Practice, An Ash Wednesday Reflection
Today’s Scripture Reading
Practice
An Ash Wednesday Reflection
My mother paid for piano lessons for years and I never practiced. “You are wasting my money,” she would rightfully say. “Then stop paying for lessons I don’t want,” I would reply with a superior teenager tone. I don’t remember anything about the piano and it is my fault. I had the opportunity to learn and I squandered it because I wasn’t interested in it.
My daughter decided in the middle of last year to learn to play the piano. For Christmas, she asked for a keyboard, and she started taking lessons. All her choice. At 17, she decided this new desire was worth practicing. She drives herself to lessons, she pays the teacher, and she practices. Missing a couple of lessons in a row over the Christmas holiday frustrated her. I don’t hear her practice – she has a keyboard with headphones. She doesn’t tell me she practices, she just does. It is a part of her now. She has given time and resources to the practice and it has grown in importance to her.
Far too many times, I have heard our lesson for today used to admonish people for their faith practices. We like to throw the word hypocrite around and point out those who are being too flashy. We also like to point out when people are the opposite of flashy – when they don’t attend church or volunteer or help as much as we do. The tone is often one that says, “I care about God more than the person who doesn’t attend.” Words laced with resentment and anger. I’ve even heard it preached that if you make a show of these practices you will damn yourself to hell as the pastor quoted, “for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” The reward is not defined in the actual lesson though.
We seem obsessed with what others are doing and how we compare.
In today’s lesson, Jesus highlights three faith practices of his Jewish tradition – praying, almsgiving, and fasting. He isn’t inventing them and making them Christian practices, he is lifting them up as familiar and significant from his tradition. These are practices that the people are accustomed to engaging in, but it seems that some are making a show of their participation. When taken in context with other scriptures that fall before, between, and after this one, it seems that Jesus is admonishing the way of the Scribes and Pharisees who twist faith practices into works righteousness or a salvation scale by which they overshadow others.
Jesus has also just told his followers to “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” So, how do you and I reconcile these contradictions and hear the words of the Holy Spirit for us today?
I didn’t practice the piano without coercion because it wasn’t my goal, and I didn’t get anything out of it. But if I had practiced, whether it was my goal or not, I would have learned something – anything.
Jesus knows what we need.
We need spiritual practices that open us to God’s presence, not inflate our sense of self-importance. Practices that connect us to God’s people. Practices that teach us reliance on and trust in God. This takes – practice.
Of course, nothing we do is ever pure of heart or selfless – we are sinful humans – but when we pray with intentions to listen and share with God, practicing prayer stretches our roots deeper into the soil of God’s love. We begin to hear and see God in the world. This opens us to see God in our neighbors, including and especially our neighbors in need. When we can see the need for water, bread, safety, inclusion, and justice, we respond with alms and actions that serve our brothers and sisters who don’t share in our level of privilege.
We see. Time with God makes us see.
Our knowledge of God’s deep-rooted love for us opens us to believe in God’s deep-rooted love of others and the interconnectedness we share as brothers and sisters of the Divine. As we see our neighbors, we are led to acknowledge our privilege and excess. We are moved to recognize our dependence on our possessions that bring us comfort and ease while others sleep under bridges or fear violence because of how they identify, and so we fast. Not to be seen, but to not be seen. To repent and refrain from those things that separate us from God and our larger community and world.
As we enter into a time of Lent, a time in the church when we repent, when we turn back toward God, may we see it as a time of practice. A time to recognize our need for God in our waking and our sleeping.
May we practice listening for the Spirit’s breath.
May we practice seeing our neighbors as God sees them – as beloved children.
May we withdraw from those things in life that elevate us while diminishing others and our reliance on God.
May we practice.
From dust, we come, and to dust, we shall return.