Ash Wednesday: Not So Fast
Isaiah 58:1-12
The season of Lent, which begins today, is a time of self-examination during which we reckon with the two things we try most to avoid thinking about…our sinfulness and our mortality. Some of the ways we reckon with these two uncomfortable truths involve rituals like receiving ashes and practices such as fasting on certain days or giving up something for the entirety of Lent.
It’s just my own observation. I don’t have any data to back it up, but it seems to me that while fewer and fewer people in this country attend church regularly, those that do seem to have a growing enthusiasm for religious rituals and practices like receiving ashes and fasting.
Growing up Roman Catholic, receiving ashes and fasting during Lent came with the territory (along with no meat on Fridays and going to confession). Not so for Protestants. My mother did not share my father’s Catholic faith. She was a diehard Episcopalian, which as a Protestant is as close as you can be to Catholic without having a picture of the pope hanging in your dining room. Episcopalians even call their clergy priests! And yet I don’t recall my mother ever once receiving ashes.
Today, however, it’s not unusual to find Protestant clergy administering ashes on the go in public parks or parking lots and posting clever notices on church marquees like “Get your ash in church.” Believe me, I thought about it.
Maybe it’s because of my Catholic background, but I don’t mind the growing desire for rituals and practices, provided they’re properly understood. By that I mean as long as they are understood to be a means to an end—the end being a deeper relationship with Christ—and so long as they are not an end in themselves. When religious rituals and practices become ends unto themselves, when they are divorced from love of neighbor, they are at best self-indulgent and at worst a moral abomination.
What we see in this reading from Isaiah is a community whose rituals and practices are abhorrent to God because they are divorced from love of neighbor. The passage begins with the Lord instructing the prophet not to hold back but to make his voice heard:
Shout out; do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
God accuses the people of being rebellious. What exactly is the nature of their rebellion? How have they sinned? They’re going to church! They’re reading the Bible! They’re fasting and praying! They’re calling on the name of the Lord!
Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways…
they ask of me righteous judgments;
they want God on their side.
Day after day they seek me? They delight to know my ways? They ask of me righteous judgments? [TAKE GLASSES OFF] Am I reading this correctly? What’s the problem here? There seems to be something of a disconnect.
Yes, that’s precisely the problem. There is a disconnect between the religious rituals and practices of the people on the one hand and on the other their utter disregard for the plight of the poor and the afflicted. All their pious prayers and all their fastidious fasting doesn’t translate into love for their neighbors in need.
There’s another disconnect as well. From the people’s point of view, they can’t understand why God isn’t responding to their show of faith.
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Hey, God! Where are you? [KNOCK ON TABLE] Why are you not answering? Can’t you see that we’re fasting? Can’t you hear that we’re praying? Don’t you know all the ways that we’ve humbled ourselves? Just look how humble we are! There is no one more humble in all the Earth!
The people are operating under the assumption that all their prayers and practices will win God to their side. If we do these things, they think, then God will be for us, then God will do what we ask.
But it goes beyond that. Not only do the people want God on their side, they want God in their debt. We’ve spent all this time praying to you and fasting for you, and you haven’t even said “thank you”! Since we started this prayer meeting, did you ever once thank us? Their approach to God is not relational but transactional. We’ve done something for you, God, now you must do something for us. You owe us.
What we’re seeing here is a faith that has been reduced to empty ritual. And God is not honored by such ritual, even if it is done in God’s name. It may have the form of righteousness but it lacks the content of righteousness. The content of empty ritual is not love of God and neighbor but love of self.
How does God respond to this self-justifying religion? By saying, in no uncertain terms:
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day
and oppress all your workers…
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
I’m always amused that on Ash Wednesday, this day on which we engage in this ritual of receiving a mark of ash on our bodies, the Scripture readings all take issue with this kind of ritualistic display of repentance.
Then what? Should we not receive ashes? Does God hate religious rituals and practices? Should we dispense with them altogether? Not so fast. It’s more nuanced than that. God does not say “no” to fasting altogether but rather:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
A ritual fast disconnected from love of neighbor is just a diet.
I’ll be honest. It’s not easy for me to read these verses. In these days in which we as a nation are mercilessly cutting off aid to the world’s poor, these lines fall heavily upon our hearts. When the world’s richest man can unilaterally deny food to the world’s starving and malnourished and medicine to the sick, that is not just a headline but a history as old as the Bible. We are living in biblical times. The Old Testament no longer seems so old. We could do with the sound of the prophet’s voice right about now, a voice like a trumpet to wake the church from its slumber. Lord, have mercy!
I’m torn. This is the point where it’s tempting to say, “See, we need to do better. We need to try harder. We know what God wants, so let’s do it.” But that’s the law speaking. The irony amid this call to “break every yoke” is that the temptation to yoke ourselves back to the law is very real. In fact, at a superficial level, that does seem to be what God is saying. Do better, people. Try harder. Follow my commandments. Obey the law.
But what a terrible and terrifying message that would be, not because the law is bad but because we are weak. No matter how hard we try, we will never satisfy the demands of the law. Just like God’s people in this passage, whose piety is all just a big show, sin taints everything we do, even the things we think we are doing for God. A ritual fast disconnected from love of neighbor is just a diet. The most poetic prayer separated from mercy for the poor is but a clanging cymbal.
From our perspective, the love of God is inseparable from the love of neighbor. You can’t do the one without the other. You cannot love God without loving your neighbor who is made in God’s image. No amount of fasting and prayer will alter the irrefutable mathematics of that equation.
Then how do we resolve this dilemma? If the law condemns us, and no amount of prayer and fasting will win God to our side, then what are we to do?
I mean, we want God on our side, don’t we? It’s certainly better than the alternative.
The good news is that God is on our side, so much so that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. That is the core of our faith. The mercy of God is stronger than our rebellion. God is on our side not because of anything we’ve done but solely because God is merciful. And the One who is merciful promises to be with us, guiding us continually, satisfying our needs in parched places, and answering our cry for help by saying, “Here I am.”