Beware. . .

Matthew's section of the Sermon on the Mount chosen for Ash Wednesday has always troubled me.  Oh, I get it.  I am not as stupid as some might assume.  But is that the text we need to hear on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent?  “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 6:1)  Here we are plastering ashes in the shape of a cross on the forehead on the foreheads of God's people and Jesus is warning us against it -- or so it seems.  Certainly there is enough in Jesus' words to fuel those who do not like the practice.  Is practicing our righteousness or piety really a problem today?

I fear that piety and righteousness are exactly the things that are missing from Christianity today.  Even in Rome, not eating meat on Fridays, fasting, making confession, giving alms, the rosary, and a host of other historic practices that once were nonvenomous with being Roman Catholic are on the decline and have become remarkably absent from the faithful.  Lutherans have always been accused of having an invisible piety and seem to accept nearly everything in moderation -- perhaps even sin.  We have lacked some of the historic practices we inherited from Rome and in our haste to prove we were not Roman have distanced ourselves even from some of the things that Jesus commended and even Luther thought good.  If we fast has replaced when we fast and you could say the same about a host of other practices of our piety.  So do we need to hear words of warning against a public piety on Ash Wednesday?  I wonder if we need to hear the opposite.

It has become amazingly easy for us to separate what we believe about Jesus from what the Scriptures say about morality.  We live in such compartmentalized lives in which faith lives conveniently in a box away from want, desire, or much of everyday life.  Perhaps we need to hear something else from Jesus.  Maybe we need to hear Jesus call us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him.  Maybe we need to hear Jesus call us to hear and heed the voice of the Law and to honor, respect, and obey the order God established for our lives.  I am not sure we are as much in danger of believing our good works or piety saves us as much as we are in danger of lacking any real piety at all.  We no longer presume that the Bible has much to say about our choices and we presume that God is less the counter of good works than the senile old Santa who will give us everything in the end.  

The words of Jesus are not wrong.  Nobody but a fool say that (or a heretic).  The question I am raising is about what we need to hear now, at this point in the scheme of things.  Piety is not our problem.  Good works are not our problem.  Our problem remains connecting the faith we profess with our lips to every aspect of our lives.  We need to find a piety and some righteousness worthy of the faith we confess.  We need to rend our hearts, to be sure, but a little rending of our garments in our world of accommodation to desire in all its forms and a presumption that truth is only as big as our preference or judgment would not hurt.  We struggle to find a Christian lens to see the world, a Christian worldview worthy of the faith that is so easily on our lips.  We love to tell God how much we love Him but we struggle to let that love order our desires and our days.  

This Lent is almost over.  I know I am late.  But the whole of Lent is heralded by the readings of Ash Wednesday.  At least part of those words ought to be a reminder how important piety is to faith.  It can never pay the price for our salvation or contribute anything to our redemption but it can demonstrate to the world that we do not speak with words only but also with works that testify to those words.  Jesus warns us against doing the right things for the wrong reasons but we need to be encouraged to do the right things as well.