Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
18th of February 2024, ‘Ash Sunday’
Isaiah 58:1-12
Matthew 6:1-6 16-21
On Ash Wednesday both Nell and I participated in parts of a pilgrimage to map Gaza onto Melbourne, one of at least 85 pilgrimages in 12 countries. Collectively, a group of Christians walked the 35 kms from Gaza City to Rafah, the distance that so many Gazans have fled in a desperate and ultimately futile search for safety. I did about half of that, starting at St Monica’s College in Epping at 6.30 in the morning, then walking through Lalor, Thomastown, Reservoir, Preston, Thornbury, before ending at North Fitzroy. After working at home in the afternoon I rejoined the pilgrimage in its final stage to St Paul’s Cathedral for the Ash Wednesday Service.
The service at the Cathedral used the same readings that we heard today and, after a day of praying for Gaza, the final line from the reading from the Prophet Isaiah almost brought me to tears. The prophet tells the Israelites, ‘Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.’ Even if modern Israel were to stop its attack on Gaza today, displaced Gazans would have nowhere to which to return. Houses have been reduced to rubble, every university has been destroyed, schools and hospitals have been targeted, no mosque or church has been left undamaged. Even those Gazans who survive, and on the day we walked a European human rights group said that 36,671 Gazans, including 14,031 children, had been killed, have no ‘streets to live in’. Who will rebuild the ancient ruins, who will be called the repairer of the breach, if and when the bombing stops?
Today we are commemorating Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a day that reminds us that we are mortals who come from dust and who will one day return to dust. Ash Wednesday also tells us that as we live between dust and dust we constantly fall short and turn away from God, that none of us is without sin and without the need to return to God in repentance. The good news is that no matter how often we fall and fail, no matter how often we turn away, God waits with love for us to return. The even better news is that the Psalmist’s plea, that God will ‘in the secret place teach me wisdom,’ can be answered by the God who desires ‘truth in the inward being’. We can confidently ask: ‘create a clean heart in me, O God, put a new and right spirit within me,’ knowing that God is able to purge us with hyssop and wash us clean.
One of the elements of an Ash Wednesday service is the imposition of ashes, when our foreheads are marked as a visible sign of our repentance. We then enter the forty days of Lent, during which we often fast to remind ourselves that we cannot live by bread alone, that our relationship with God is more important than material possessions. (I have, as usual, given up chocolate, so I apologise in advance for any shortness of temper that may result.) Given these ancient Christian practices, ashing and fasting, it is fascinating that the lectionary readings the church hears on Ash Wednesday tell us that God prefers a contrite heart to a material sacrifice; that the fasting that God wants does not involve sackcloth, ashes and humility, but instead doing justice; and that if we are to do pious acts like fasting and praying and giving alms we are to do them quietly and in private so no one but God knows of them, rather than marking our pious acts on our faces.
True worship, according to Israel’s prophets, always includes justice. Without justice, no matter how carefully worshippers follow outward forms, it is meaningless. The people to whom the Prophet we call Third Isaiah is speaking might think that they delight to know God’s ways, but their righteousness is superficial. They engage in pious rituals, but oppress their workers and become involved in quarrelling and fighting, even violence. They do not share food with the hungry or house the homeless. They do not cover the naked. They close their eyes to those in the community who are in need, pretending that they are the responsibility of someone else. They are not fasting as the Lord chooses, they are not loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoke, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke. If the people of Israel were to do that, were to fast as the Lord demands, Isaiah tells them, then their light would break forth like the dawn and the Lord would listen to their prayers. As it is, all their careful rituals are meaningless.
It was this passage from the scroll of Isaiah that Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry. So it is unsurprising that he also taught his disciples not to be hypocrites in their religious practices. They are not to be ostentatious in their praying and fasting and giving of alms, in order that other people can see their virtue. Instead they are to do these things in secret, to store up ‘treasure in heaven’. Jesus is speaking in a culture of social honour and patronage, in which giving and receiving gifts, incurring or being relieved of debts, was done in public. There would be no point in giving alms if no one could see it and honour the giver; no point in praying or fasting if no one were there to remark on one’s piety. Jesus completely upends this honour-shame system; reminding his disciples that these practices should be done as part of loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves, and not to gain prestige.
The church has given us these readings on Ash Wednesday, when our foreheads are visibly marked with ash, and at the beginning of Lent, when we take up fasting and humbling ourselves, to remind us not to become proud of our humility. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it is not. It is devastatingly easy to take pride in our religion and our relationship with God and to imagine that we have all the answers. This is what the people that Third Isaiah was addressing seem to have done. They approached God with confidence, believing that they had done all that God asks of them, and wondering why God was not rewarding them: ‘Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’ These are not people who have deliberately turned their backs on God. They are religious but they are not righteous, and the prophet thunders at them: ‘Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.’ Seeking God and delighting to know God’s ways is not enough if injustice accompanies it.
It is hard to try to live righteous lives without becoming self-righteous. People who try to loose the bonds of injustice are often accused of being do-gooders, especially if they suggest that other people should join them in that work. No one likes people who claim that they are standing on higher moral ground. Today’s readings remind us to be careful of falling into the trap of believing that we are more righteous than others. To claim that is to be like the hypocrites who sound trumpets in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may be praised by others.
On the other hand, approaching God with a contrite heart, aware of all the things we have done wrong, does not mean that we cannot try to do right. We are dust and to dust we shall return, but we have much to do in between the two. We cannot wait until we are perfect ourselves to fast as God wants. While we may, in the words of today’s psalm, know our transgressions, while our sin may ever be before us, that should not stop us from doing what God wants. Centuries of prophecy, culminating in the message of Jesus, tell us exactly what it is that God wants: to loose the bonds of injustice and to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, to share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our houses; when we see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide ourselves from our own kin.
What does Ash Wednesday mean for our response to the situation in Israel and Gaza? Having pondered this throughout a day’s walk, these are the answers I have found. I must always remember that I am a human being, someone made from dust who will return to dust, a sinner who needs God’s abundant mercy to blot out my transgressions, and that the same is true of everyone involved in the Gazan conflict. I must not see any combatant as less than human, no matter what they have done; I must not give in to ‘the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil’. One of the reasons I went on the pilgrimage was in the hope that it would purge me of the incandescent rage I feel at the people who have murdered, or allowed the murder of, thousands of children. I was not purged of my anger, but I was reminded that the murderers are my fellow, sinful, human beings and that all of us need God’s grace.
Today’s readings also remind us that, even if we are all fellow sinners, God does not want us to accept injustice. We have been called to care for those in need and to loose the yoke of oppression. We are to offer our food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted. Currently more than eighty percent of world’s people assessed as being at high risk of mass starvation and death are in Gaza. This is an entirely human-created famine, and so humans can end it. We can support the organisations that work in Gaza, and we can ask our government to demand that Israel allow food relief into Gaza. We can also keep speaking about what is happening in Gaza, even as other people become bored with its tragedy. Jesus has told us not to sound a trumpet before us when we give alms, but the Prophet Isaiah said that when we speak about injustice we are to ‘Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!’ We are not to hold back when we can lend our voice to the voiceless.
I want to end with a prayer from Rev. Ashraf Tannous from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Beit Jala, just outside Bethlehem. His prayer, in which he invites us to join, is: ‘I pray that there will be enough people to shout and be the voice of the voiceless. I pray for mercy. I pray as Jesus said: blessed are the peacemakers because they will be called the children of God. I pray that the whole world would recognize us as Palestinians here. That we are the descendants of Jesus. We are the people of this land. I pray that peace may prevail. I pray that love may prevail. And I pray that people may feel our suffering and act accordingly.’
Throughout Lent, let us pray that peace and love prevail. Let us feel the suffering of the world and act accordingly. Amen.
Rev Doc Geek 
Surprise, all sides kill in the name of God, sadly, we all have different Gods. But fear not, your God will absolve you sins, so kill on.