A sermon preached by the Reverend Canon Dr. David Anderson on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025, at St. Jude’s Church.
Today’s readings begin with complaints. God calls his prophet Isaiah to raise his voice like a trumpet to call his people to attention and to hear his complaint. “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” (Isaiah 58:1).
Isaiah does indeed lift up his voice and points out that God recognizes that his people somewhere—perhaps very deep in their hearts—have a desire to hear God’s him and to seek his ways. So much so, that God knows that his people are complaining that God does not seem to hear them. So we learn, that God’s complaint, is a kind of counter-complaint. The people ask, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (v. 3). The people are complaining that their worship does not seem to be rising up to God. God seems to be deaf to them.
God’s answer to that complaint is that the people are going about their relationship with God in entirely the wrong way. “Look, says God, “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. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high” (vv. 3-4).
So God is raising his voice, having the prophet raise his voice to sound like a trumpet what worship it is that God desires. The worship God seeks is justice, loosing the bonds of oppression, feeding the hungry, caring for the homeless, clothing the naked, a caring for one another. And tucked into God’s message through the prophet is a hope. God will hear our prayers and answer our pleas for mercy.
And there's even more. The beginning of Lent is not merely a time for introspection, which could play neatly into the hands of our over-individualistic culture. Paul also tells us in our reading from 2 Corinthians that we, as the people of God, are called towards a renewal of relationship. Our service is not just surviving what evils come our way, but of addressing them with goodness: speaking the truth from our hearts, offering kindness to others, striving for righteousness whether we face honour or dishonour.
And that is the ultimate challenge of this Lent: to turn our hearts towards God by being true to who God made us to be.
In a moment, our liturgy for Ash Wednesday will call to keep a holy Lent with the following invitation you will hear from Sarah: “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Lord, to observe a holy Lent by self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and by reading and meditating on the word of God.”
Our self-examination will be a reflection upon our need for God and our need to seek forgiveness. Our penitence will only be the next step in that journey and our confession is the way we begin. Our prayers will be an opportunity to put down the baggage that gets in the way of who we really are. Our fasting will be about finding clarity and simplicity in the midst of our complex, materialistic world. The apostle Paul describes his own experience “as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Co 6:10). Our fasting invites us to experience where it seems as though we have nothing, and yet discovering that really we possess everything. Our practice of almsgiving—of our generous response towards the poor—shapes us so that we make room in our hearts for others and for God, so that we hold up a light in the darkness for God-given communities, friends, families, and the creation that we cherish.
So take this Lent as a discipline not so much of sorry self-deprecation. Live into the discipline of love that has been laid before us by Jesus. Over the coming weeks, we will be invited to follow him in this discipline, we will be challenged by it, and our world, if we let God in, might be turned inside out. But we may also find the peace and true freedom that the world cannot give or take away. And we may also discover and rediscover with our very hearts the deepest mystery of the Christian faith: that Christ, whom we follow, walks a path that leads beyond the cross. That even in the crucifixion sitting at Lent's end is a hope that God in Christ, the very source of life itself, rises out of the ashes.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. Isaiah 58:8-9
