Readings: Isaiah 58.1–12; Psalm 51.1–18; Corinthians 5.20b – 6.10; Matthew 6.1–6, 16–21.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So are you giving something up for Lent?
It’s an old tradition isn’t it?
As small children we talked about giving up chocolate –
but to be honest we never had a lot of chocolate,
so there wasn’t much to give up!
And as an adult I have tried eating a bit less,
with limited success;
and I know a number of people
who refrain – or try to refrain –
from alcohol during Lent.
Of course all these things,
we are told,
are good for our health.
But Lent isn’t really about our health,
not our physical health anyway.
It’s not a sort of “dry January” for Christians.
So what is Lent for,
and what does Ash Wednesday mean?
Our service booklet tells us a little about the history –
that Lent perhaps originated
as a period of instruction
for those who were to be baptized at Easter.
It seems possible
– and we don’t really know –
it seems possible
that Easter was originally not always on a Sunday
but could fall on any day of the week.
And the day before Easter,
the eve of Easter, whatever day of the week it was,
was kept as an extra day of fasting.
But eventually the annual Easter
was fixed to the weekly celebration
of the resurrection each Sunday.
The fast before it was gradually extended,
becoming forty days
under the influence of the gospel account
of Jesus’s fast and temptation after his baptism,
a story we will hear next Sunday.
Now in a little while
we will all be invited
to begin Lent
by being marked with an ashen cross on our forehead.
And yet we have just heard
what Jesus has to say on the topic of fasting.
Let me read those words to you again …
whenever you fast, do not look dismal,
like the hypocrites,
for they disfigure their faces
so as to show others that they are fasting.
Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast,
put oil on your head and wash your face,
so that your fasting may be seen not by others
but by your Father who is in secret
“Put oil on your head and wash your face”
Jesus tells us –
and oil here is both a soap and a perfume,
cleansing and giving a pleasant fragrance.
Jesus, it seems to me,
doesn’t want us to parade our faith,
or at least, not this aspect of our faith.
What are we to make of this?
Well, first we should remember
that Jesus is a master of public speaking,
of oratory or rhetoric.
And one of his favourite rhetorical devices
is hyperbole – the art of exaggeration.
Jesus just seems to love to exaggerate for effect.
And we see that clearly
in the first part of today’s gospel reading.
Remember the bit where Jesus talked about
not letting “your left hand
know what your right hand is doing”?!
So we should always take into account
that Jesus is speaking
to a particular group of people
in a particular time and place,
and we cannot tell if he had a grin on his face
or the way in which he told a story.
And let’s also look for a moment
at our first reading this evening,
from the prophet Isaiah.
Perhaps it can give us a bit of a clue as well.
Here are a couple of verses
from the middle of that reading,
verses 6 and 7 from Isaiah chapter 58
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?
That really does give it to us pretty straight, doesn’t it?
Isaiah tells us
that the sort of fasting God wants
is to help those
who are caught up
in the injustice and unfairness of this world.
The hungry and homeless,
those without a stitch to their name.
And then there’s that bit at the end
about not hiding yourself from your own kin –
what on earth is that about?
It’s not, I think,
about ignoring the phone
when a relative you don’t want to speak to telephones.
Rather it refers to the system of obligations
that Israelite society placed on family members
to support each other in hard times.
Don’t find excuses,
God says through Isaiah,
don’t make excuses not to help them.
Well, Isaiah is not alone among the prophets in proclaiming
that this is what God wants the people of Israel to do.
And we see the same theme
carried directly through into Jesus’s ministry –
one reason why he was described
by his contemporaries
as a prophet.
For example,
we read in Luke’s gospel
the story of Jesus coming to Nazareth
at the start of his ministry
and reading the passage where Isaiah says
“[God] has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.”
And now we can see
the hypocrisy that Jesus refers to.
Jesus warns each one of us against hypocrisy –
the hypocrisy of making it look
as if we are being pious and holy,
but not actually doing
the things that Jesus
(along with the prophets)
reminds us that we should be doing.
So let us use these coming weeks of Lent
to review our daily life
and our Christian discipleship.
It’s not about giving up chocolate or going on a diet –
well maybe we should do those things anyway
and try and live more healthily,
more ethically and more responsibly.
But more than that
it is an opportunity for each one of us,
you and me,
to review our response
to the good news that Jesus proclaims,
the good news
that all of us are made in God’s image
and all of us are loved by God.
All of us –
not just you and me,
but all people across the world,
those we know and those we don’t know,
those we like and even those we don’t like,
whether individually or as groups.
All are made in God’s image
and are loved by God.
And our response to that
must be
to work for
the loosening of the bonds of injustice,
to work for
the care of the poor and hungry and the oppressed,
that those people too
may live lives made in the image of God
and the love of God.
May you have a holy and blessed Lent!
0 CommentsReadings: Isaiah 42.1–9; Psalm 29; Acts 10.34–43; Matthew 3.13–end.
Words from today’s gospel reading:
“Jesus came from Galilee
to John at the Jordan,
to be baptized by him.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When I was a bit younger,
we used to hear from time to time
about Billy Graham.
I’m sure many of you remember him too.
And for anyone who doesn’t,
he was a renowned American evangelist
from the 1950s through to the 90s.
And every few years
he would come to the UK
and hold rallies
in big arenas and stadiums,
and in the later years
technology meant
these could be simultaneously relayed
to smaller, local venues.
Perhaps you know someone
who attended one of these rallies –
maybe you even went to one yourself.
And Billy Graham
stood in a long line of “revivalist” meetings,
encouraging the young –
and the not so young –
to commit their lives to God.
There was a big revival
at the start of the 20th century,
largely in the USA,
which became the Pentecostal movement.
And a century earlier
revivalism had swept through
the villages and communities of Wales,
leading to a multiplicity of nonconformist chapels
throughout the country.
And we can look further back
to Methodism in the early 18th century
and back before that to earlier revivals.
And I wonder whether we can see
the ministry of John the Baptist in this same light.
There he stands
on the banks and in the shallows
of the River Jordan,
(the arena of his day perhaps?)
and the crowds come out
to hear him preach.
“All Jerusalem”, we are told.
And then instead of an “altar call”,
those who had heard his message
and wanted to be part of it
were dunked in the river water
as a sign that their sin was washed away
and they were beginning afresh.
John’s message
was that people needed to repent
and live a godly life
because judgement was coming,
indeed it would arrive,
he seems to have thought,
very soon.
And into this revivalist meeting comes … Jesus.
Now I want to make three points this morning,
and the first of these points is about – Jesus.
Because the presence of Jesus
here
with John the Baptist
gives the gospel writers
some pause for thought.
You see,
baptism was a sign
of repentance for sins committed,
and yet …
and yet
we believe Jesus was without sin.
So why was Jesus baptized?
In this morning’s reading
we can see
a bit of the struggle with this question.
In Matthew’s account
we heard Jesus and John
debating the issue –
and we can easily imagine
that these are the sort of arguments
that must have been debated
in the early years of the Christian Church.
But we also have to take into account
what is reported after the baptism.
Matthew tells us that
“just as [Jesus] came up from the water,
suddenly the heavens were opened to him
and he saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove and alighting on him.“And a voice from heaven said,
‘This is my Son, the Beloved,
with whom I am well pleased.’ ”
If we read carefully,
we see that Matthew tells us
that it was Jesus himself
who saw the heavens open.
If we were to put this
in the language we would use about anyone else,
we might perhaps say
that this was a profound religious experience.
It had (as the theologian Joe Cassidy wrote)
“all the hallmarks of a powerful conversion experience,
a real turning-point”.
It was the moment when,
perhaps with hindsight,
Jesus recognised God’s special call to him,
the special relationship of a son to his father.
If indeed things happened something like this,
then Jesus must have subsequently
told others of his experience –
how he had been affirmed
in the ministry he was about to undertake –
that ministry
as a wandering preacher and teacher and healer
that would ultimately lead to Jerusalem
and to the Cross.
And for my part
I find the humanity of Jesus
profoundly meaningful.
But each of you
will have to come to your own conclusions
about how plausible this is.
And the second thing I want to say is about – us.
We too – nearly all of us here I imagine –
have been baptized.
For many of us
that happened when we were tiny infants.
It’s an event we are unable to remember.
For others,
being baptized was a deliberate decision
we made when we were older.
(And maybe – one or two of you
have not yet been baptized,
or perhaps you are considering being baptized.)
Well, today is an opportunity for us
to think about baptism,
to think about our own baptism
(or perhaps to think about
the possibility of our own baptism).
So one of the things
today’s gospel reading tells us
is that baptism is something
we share with Jesus.
In baptism we are incorporated into Jesus;
incorporated with Jesus
into the life of the Christian Church –
all those people who down the ages
have tried to follow the teaching of Jesus.
All those people who in our own time,
and in our own lives,
have tried to follow the teaching of Jesus.
Now in a few moments
we will take some time
to remember our own baptisms.
The water of baptism is life-giving
and brings refreshment.
But we shall also remember
that we don’t always live up to the promises we made
(or that were made on our behalf)
at our baptisms.
And yet the water of baptism
washes away our wrong-doings.
Through the water of baptism we are,
as I said, united with Jesus.
Through the water of baptism
we are given life –
new life in God’s kingdom,
new life where we are called
to share God’s love with the world:
sharing our food with the hungry,
and our houses with the homeless,
sharing our hope with those who are in despair,
sharing forgiveness and reconciliation
with those who have wronged us.
This is the life that our baptism inaugurates us
– each one of us – into.
And that brings me to my third point, my final point.
The story we have heard today
about Jesus’s baptism
marks the start of the story
of the adult Jesus.
Yes, we have heard over the last few weeks
the story of Jesus’s birth and the coming of the Magi,
and those passages form
a sort of prologue or prequel
to the rest of Matthew’s gospel.
But today’s reading is where the action starts.
It begins with the crowds
coming to see John the Baptist:
they hear him and many of them are baptized.
That is how the gospel,
the good news about Jesus,
begins,
with John baptizing and making disciples.
Now baptism is not mentioned again in the gospel.
Not until the very end.
We have to turn
to the very last three verses
of Matthew’s gospel,
and there we find that it ends
with a passage that has some parallels
with this beginning.
At the end of Matthew’s gospel,
Jesus tells his followers
to go out …
and preach to the whole world
and to baptize all people,
to teach everyone about God’s love.
And that is our mission.
To give people
the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus,
the good news of the kingdom of God
where those in need are blessed.
That is our mission.
To give people the opportunity
to have a religious experience
and to turn their lives around.
We ourselves always need to be open to this,
and we ourselves can sometimes be
the person who helps someone else
– a family member, a neighbour, even a stranger –
to come to that moment in their own life.
And when we do this
we are strengthened by the promise
with which Matthew ends his book:
“Remember,”
Jesus said,
“I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
[pause]
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
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