A Sermon for Ash Wednesday
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
This is a hypocrite's mask. It's black and smells of fire -- like ashes. (Go ahead, smell it.) The hypocrite puts it on so people will notice her. She flaunts even her sins and her dark side in order to make public her prayer of repentance and so display how humble and holy she really is.
But looking holy before others is not what God asks of us. In today's gospel, Jesus is pretty hard on the hypocrites, the ones who try so hard to look good. Their concern is about what others think of them. But it really doesn't have anything to do with others. The hypocrite's obsession is with himself or herself. Their treasure and their sin is their own self centeredness. "Look" Isaiah tells us "you serve your own interest on your fast day." And self-centeredness is black indeed. Black absorbs all the light around it into itself.
Remember you are dust. True self-examination (as distinct from self-centeredness) reveals not only that we all are smudged with that blackness, but also that we all have our masks. Its so easy to disguise ourselves as what we want others to see. It's easy to be a hypocrite because we want to be loved. We want to receive the "reward" of the love and approval of others. But the masks don't show who we really are. So the reward is hollow. If we wear a mask, people can only love the mask, not who we really are.
It's a mask. It's hollow. It isn't real. You can wear all the masks you like: sound a trumpet about your good works or stand at the street corner in public prayer, and people may love you for it, or at least love the mask; but remember that God sees through the masks.
Remember that you are dust. God sees the black hole of self centeredness. God sees the little smudges and mistakes of our daily lives. But God sees more than that: Your Father, who sees in secret, sees behind the dust and ashes of our lives. Behind all the masks, God sees the image of God's own beloved Son.
Although our lives are smudged and dirty, dust and ashes, when we turn to Jesus he clothes us in transfiguring baptismal white. In the acts of Jesus' life we see "the light that breaks forth like the dawn." This is the removing of the dark masks and the self-centered, hypocritical behavior. It is a kind of repentance, a turning from concern for ourselves toward concern for others. This behavior that Jesus models is the fast acceptable to God that Isaiah describes:
"to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover therm,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin."
Take off the mask and stop worrying about whether your own face is dirty. Follow Jesus and look at others with love, for "then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday" and your Father, who sees in secret, will rejoice.