Ash Wednesday 2018
In Proverbs we read:
A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.
A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.
And in Exodus:
Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
There are often two ways of looking at things, and in the Old Testament we find this a great deal – it is called parallelism. A modern example might be asking whether your glass is half empty or half full.
Lent is a time of fasting, of self-denial. It is a time when we remember Christ’s sacrifice, a time of prayer and penance, mirroring His 40 days in the wilderness.
But Isaiah shows us that God wants us to adopt another way of considering fasting: not self-denial but generosity to others. He is suggesting these two form a parallel. Is it a day only to humble yourself, He asks. Is it just about self-denial?
NO he says. No!- your fast is a time to “loosen the yoke of injustice”, to share with the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the naked. He says there is no point in denying yourself unless the fruit of that self-denial flows generously to others! The fasting and sackcloth and ashes bring no pleasure to God on their own. They must be accompanied by a generosity of spirit that finds its outworking in the lives of other people.
Surely these are actions we should always practise, aren’t they, and attitudes we should always hold dear? So what changes in Lent? If we are to mark it we should be accentuating these things, making them even more a part of our lives, making more of a point of being generous and just.
In the story of the woman caught in adultery from John’s Gospel (John 8:2-11) the evangelist paints a scene consisting almost entirely of men. Yes, there is the eponymous woman in the story, but she is alone. All the others in this scene are men. The teachers of the Law are men. The Pharisees are men. Those being taught in the temple courts are men. The one man who should be there isn’t. Where is her co-accused? Adultery takes two!
But the men aren’t interested in justice, or in the woman herself; they only want to trap Jesus. The woman is being used as a pawn in a bigger game. Everything here is to do with power, consideration for people is irrelevant, especially the least important ones in society, the ones Jesus usually championed. That’s why she is there, and that’s why she is alone. Jesus has to choose between justice and mercy.
We like to think things have completely changed. But it was only 100 years ago that all men over 21 got the vote here, and only 90 years that same right was given to women. My grandmother didn’t have the right to vote at 21 because she was a woman; my mother didn’t receive her degree from Cambridge University when she passed the Tripos Exams because she was a woman. Legal change has come slowly, but the attitudinal and cultural advances have been even slower. Sadly the church has often lagged behind wider society in this respect. Reading the passage from Isaiah alongside this one from John’s Gospel should be a wake-up call. We have no room for complacency.
Christ taught us a radical equality, reflected by Paul’s statement in the letter to the Galatian church:
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Perhaps we should add: neither privileged nor poor; native nor immigrant; home-owner nor homeless; young nor old; black nor white.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’”.
Martin Luther King spoke these words on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in 1963. Almost a lifetime ago.
Don’t even think about giving something up for Lent. We are called to do something much more difficult; to offer something more; to go the extra mile. To give, feed, clothe, cherish.
Mahatma Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
“Be the change you want to see in the world”.
February 2018
