Year B
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
Psalm 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

As we grow up…  some things catch our attention…  some things make more of an impression on us than other things do…  form us in some way…  when I was almost a teenager…  I watched the 1937 version of the movie Lost Horizon…  it was a magical…  mystical story about life and hope…  like other Utopia or Shangri-La accounts…  it’s a Garden of Eden myth…  about a valley deep in the Himalayas…  where people live in harmony with each other…  and nature…  and don’t age…  or become ill…  or die…  unless of course…  they leave…  but the seed that movie planted within me…  was the hope of eventually living outside of that valley…  in harmony with each other…  and with God’s creation…  we might call it the Kingdom of Heaven…  and when we don’t…  or can’t…  is it because there’s sin…  is it because collectively…  we’ve missed God’s mark for us…  because as I read the Jewish scriptures…  God seems consistently…  far more concerned with Israel’s corporate sin… than with any one individual Israelite’s sin…

And so as we embark into Lent…  there’s a question I think must come before other questions…  are we tainted by Original Sin…  or have we been marked with Original Blessing…  is the glass half empty…  or half full…  or are we a little of both sinner and saint…  we don’t consider our children to be sinners when they make mistakes…  when they need to learn about themselves…  and their relationships with each other…   and with God…  when they need to learn about their environment…  and about how things work…  that fire is hot…  that they need help when they have trouble in school…  so how can we…  once we’ve become adults by any one of society’s standards…  how can we think that we’ve figured out life…  the universe… and everything…

I might be wrong…  but I when I think about how things could be…  when I think about everyone having enough food…  and healthcare…  and shelter and clothing…  and access to education…  to all the things that would support them in reaching their full potential…  whatever that may be…  when I think about the divine spark that God has planted at the center of our Being…  I’m reminded about that movie I saw…  but I don’t think we’re quite there yet…  and I have to wonder how much more global growing up we have to do…

Again…  does Ash Wednesday…  does today…  make a value judgement about our intrinsic worth…  or does it simply bring us unapologetically face-to-face with our mortality…  death is in the air this year in a new way…  and we’ve certainly had enough pandemic-related death to last a lifetime…  so many families and communities are experiencing deep pain because of the relatives and friends they have lost to this virus…  as of Monday…  there have been approximately 486,000 COVID-related deaths in the US…  and so I ask…  if we know that we’re going to die…  how do we reflect on our lives so far…  and how does that inform how we choose to live…  how does that inform the more than 35,000 decisions we make each day…  how does it inform our future discernment on decisions both great and small…

That’s the blessing of Lent…  it gives us a season dedicated to the self-examination and discernment about all the subtle motivations which help illumine why we do what we do…  and to ask ourselves…  maybe not out on the street corners like the Pharisees do…  but in the quiet of our rooms…  with the doors shut –– circumstances have certainly forced us into our rooms with the doors shut ––  to ask God simply and directly…  for whom do we do the things we do…  how selfless are we…  or how selfish…

In fact…  in the missing verses from today’s Gospel…  vv. 7-15…  Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord’s Prayer…  but in v. 7 he says…  When you are praying…  do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do…  in the Greek…  do not heap up empty phrases…  means…  do not prate…  on…  tediously…  do not…  babble on…  for your Father knows what you need before you ask him…  so do we pray more for God’s kingdom…  or more for our own…

Most of the prophets…  like Amos…  didn’t think too much of worship…  in ch. 5:22-23 he heard God say…  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings…  I will not accept them…  and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals…  I will not look upon…  take away from me the noise of your songs…  I will not listen to the melody of your harps…  but the prophet Joel believed that worship was grace-filled and beneficial…  he said…  return to the Lord… rend your hearts and not your clothing… and we rend our hearts by repenting…  by turning from our ways to God’s ways…  Joel called for the counter-cultural practice of confessing one’s own sins…  and not the sins of others…  even if we first must do it by ourselves…  in our room…  with the door shut…  but when we look outside of ourselves…  at the issues we’re facing in this country…  we lament the pandemic which sickens us…  the systemic racism which infects us…  the disconnect between political speech and action…  the environmental degradation we impose on God’s creation…  and the extreme economic disparity which cries out for a living wage…  we must also ask ourselves whether we support the legislators…  who support the policies…  and the laws…  which reflects as much as possible…  the Good News of the Gospel…  or do we rationalize why it’s OK to turn our faces away from them…  and from the people they might help…

In Matthew 26:11…  when Jesus says…  For you always have the poor with you…  he isn’t condoning poverty…  he’s reminding us of Deuteronomy 15’s message that God hates poverty…  and has commanded us to end poverty by forgiving debts…  has commanded us to restructure society around the needs of the poor…  not the rich…  but the poor…  and to abolish slavery…  though some people  are still kept in economic or social slavery by the legal inequalities or cultural practices we fail to abolish too…  but Deuteronomy 15 also says that because people will not follow those commandments…  there will always be the economically poor…  among you… 

In a few minutes…  I will read the Psalm that is typically chanted…  Psalm 51 expresses King David’s repentance and lamentation…  after the prophet Nathan called him up short for what he had done with Bathsheba…  and to her husband Uriah… perhaps you will hear it as an invitation to repent of those thoughts…  attitudes…  words…  or actions…  or inactions…  of your own…  and of which you lament…  and ask God to heal you…  for we are dust…  and to dust we shall return…