“Time for a Spiritual Audit”
     Joel 2: 12-17; Matthew 6: 1-6; 16-18
     February 21, 2010
     
      I want tell the story of the little boy who went to church with his parents and listened to the sermon. It was an Ash Wednesday service.  When they got home, he went to his room for a while, and then came to his mother. "Mom," he asked, "is it true what the preacher said, that we came from dust and to dust we shall return?"
The mom was amazed that her son had listened so well to the message. "Why, son, you really listened tonight. Yes, it is true that we came from dust and to dust we return." ??"Well," the little boy said, "you'd better come up and look under my bed. There's a whole lot of people coming and going!"?? :>)
     When I was a child, I had never heard of Ash Wednesday or Lent.  I grew up in the Southern Baptist church and we only celebrated Easter, no Ash Wednesday, or Lent time.  Though we were told many times that Jesus died for our sins, that Jesus died on the cross for us, there was no preparation for Holy Week and the celebration of the resurrection.
     Just as the seasons of the year make us more aware of what is coming next and how to prepare, so the seasons of the Christian calendar give meaning and purpose to our time.  As  Presbyterian Christian, I have truly appreciated the rhythm of the liturgical year.
     Ash Wednesday is one of the most somber days of our church year as Christians.  Ash Wednesday confronts us with our own mortality.  “You are dust and to dust you shall return,” we say as we smudge a cross on the foreheads of congregants.  Every time I do a funeral and am confronted with death, I think about the meaning and gift of the life we are celebrating, the meaning of my own life.  What am I doing to bring about God’s kingdom of love and peace – soon I will just be ashes!  
     Just two weeks ago Dr. Bill Lowrey, our Parish Associate  poured some of  the ashes of his beloved, Linda into the cold earth of our memorial garden.  A path had been dug through the snow and standing in a circle of love, we not only remembered the beauty of her life, but we committed her life back to God.  Each death reminds us of the precious gift of life.  It is a time we all think about the meaning of our own lives and what is meaningful and purposeful in our lives.  
     Lent is a valuable time, forty days to be exact, to focus. It is a time to slow down and engage in what Peter Gnomes calls a “spiritual audit,” to acknowledge the non-rational side of our beings and to deal with the feelings and cravings of the heart. Most of us would rather be doing something than thinking about our lives; we are into production, not reflection!  We are not inclined to do spiritual self-examination; that is the very reason we need this season of Lent.  And as community we need each other and we can encourage each other in this time.
     Lent is a time of spiritual practice for Christians as is every other season of the church year from Advent to Ordinary Time to Eastertide and Pentecost, but Lent mirrors the forty days and night Jesus was in the wilderness, a time of temptation and testing, a time to discern and define  his particular vocation, what God was calling him to do.  So Lent is a time to take a spiritual audit, what practices are going well and where do the accounts not quit match with intentions.  It is a time to discern and define what God is calling US to be and to do.
     We all know the importance of practice.  I don’t know about you but I have  thrilled at watching the Winter Olympics this week.   And the Olympics certainly highlight the importance of  for us.  The incredible amount of practice demanded by these athletes is astounding!  Their stories of forgoing some of the fun things other students may have in order to practice again and again is impressive. The excellence of their work is a joy to watch!
     Musicians know the importance of practice too.  Horowitz, the great pianist once said, “If I skip practice one day I know it. If I skip practice two days, the critics know it.  And if I skip practice three days, everybody knows it.”
     Ash Wednesday begins spring practice, if you will, for  us as Christians.  There are three primary ways that Jesus tells us in the scripture today that we get in shape: prayer, fasting and giving to the poor.  Spiritual health, like physical health is not a luxury but a necessity if we want to live fully!  And no one of us is so well off spiritually that we can afford to skip Lent!
     Let’s look briefly at the spiritual practices Jesus mentions in his sermon: prayer, fasting and giving to the poor.
Let me ask some questions to get you thinking in the moments we have together this morning.  And then I will share some stories of how the practices of prayer, fasting, and giving to the poor have worked for others.  
     Is there someone who is having a hard time, in pain that I need to pray for?
     Is there someone I need to forgive?
     Is there someone I need to ask forgiveness of?
     Of what do I need to fast?
     Do I need to fast from eating out so I can give some extra money for “Coins for Kenya?”
     Do I need to fast from busy-work or television in order to have time to study scripture or just be present to my spouse or children?
     Do I need to fast from shopping so I have time to volunteer and give to the poor through Hypothermia or Snacks & Backpacks?
     Do I need to fast from stubborness, anger, criticism in order to have a better relationship with family members?
     Do I need to fast from unhealthy food, or a certain amount of food, so I can be a healthier person physically and build a strong spiritual house?
     How is your spiritual practice?
     What do you need to do to get in shape or stay in shape?
     As you can see by the questions, spiritual practice, like the practice of golf, knitting or a musical instrument takes time.  Spiritual health is about a choice of how we use our time.
     Let’s first look at the practice of prayer.  Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian minister and professor, has a chapter on prayer in her new book, Altars in the World, that the staff and session are reading and discussing together. She says in this chapter “I am a failure at prayer.  When people ask me about my prayer life, I feel like a bulimic must feel when people ask about her favorite dish.  My mind scrambles for ways to hide my problem.”  Probably many of us can identify.  She mentions having many prayer books and many books on prayer.  She mentions trying many ways of prayer, from mantras to singing the Psalms. And she still feels a failure at prayer.
      Dr. Taylor comes to an important realization, which has been real to me for some time.  It is the title of her chapter on prayer: “The Practice of Being Present to God.” -- what she had learned about prayer from a couple of monks.  Prayer as the monk Brother Lawrence says in his little book by the same title is “practicing the presence of God.”  He says I have resolved to give myself wholly to God no matter what I am doing.  If my mind serves me right (I read the book many years ago) he mentions particularly practicing the presence of God while washing dishes.
      A similar thought is given by another monk, Brother David, who says that prayer is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing.i
     So I call you to look at your prayer life with this question: Am I practicing the presence of God?  Am I awake, alive to what God is doing in my life?
     Fasting is another practice of the spiritual life.  It is a good one to practice particularly during Lent because of the time constraint.  Fasting comes with the traditional Lent question of “What are you going to give up for Lent?”  Persons often think of this as a Roman Catholic question.  Now often this concept has been poo- poohed as old-fashion.  I think it needs to be re-claimed!  It is particularly relevant in an age of over-indulgence like ours!  There is a place of self sacrifice today.  Again looking at the example of the Olympic athletes; they sacrifice many other opportunities and things for the sake of physical excellence.  Lent is about the time we can speak of the practice of self-sacrifice.  We need to look at the value of what it means to give something up for Lent, and explaining it rightly. ?

     Here is another minister’s explanation of what happened to him with just one simple fasting task – giving up chocolate.
       Once you give up something, temptation comes at you from all angles. The year I gave up chocolate, I was attacked by chocolate. Ash Wednesday was barely ten hours old when I remembered that I had stashed some candy bars and some Oreos in the back of the cupboard. And immediately the thought came to mind: I had better eat them right now. If I wait forty days until Lent is over, they will be stale. Yes, I know I gave up chocolate, but I don't want to waste food – see the rationalization? (I was able to overcome this temptation when I realized that whether I threw that chocolate and those Oreo cookies out or whether I ate them, they were going to waste either way). ??I believe Satan enlists other people to help him tempt you. On the second Sunday of Lent in the year I gave up chocolate, one of my parishioners showed up at the door with a homemade German chocolate cake, my very favorite. I even encountered chocolate in the most unexpected places: I was getting my teeth cleaned and my dentist asked, "Do you want to try the new chocolate polish?"
Everything in my body rebels against giving something up. By 9 a.m. on the day after Ash Wednesday, the voice inside my head starts to plead, "I need that chocolate." Then later, "I deserve that chocolate." And finally, "I cannot live without chocolate!"
    ?? ?Now we are at a good place, because Lent is not about some personal "home improvement project" to make me a better person, i.e., one who can actually resist chocolate. Nor is it about making me a slimmer person. Oh, that we would all get to Good Friday with slimmer waistlines. Oh, that we would all get to the end of Lent in better health, with better diets, with better use of our grocery money. But that is not what giving up something is about.??The purpose of giving something up is not to deaden our senses, to pretend that we aren't hungry when we are; it's not to pretend that we don't want to take a whole tub of ice cream and shovel our way through the whole thing right now. The purpose is not to deny ourselves and deaden our senses.??Here is the secret of Lent: the purpose of giving something up is to sharpen our senses. It is to realize, "I am really hungry" – and to know what that feels like!  Or in my case, "I am dying for a cup of coffee. I'd give anything for a Snickers bar right now." And then to sit with it. To sit with the thirst, the hunger, the emptiness, the loneliness, and let it be real. To feel the pain, befriend it, and embrace it. And then the most important step: to invite God into that vacuum. "Oh, God, I'd love a cup of coffee this morning, but how much more so, oh God, do I need you! Come and fill me, fill me up, I am empty, Lord, and I need you!" The key is to become empty so that God can fill us up. ??
    When we pray and when we fast or when we give alms, give to the poor, we are practicing the presence of God and letting God fill us up!   Jesus lets us know in so many ways in his teaching that we are to preach good news to the poor – let me tell you that good news for the poor is a warm church to sleep in on a snowy night, it is money from the church Shepherd’s Fund for rent when you are in dire straights, it is being able to pick out some school clothes at ECHO for your children, it is having a truck to deliver food in the villages in Kenya.  Giving to the poor is about bringing God’s kingdom, it is the awareness that none of us is free until all of us are free, that none of us is satisfied until all of us are satisfied.  We are a part of all who God created in God’s own image, so we never tire in well doing, to help those in need.  As we bring health to others, it brings health to us!
    Jesus gives us warnings in the scripture today  not to pray for the sake of praise or for the pleasure of hearing others say what a devout person you are.  do not give alms for the sake of hearing others, praise your generosity.  Do not fast for the satisfaction of having others awestruck by your sacrifice.  This is what, Jesus says, hypocrites do.  Jesus shifts the focus from the act to the motivation.
    Jesus borrows the word hypocrite from the world of theater.  It is the Greek word for the actor who performs his part behind a mask.  We never know the true self of the actor until the play is over, for the actor plays his part behind a false image.
    Do not be like the hypocrites, Jesus says, acting a part, deceiving others, deceiving yourself.  The disciplines of Lent: prayer, fasting, giving to the poor are not to be practiced so others will think you are good and righteous, or so that YOU think you are good or righteous.  No, the spiritual practices are to “return us to God” as the prophet Joel says, return to God and to give God praise and glory! Only then do we have freedom.
    Jesus does not mention specifically here in the Sermon on the Mount two other practices – silence and study.  Yet we know that Jesus practiced them – it is obvious that he was  someone who knew his Torah; we hear that in all his teachings.  And Jesus practiced silence in time alone with God on many occasions.
    So this morning I want you to consider what practices you need to engage in to return more fully to God, to strengthen your relationship to God and others.  Therefore, I am going to ask that you take a few moments now to write on the sheet of paper you were given as you came into worship, a practice that you commit yourself to during these forty days of Lent.
     I am also going to ask you to think about someone in our church community who can be a spiritual partner during this time; who can pray with you and help hold you accountable to the practices you choose to do.
    Don’t over extend – just commit to one thing -- maybe the practice for you is to sit in silence for five minutes a day, totally present to God! OR reading the one devotion for the day with your spouse or spiritual friend.
    As Tessa plays a hymn let us make a commitment to God and ourselves this Lent.  Amen.
    
     
       
i Barbara Brown Taylor, Altars in the World, (Harper One: New York, 2009), pp. 176,178-179.