A Journey Toward the Light, a sermon by the Rev. Dr. William Seth Adams, Professor of Liturgics and Anglican Studies, during the Lutheran Service of Ash Wednesday (February 25, 2004) in Christ Chapel

Matthew 6.1-6, 16-20

Blessed be the Name of God

This day, this Ash Wednesday, we come to the predictable Lenten vocabulary, and we come to it more easily than perhaps at other times, or so it seems to me. As I read the charge that begins this service, I found words like “struggle” and “confess” quite familiar, almost as familiar as friends. “Grieve” and “judgment” and “sin,” words intimate to the disposition and mood of our hearts, words mournful and sorrowing. We are ripe for them. Almost hungry and therein lies a caution.

There have been times in my life when Lent has seemed a rather illusory thing, a phantom season through which I moved in a shadowy sort of way, not paying so very much attention. Instead, it was Mardi Gras that was “real,” its beads and rhythm, its extravagance and voluptuous character. Samba your way through the cupboards! Eat the fat! Surely it’s a foretaste of that al fresco meal on the mountain of the Lord, where we will drink wine on the lees and enjoy a feast of fat things! Mardi Gras…“Pork fat rules!” shouts Emeril. Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday would launch me into the Lenten air and I would float through the forty days, insensitive to their reality, all the while lusting after the joyful water and oil of Easter. But that’s not the case this time around.

The themes and necessities of Lent seem very familiar, intimate friends, a suit of clothing that fits. It’s likely not so much that we are more sinful, that we are more a burden to God than before — no, it’s just that the “feel” of Lent, at once spare and heavy, this “feel” feels right, almost welcomed. My guess is that you know what I’m talking about — be it death or capture or violence, my guess is that you know what I’m talking about.

This being so, it’s all the more necessary that we hear what Jesus says to us in the reading from Matthew. Our current mood can very easily seduce us into a morbid kind of self-interest and self-pity that will do us no good and could very easily annoy God — not at all a good thing.

Be careful about your piety, Jesus tells. Be careful. Be that piety a woeful thing or a joyful thing, be careful.

Some years ago now, I had the privilege of serving on the faculty of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi’s annual Conference on Liturgy and Music. I was joined by Judith Dodge and David Hurd, wonderfully accomplished Episcopal Church composers and musicians. Rarely have I had a more rewarding time as teacher and preacher. [From earlier experience in another place, I knew how rewarding I would find preaching in a community of musicians. They seemed to draw out of me things I didn’t know were there.]

For several years the Mississippi Conference had built its week of prayer and study around the church calendar, doing a season at a time, a season a summer so to speak. During the session I was there, the season was Holy Week. Through study and liturgy, we prayed our way through Holy Week — even though it was late summer in sticky Vicksburg, Mississippi. My job, so to say, my privilege was to preach the liturgies of Holy Week — Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Now, here is what was remarkable about this experience. For decades now, I have preached through Holy Week in some measure — as parish pastor and seminary teacher, I have spoken the words of Holy Week regularly — and with some care. But this experience was altogether unique. Here’s why I say that.

Although I had never been particularly conscious of it, whenever I had taught or preached through Holy Week, I knew that Easter was coming — I knew that the stuff of Holy Week was not all there was. And somehow or the other, knowing that had a bearing on what I said. I caught on to this fact in Vicksburg — where, that week in the summer, there was to be no Easter.

The way the scheme was built, during my session in Mississippi, we had Holy Week — but Easter was to come “next summer.” What this created was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life — and one that teaches me in the midst of our current situation.

As the preacher, I had to adopt the experience and the perspective of those first followers of Jesus, the ones like those on the Emmaus Road. I could not know more than they knew. For those few days, there was no “other side,” no “wait and see.” There was just the moment at hand. Whatever lay beyond the cross, if anything, the preacher simply could not know. For those few days, the preacher could not harbor a knowledge about the resurrection of Jesus; the preacher could only plead the mercy of God.

Can you understand how remarkable that was? I dare say, the sermons I preached in that community of prayer and study were some of the most difficult and most rewarding sermons I have ever written, written, as they were, “in the dark.” After the Good Friday service, someone came to me and said the sermon seemed very sad — and I agreed and said, it could not have been otherwise.

But then, of course, the Conference week ended and we emerged from our Holy Week cocoon to discover what we could then know for real and for sure — that Jesus was raised, that death had been overcome, that the intentions of God were finally unassailable. Our Holy Week got put back into its proper setting.

My conviction at the moment, as I said at the outset, is that the emotional color and theological texture of Lent suit us just fine now. The sackcloth and ashes of the mournful, the costume of the penitent — these come to hand quite readily. They invite us in. But, my sisters and brothers, listen to the counsel of Jesus, and be careful.

How blissfully easy it would be to let our sorrow or confusion feed on Lent, as if we were, of all people, the most to be pitied. It’s one thing for us to find ourselves, as I did in the Vicksburg summer, bereft of any sense of the future but that is not our situation. Lent invites us into a journey toward the light. It is not an invitation to enjoy the darkness. The invitation to take up the discipline of Lent — repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love — this invitation does not require that we ornament ourselves with sorrow.

Indeed, the admonition from Jesus that we read in our gospel today gives us quite a different requirement. Call it modesty or balance, call it humility or moderation — whatever we call it, it requires that we showforth our faithfulness, not our piety. Our commitment to the discipline of Lent is not to “show” except to God. It might be then, that during these 40 days, we would put away all our pious adornments, religious jewelry, crosses and the like, and simply be ourselves, willing to live our faith without announcement, committed to fulfilling our discipline without decoration. We could leave all that to the “religious” people.

If I take this rightly, it’s a timely word for me — not about the religious jewelry since I don’t wear such anyway — but about contenting myself with the ornaments of sorrow. I need to put them away. For me, then, Lent will be a mercy, if it aids me in doing that. Perhaps it will serve you in some similar fashion. I hope so.

Blessed may you be.

Pleased be the Name of God.