Matth. 6:16-21. Ash Wednesday, Feb.17th, 1999.

I don’t know about you, but for me one of the very worst things about the public promotion of vice, whether homosexual or other, in the church of Jesus Christ, is that it brings out the legalist in me. In the face of libertinism I fall into the opposite distortion, in which the Christian stance is that of a finger-wagging schoolmarm, and our main message is “Naughty, naughty”, or “Touch not, taste not, handle not”. Don’t get me wrong: I am as sure as you are that Jesus did not teach the love of God, or hang on His cross, so that any one of us should live as we please. At the same time, He did not come to teach us new and burdensome rules, nor even primarily to reaffirm the old ones. He was concerned with how we live, but infinitely more with why we live as we live, that is with our interior life and motivation. He said to the Rich Young Ruler “You know the commandments”; but then He called him to do something which brought to light how far his heart was from wanting to obey.

So in today’s Gospel He is searching our hearts, as He alone is entitled to do. Sometimes we think that when we have put away gross sin, when our external righteousness has reached what we or our Christian grouping consider an acceptable level, we are now called to move on to cleaning up the lives of other people. Or more subtly, we now have discernment of what motivates other sinners, and are entitled to give them a word from the Lord about that. To judge and assess the motives of others is I believe quintessentially what He meant by “judging”, and this He called about the most spiritually dangerous thing we can do. He is asking us, with His commands here, to deal radically with the root of sin in our own personalities, our idolatry of ourselves and our divided hearts.

Our Gospel passage must have been used as an Ash Wednesday lection for many centuries. The immediate connection is fasting, first with the Lord’s forty-day fast which gives us our forty days of Lent, and then with the fasts with which the Church has imitated that. Quite early, as asceticism grew in influence, Christian married people began to abstain from sex-relations for those days, in order to devote themselves to prayer in accordance with I Cor. 7; I trust that all of you entitled to such relations seized the day, or the night, yesterday, for it’s your last chance for some while. North of the Alps the tradition was transmuted, food disciplines were developed more suitable to a cold climate, so that abstinence was from rich foods, and it is in this tradition that we stoke up on Shrove Tuesday. In the wealthiest and most fashionable parish in this Diocese I used sometimes to think that the only Lenten abstinence regularly practised, at the end of the skiing season, was from church. Some of us eat at the start, and go on eating, in spite of cars and warm houses, and could usefully both fast from food and walk more, so that there would be less legitimate adverse liberal comment on those pendulous evangelical tums. But whatever we do or don’t do, we may not exculpate ourselves by saying, “I never dream of showing how abstinent I am by failing to smile, shave, comb my hair or put on lipstick, and therefore I am obedient to the Lord’s word”; we can only make such a claim, when we no longer care at all to preach deep sermons, be so prayerful, toil in the church office or do other strenuous volunteering, lead worship finely, know lots of praise songs, remember all the Book of Common Prayer by heart, explain the Bible skilfully to others, be always at the parish prayer meeting, exercise special spectacular gifts, be so loving, or manifest anything else that is considered in our circle to be the mark of being really keen, AND be properly praised and petted for it, at least by other serious Christian people.

“When you fast (people who do that are very serious about their religion), do not let yourselves look melancholy, (as though serving God were a miserable thing) as the hypocrites (people who wear masks as professional actors) do: for they neglect their looks (‘See how surrendered I am, how I deprive myself for God’), so as to make it obvious to human beings that they are fasting (‘Let me gaze on myself reflected in your eyeballs’)”. Our Lord is warning us that parade of self, a posing self-consciousness in all we do, is natural to sinners. He is also saying that it is the occupational hazard of the ultra-religious in their own society.

“I tell you truly, they have got their reward.” If what I want is the warm glow of public approval, I can have it; but that’s all I’m going to get. Why is that so? Because it is characteristic of us that we cannot really concentrate on more than one person at a time, and we have to choose who that is. For the effect on the human audience, the public image, I needn’t even bother with the genuine fast. There is real irony here. If we do something designed to bring us closer to God, but with even half an eye to the image which we present, it will drive us further away. When we are thinking about impressing others with our earnestness, we are at our furthest from God, and while we are listening for their approving voices, we will not hear His.

“But you, when you fast”... Yes, the Lord does sometimes want me to give up what I like for Him. “Shampoo your head and wash your face.” This is joy, so why not look your best? “So that your fasting may be obvious, not to human beings, but to your Father in the secret place.” There is only one opinion of us that matters. We must choose which we prefer to have. “And your Father who sees in the secret place will reward you”. Not only is this the one opinion which counts, it is the only true opinion: God is the one who sees; He does not, like human beings, merely think He sees. In that secret place where there is nothing to separate us from Him, in joy, in sorrow, in bewilderment, self-doubt, penitence, triumph, He alone judges justly. When our heart condemns us, He knows all. He never misunderstands us, never flatters, never betrays our confidence. Moreover He is tender to our insecurity: there will be something in it for us, though it be long in coming. He will give us the desires of our heart, though He may first, perhaps over many years, change those desires.

How badly most of us need to wean ourselves off the good opinion of other Christian people! How comfortable we become, in our warm and comforting nexus of relationships, all leaning on one another like a rotten fence! Some eighteen months ago an individual told me with great vehemence that my only motive for preaching was to show off my knowledge; and for good measure that this whole parish was in retreat from me, and that if I thought that this was not entirely so it was because I just wouldn’t see it. This was a double assault, on the genuiness of my living for God, that is of my faith, and on the genuiness of my fellowship with others, that is of my love. For some days I could not move, I could scarcely crawl to the lectern to preach, I was so wounded, and as for the ‘retreat’, I asked myself with some bitterness how this could be the response to years of service, all the pastoral counselling, the sympathy, the care and leadership of every kind, which I had offered out of bodily sickness and an often sore heart. I even caught myself saying, “But Lord, how is it that these things have been said to me, of all people?”. Then I remembered the teaching about purity of motive which I heard when I was young, namely that if we waited for that before doing anything for God we should wait for ever; and after some tearful, sleepless nights and self-examination I concluded that though people’s approval and liking was nice, it was not necessary for my work. The work was not done to them, but to God for them, and I would not be stopped. The question in the face of such episodes is “Whom am I serving?”.

So I slowly gathered myself up again to meet the needs which presented themselves, whatever the parish thought of me. And I said to the Lord, because I am made of flesh and blood, “Well, thankyou for that, I wouldn’t have been without that chastening for the world; and you won’t do it to me again, will you?” But of course He did, because He still was not satisfied with me: again He called my motives in question. More recently a team was set up at Holy Trinity to do a particular task amongst us. I do not know why I was not invited to join it, and again I noted with some bitterness that almost everyone up to and including the pigeons that sit on the roof got a thankyou for their role in this work, but not this Turner or the other. I have asked myself radical questions. I have been forced to conclude that when I am not invited into some team of people doing work for God which I have been engaged in for a long time, the only damage is to my feelings of being affirmed and esteemed. But at my time of Christian life I do not need those feelings. Unless my exclusion cuts me off in some real way from doing my work for God, what practical difference does it make? To put the question more generally, if I cannot get ordained, as a man, or in some places as a woman, but I am not stopped by this fact from doing work to which God has called me, must I sit down and wait for some time which will possibly never come before I lift a finger? To be left out of public recognition is not at all the same thing as being left out of ministry.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth”: Laying up implies a lifetime of concerted effort at accumulation, dedicated acquisition. So many of my sentences begin “I must get…”, “When we’ve got…”, “How can I get…?”. After “Whom am I serving?” we have “For what am I labouring?” “Where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal”: too true they do. My best woollen suit (Oh what pain for such a sucker for colours and textures as me!) gets eaten, my precious slides get mildewed, my papers rot, my house is entered and irreplaceable things are taken... And to avoid all that I must think about mothkiller, a new roof, insurance, security... That is to say nothing of the decay of my teeth, my looks, my mind. Idolatry does not give us anything that lasts or is worth having. “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal”. This is secure investment, this is worth spending my life for. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be as well.” Your treasure is what your heart is wrapped around, what you are really religious about. Be careful, then, the Lord is saying, where you bestow your heart.

Recently I received a capital sum, on which because of delays I lost 10¢ per pound sterling in exchange in January and the same again in February, for a total of 8%. Again I have had to ask myself, as I complained mightily about these losses, what I was so upset about. What do I want the money for, why am I upset by a poor rate and fewer dollars? Because I now have less to give away? Who is the source of this sum, and of all wealth, in the first place? These are the kind of questions that I at least need to ask myself.

“Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise”. Really? Oh how we love our cosy reputations, how we love our nice things and the protection we find in them! How we dedicate ourselves to their accumulation! Wouldn’t these lines of Lewis as poet ring more true?

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through...

Twice in today’s Gospel the Lord says “Do not”. He could have told us baldly that the idolatry of human opinion, and of things however beautiful, were sin. But He is so merciful with us that He deals tenderly with our insecurity too. He stoops to explain what is best for us. He gives us reasons: He warns us off idolatry because it will hurt us even in this world. We were made for God. It will be misery for us to live torn into as many pieces as we have human beings to please. We are creatures intended to live for ever. It cannot be satisfying for us to have our hearts set on gifts which will not last as long as ourselves. But this is infinitely more than prudential advice: He is also saying, and this is the real point, that it is an offence to God, Who is to be worshipped because He is to be worshipped. Do not: insecurity is sin.

The Lord is saying that it is a question of what I really love, what I live and long for. That is my treasure. Ash Wednesday with its vivid memento mori is a poignant time for me, for just before it three years ago I saw what was left of that warm body out of which I came, my mother’s, vanish behind a curtain to be reduced to a little heap of grey bones and ash. My father died just after All Saints’ Day nearly twenty years ago. Is there anything left of them, that pair of imperfect but oh so significant Christian parents, are they still anywhere at all? Are they just two handfuls of grey stuff in the ground, the same as you and I may shortly be, if the world stands? Yes, that is all, unless they believed a true faith, and only if they believed it truly. Only if it was their joy to be alone with God in the secret place.

God wants me to serve Him with an undivided heart and to root out the sin of insecurity from its entanglement with all that I do. He wants to free this church from all those sordid little power-plays and the coldness towards need which are rooted in unacknowledged and unconfessed insecurity. At a deeper level still, He is determined to free each of us from our idolatry of our nice friends, our nice things, and behind those from our idolatry of self. He wants us to be able to sing without a blush, “Thou and thou only, first in my heart...” What the Lord could do, if, to quote John Wesley, He had here “fifty men who love nothing but God, and fear nothing but sin”! “It pleased the Lord to bruise him, He has put him to grief” was written of the one whose heart was never divided. My Father in heaven will wound me, and wound me again, because He is interested in people who will live only for Him, and I am not like that.

How then are we to change our motives? He is not asking us to change our own motives. Have you ever tried to do it? There are passions so strong that only God is stronger. Jesus our Lord, when He taught these things, knew that that is so. Our part is to be willing to be made willing. This willingness He will honour. So, because there can’t be love-triangles between Christian people, just about twenty-eight years ago I gave up, for ever in this world, a very dear friend, who was it seemed also still my suitor. Given grace to do this (and anyone who has done this kind of thing will know that it is harder by far to give up than to lose), there was pain where the plucked-out eye and the chopped-off right hand had been. I did not find that I could alter my own feelings: my part was to ask for the feelings which I did not need to be taken away out of my heart, and for those that I did need to be supplied instead. And it was done, as I was made willing. “Do you want to be made well?”

Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continually mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that, through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.