Preached at Croydon Minster, Liturgy of Ash Wednesday
‘For out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaks’ (Matthew 12.34).
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The
gospel reading we have just heard, read in the context of Ash Wednesday, calls
us to almsgiving, prayer and fasting, which, along with penitence, we know as
the traditional features of Lent.
And
it calls us to ponder deeply what we really treasure, because that will be a
sign of where our hearts truly lie.
This
is what acts of piety are, and what their outcome is meant to be: getting our
hearts right with God; righteousness.
And
this task of practicing our piety, our righteousness, is for the private
sphere. You could almost say Jesus calls for ‘piety distancing’.
For
those Christians given to be highly sociable, activist and extravert that is
really rather hard to get their heads around. Privacy sounds very
individualistic – me and my God - privacy is what they crave at out of the way
early morning services, isn’t it?
This
isn’t about a worship-style choice or temperament, but the heart of righteousness.
Piety,
as taught by Jesus, is unshowy, seeks no flattery or admiration from others but
rather focuses on the intensity of our relationship with our Maker and
Redeemer.
The
refrain throughout this passage is when you give alms (charitable giving), when
you pray, when you fast, do these things for ‘your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will
reward you’ (vv4, 6, 18)
We
have all been driven out of public spaces into the private realm by the
lockdown. That has been uncomfortable for so many people. People are finding it
hard to live with partners, family members, or households.
Or
perhaps it’s just they find it hard to be with themselves, whether living alone
or in company.
No
wonder there is such widespread poor mental and spiritual health, and not just
because of the pandemic.
The
hardest person to confront is yourself. The hardest place to enter is one’s own
heart.
Lent
is the time for ‘spiritual audit’ and a deep heart check-up.
What
in my faith has nourished me in the pandemic? Where have I found myself bereft?
Ask those questions, and if you want help with them, be bold, ask: that’s is
what I and your priests are here to offer, and there are other wise fellow
Christians you can speak to amongst our number. What are the ‘tools of the
spiritual life’ as St Benedict calls them, that you need now?
One
outcome of the pandemic must surely be for us to re-learn the disciplines - the
structures if you prefer - of our lives of prayer. (And that’s for now, not
just when Boris says it’s okay to mingle again).
Ultimately
in Lent we are invited to go deep into the chamber of our own hearts. It is an
invitation into what the mystics call the ‘interior life’. That is what the
action of penitence is all about: as tonight’s psalm says, ‘Make me a clean
heart, O God : and renew a right spirit within me’ (Psalm 51.11)
And
what do we find in our hearts? Perhaps it’s anger, bile, frustration, vitriol;
perhaps it’s faith, hope, love, endurance, gentleness. Perhaps it’s some of all
of those.
Lent
gives us grace and space to turn in and examine our hearts and the places we
don’t really want to go, because as Jesus says, later in St Matthew’s gospel,
‘For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Matthew 12.34). After
all, he says, the place where what you most value, what is most you and where
what you treasure is, it is there your heart will be also…
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