Ash Wednesday 26 February 2020  

Sermon given by Revd Pat Mann

It hardly seems five minutes since we were celebrating Christmas and Epiphany but the Nativity has been put in the cupboard for another year and here we are, finding ourselves in Lent.

The word “Lent” is from the Old English word Lencten which means Spring or Springtime and from the West Germanic word “LANGITINAZ” for long days or the lengthening of the days. Lent originally had nothing to do with the church season we now keep but the great pentitential season had always fallen in spring so the word lent became synonymous with the 40 days that the church keeps before Easter.

Spring was also traditionally associated with the “Spring Clean”. Many of us might remember our mothers or grandmothers as they made a special effort to clean the house.The lengthening of the days and the brighter daylight showing up the cobwebs and dirt that had accumulated in homes over the winter period and looking afresh at possessions.

Lent is the season for spiritual spring cleaning – for turning out what is no longer useful, cleaning up or replacing what has become dirty or drab, and generally putting our spiritual house in order.  It is a time to unload guilt and receive forgiveness, to ditch those moral habits which spoil our relationship with God and with others, to freshen up our religious habits if they have become stale and mechanical, and to renew our dedication to the service of God.

Lent is a time for repentance. The Greek word for repent literally means to rethink, to think again, to change one’s mind.
Lent is a time for some serious thinking. If our beliefs have got stuck in the traditions that we take for granted but don’t fully understand, lent is a good time to think them through, to ask questions or do some reading. It is a time to not be satisfied with the second hand but to reclaim what of who is God for us.

Our readings give us some food for thought in this process of spiritual spring cleaning.

Joel describes a corporate repentance. A gathering of the people and a sanctifying of the congregation. Faith is both a personal and a corporate thing. We each are a disciple but together we are members of the body of Christ. 

Together we are citizens of the world, whatever is spoken about personal freedoms to think and act, corporately we have a responsibility to live in the world as those who know that they are made and loved in the image of God.

With that comes a heavy responsibility as we are also complicit with some of the actions of all those who also live in the world. We all have a duty to think and help others think about issues such as the use of the earth’s resources and the oppression of those too poor or not sufficiently educated to speak for themselves. 

Part of our Lenten review, our re-pen-tence, should acknowledge who we are and how we live together.
But Matthew’s Gospel has the advice that our piety, not a popular word, but one that feels so much wider than just our prayer life but the whole of our relationship with God is to be put under scrutiny.  Matthew reminds us that spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting and almsgiving are between ourselves and God, not for us to make a show of but quietly to make a part of who we are.

Prayer and fasting and almsgiving are those things that are perhaps part of the inner review that we undertake in lent. And in doing so we come to see more clearly what is the treasure that we have. What is that which is dearest to us? For where our treasure is, there is our heart also.
A word of warning about fasting. It has become traditional for many of our Lenten disciplines to become about something that we are giving up; Alcohol or chocolate or social media. If we are to keep our spiritual disciplines with a cheerful face, with no outward sign of what is going on inside between ourselves and God, why would we choose a discipline that makes us grumpy or bad tempered and not a more kindly or and generous person. Why would that be any use?

True fasting is perhaps to live simply so that others might live. Easy and familiar words to say but how difficult to put into practice but how rewarding if they might bring us to some permanent change.

Lent is a time to think through making changes in our priorities and lifestyles, to turn our attention away from ourselves and towards God and others.
This is the real point of Lent. To come closer to God, to be a better disciple of Christ.

Morning Prayer this morning contained some beautiful words from what is known as the “Song of Manasseh”, and it had this to say: “And now I bend the knee of my heart before you”. Bending the knee of our heart to our God is difficult but only God and we can see the effort and the extent of the bend. For at the heart of Lent is our yearning to be closer to God and our prayer is that whatever we choose to do outwardly and inwardly it will be Christ centred and spirit filled.

When we come forward to receive the ash on our foreheads we are acknowledging that God is God and we are his wayward but beloved children and that we each in whatever way we can, resolve to do our best for God and for others in our keeping of a “Good Lent”.

Amen

With thanks to the resource “40 Days, Thinking about Lent” by Peter Dainty