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One of the questions we have been asking in our post-pandemic secular world is “how important is our worship to us?” Perhaps we might word this “how do we make our worship important to us?”
The only way I can begin to look at this question is from my own experience. Over a decade ago, I served as an AmeriCorps member for City Year in Washington, D.C. For all the good City Year does, and for all the good I got to do with them, it is a secular organization. Faith is not something that empowers the work there. Yet Faith, from the moment Bishop Parsley laid his hands on me for Confirmation, is what has enriched my life. The power of my relationship with God, from a very young age, has kept me going.
As a City Year member, I knew I needed to make sure I kept attending regular Sunday worship. I knew I couldn’t let up. I knew the second I made an allowance for myself, it would be so easy not to go back to church again. I knew if I let that happen, my relationship with God would suffer, and more than anything I did not want that to happen.
Ironically, I had a very different experience in a religious community I took part with briefly around the same time. Part of the offering of this community was the act of regular prayer through the Daily Office services, versions of which can be found in our Prayer Book. The focus of our daily worship together was on perfection, making sure we got every aspect of our prayer in the service went smoothly. Doing so made it more difficult to see God in our worship. It took a long time, for me at least, to experience God in these forms of worship again.
While it is good for us to ask how our worship is important to us, it would be better to ask why our worship is important to us. That is the question Lent presents us with and which our readings look to answer for us today.
Whatever we are doing as part of our Faith, whether it is worship or fasting, the main topic for today, we are warned not to do this work just for ourselves. As Jesus tells us in the Gospel, during His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, if the point of our giving, our praying, and our fasting is for ourselves, then we will have received our reward because we have done just that, done them for ourselves. Isaiah too speaks to this sort of fasting, saying that making it about ourselves “will not make your voice heard on high.”
It is not that we aren’t called to some work; it just needs to be for our Lord. That is what this day is about, as we will hear shortly in the Invitation to the Observance of a Holy Lent. It is what we hear in Paul’s words to the Corinthians as he reminds them of all the work he and their other Christian leaders have done, sometimes suffered through, on their behalf. As Paul also says, this work isn’t done simply for the Corinthians. It is done so that they might see what God is working in them through their leaders’ ministry. The point isn’t the work, but the glorification of God through that work.
In the same way, Jesus reminds His listeners the importance of giving, praying, and fasting. These things are meant to be done not for ourselves, but to further our relationship with God. They are meant to bring us closer to our Lord, not to drive us further away.
The point of fasting, penitence even, isn’t so we feel guilty, or even that we make ourselves feel better at how guilty we are making ourselves feel. The point is to give us the opportunity to move back to God, maybe even for the first time.
This is what our reading from Isaiah is trying to tell us today. It is there that the Lord asks: “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? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke. To let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”
While one of the Two Great Commandments is to “love our neighbor as ourself”, “The first and great commandment” is to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. It is from our love of God, which comes first, that our love for our neighbor flows. So when we follow what Isaiah speaks to us, when we choose the fast of loosening “the bonds of injustice”, we are really making a fast that honors and shows our love for the Lord.
Whatever it is we are doing for our Lord, why we do what we do is of vital importance. If building our relationship with God isn’t at the core of what we are doing, then we will not benefit. Our relationship with God needs to be at the center of everything we do. That is the point of our Ash Wednesday worship today. Developing this relationship is really what our preparation throughout the Lenten Season is all about. It is ultimately the work of our Faith and our life together.
We are called to help others with their relationship with God as well. We must ask if our time together, including in fast and in worship, fuels our connection with God or muddles it. We have to ask about our impact on those who walk in our doors as well. If we are nurturing relationship with God, then we are on the best path, the Lenten path even. If not, then we won’t receive what we really need.
I hope you’ll take this time of Lent to think through why it is that your worship. I hope you will deepen your relationship with God this season. Most of all, I hope that come Eastertide, no matter how ready you may feel, that you come to a fuller understanding of the Love Christ Jesus has for you as well of the Gift of Grace He has set before you to bring you back to God and restore you to Life and fullness.