February 10, 2016 – Ash Wednesday
© 2016 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here.
Do you know what it’s
like to sit down at a piano lesson and play through the piece that you have
been working on for weeks and have your teacher look at you and say, “You
didn’t practice that a single time this week, did you?” Although I enjoyed
playing the piano, I hated practicing, and my instructor knew it. Thus, he knew
that there was no future in piano for me. It’s funny how, even though a week
passes by, you don’t get any better unless you practice.
Not everyone likes
practicing. In fact, hardly anyone does. Unless you’re doing something you
really love, practicing isn’t a lot of fun. Only when you’ve found your heart’s
true passion does practice seem less like a chore and more like a gift. Even
Foster, who comes to church six days a week to practice the organ and surely
would have given it up a long time ago if he didn’t really love it, has moments
when he doesn’t want to practice. We all do. You might remember Allen Iverson,
the former NBA phenom, who, when asked about his practice habits at a press
conference after the 76’ers were eliminated from the playoffs, replied over and
over (22 times, in fact), “We’re talking about practice, man. Not the
game—practice.” It turned out that he was inebriated during that interview, but
he still got an understanding chuckle from the press: we’re talking about
practice, man. If it’s hard to get an NBA all-star to enjoy hours of reps on
the practice court, imagine, then, how hard it is to get people in a busy and
demanding world to set aside time to practice their faith.
“Practice,” Jesus says.
Actually, he says, “Beware of practicing your piety before others,” but, when I
hear those words on Ash Wednesday, I am reminded that so much of what we do as
Christians depends upon practice. Think about all that Jesus says in this
gospel lesson: “Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before
you…But…do not [even] let your right hand know what your left hand is doing…Whenever
you pray, do not be like the hypocrites…[but] go into your room and shut the
door and pray to your Father who is in secret…And whenever you fast, do not
look dismal…But…put oil on your head and wash your face…” All of that takes
practice.
How do we get good at
those things? More importantly, how do we learn to enjoy them? How do we get
past the mundane repetition of showing up and saying our prayers and dropping a
check in the offering plate? How can the practice of our faith become life-giving—something
we’re passionate about? I think that Lent is the perfect time to discover how practicing
our piety with a new objective in mind can transform it from obligatory drudgery
to a joyful endeavor.
Yes, yes—I said “joyful.”
I know this is Lent, and I know that all of us think that this is supposed to
be a season of unbearable depression. (Just ask Foster.) It’s all about “lamenting
our wickedness” and saying that we’re sorry for our sins. But repentance takes
practice. And practice makes perfect. And perfect repentance is actually a very
joyful thing, indeed. Here’s what I mean.
If this is the first time
that you’ve come to church in a while, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that
today is terrible. In this service, we spend most of the time on our knees,
telling God that we’re sorry for what we’ve done (and even for what we haven’t
done). No one would fault you for thinking that, whoever that God fellow is, he’s
the kind of entity that insists that we, his wicked subjects, wallow in our own
misery and shame (or at that least pretend to for an hour or so). That’s no
surprise because that’s what most religious types tell us. It’s what the
secular world tells us, too. So-called Christians around the world tell us that
we are bad, and, if we want God to love us, we’d better say we’re sorry and
sound like we mean it. Society teaches us that people who do bad things should be
punished, and people who stay on the straight and narrow should be rewarded and
emulated. And the result is a terrible and inescapable trap that says that God
will only love you if you’re good and that, if you’re bad, you’d better make up
for it or else you’ll go to hell. But guess what? You can’t ever make up for
it. You can’t stay on the right path. You’ll always screw up again. And then
what—more misery? No, thank you.
As we prayed in the
opening collect, God hates nothing that he has made. I believe that with all of
my heart. I believe that each and every one of us is totally and completely and
limitlessly loved by God in ways we cannot even imagine. We are beloved. That’s
what Jesus is all about. Jesus came to say that even the worst sinners among us
are chosen by God to be his children—his sons and daughters. He shows the world
that, no matter how terrible you have been and no matter how terrible you will
be, God still loves you exactly the same. There is no sin, no wickedness, no
mistake that you could ever make that could change that. God’s love is
unbreakable. But that’s where today gets tricky.
If God loves us the same
no matter what, why do we bother falling on our knees and confessing to him
that we keep screwing it all up? Why do we fast? Why do we pray? Why do we
bother to come to church—on today, of all days? If God loves us whether we’re
sorry or not, why be sorry at all? Why? Because we need repentance. God doesn’t
need us to be sorry. (God doesn’t need anything.) But, if we are going to
appreciate the reality of his unconditional love, we cannot take it for
granted. We must, instead, plumb the depths of our moral failure so that we can
see just how bottomless God’s love really is. Repentance isn’t for God; it’s
for us. And discovering that truth takes practice.
The word repentance doesn’t
mean saying that you’re sorry. It means turning around. It means adopting a new
life. It means changing direction. And that takes practice. We do those things—almsgiving,
prayer, and fasting—not to make God love us but so that we will know God’s
love. Those things? Those habits? That’s repentance. Learning to do them the
way Jesus taught us—not for show but so that our hearts might conform to the unchangeable
truth of God’s unbreakable love—that takes practice. You can’t learn all of that
in one day. It takes time. It takes time for a life of faith to take hold in
our hearts. It takes practice to learn that we do all of this not to achieve
God’s love but to celebrate the love that he already has for us. Perfect repentance
takes practice, but the joy that come with it is totally worth it.
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