
back and judge these Pharisees. But
maybe we should not be so harsh on them.
Wait you say, aren’t we just agreeing with Jesus? Wasn’t Jesus the one
who told us not to be like them? Are we not justified in our disdain? It’s true, Jesus did warn us not too be like
the hypocrites. Yet it is not our job to
ferret out the hypocrites in our midst. Jesus
is telling us how we are supposed to act.
It also might be helpful to know what Jesus meant when he used the word
hypocrite. The literal translation of
hypocrite is actor. Jesus was calling
these people actors. That was his charge
against them.
A few years ago, I read a
fascinating book called, The Year of Living
Biblically. It was by a man who
spent a year living out every law of the Hebrew scriptures. He was agnostic and wanted to see if it was
possible to truly follow the Bible literally.
What I found most interesting was one of his conclusions. He said that he had previously thought that
you changed your mind first and then your actions changed as a result. However in his experience, his mind changed
as a result of his actions. For
instance, one of the laws in the Hebrew scriptures is to give prayers of
thanksgiving constantly. While these
prayers didn’t mean anything to him when he started, by the end he found that
he was more thankful as a result. The
whole time, he was merely following these laws to prove a point. He was just acting them all out. Yet those actions fundamentally changed his
heart.
Let’s face
it. Sometimes we don’t mean every word
we pray. Occasionally we come to church
when we do not want to be here. Sometimes we come, just so we can get ashes on
our forehead, for nostalgic reasons or so everyone knows that we went to church
today. Yet there is power in these
actions that is greater than any of us is aware. God is acting in us every moment and movement. Sure it would be better if we meant every
word and our minds never wandered while in prayer. But until we all reach that state of
perfection, perhaps acting isn’t so bad.
The important thing is that our hearts remain open to the actions of the
spirit, that even when we don’t want to pray because we really are not that
thankful, we still do it. And we do it
not because of what we want other people to see in us, but because of what we
see in God. Someday, we might just lose
ourselves in the action and realize that maybe it meant something all
along.
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