Ash Wednesday 2011

Ash Wednesday 2011 (Matthew 6:1-6;16-21) Beware of practicing your piety before men.

Jesus assumed that people would practice piety. Piety is a duty we owe God to act with compassion, respect and reverence. It encompasses loyalty and devotion to God, family and the poor.

Ancient people valued piety highly. Homer refers to Odysseus as “pious Odysseus” in the great poetic work The Odyssey. Modern translations of the Odyssey delete the word “pious”. Modern readers no longer understand or value piety.
Modern secular culture has rejected, devalued and corrupted the concept and the practice of piety. In secular culture piety is almost always linked with arrogance and hypocrisy.

In the ancient world and throughout much of human history piety was linked to humility and contrasted with hubris, fatal pride.

Acts of piety included attending worship at the Temple, reading and studying and memorizing scripture, making offerings to the synagogue, taking care of widows and orphans, giving alms to the poor. A man who did not honor God, support his family and help the poor was considered vain and prideful.

Piety acknowledges that God is the Creator. All things come from God. All creatures owe God a duty to live in accord with the principles of divine love and holiness. Ancient peoples did not trust those who failed to perform the basic acts of piety.
The prophets condemned those who used their time and wealth solely for their own narrow self interest. The prophetic call to repentance focused on the rejection of the call to worship and the tendency of the wealthy to steal from and oppress the poor.

Since piety was such a universal virtue and expectation, many people attempted to cheat. They wanted to perform the minimum requirements for the maximum personal and selfish benefit.

And so, the wealthy might hire a herald and a trumpeter to announce the intent of a wealthy man to go to the Temple to make an offering. Such behavior was a gross violation of a pious duty. It was an outward and prideful form of piety that lacked the inward disposition of humility and reverence.

Giving alms to the Temple or to the poor, fasting and praying all all good things, all acts of piety. The attitude from which people perform these acts determine the extent to which the act is an expression of piety or hubris (fatal pride.)
Jesus expected people to perform acts of piety. He warns that the sin nature we each struggle with as a result of the distortions in our mind, hear and will can easily distort the acts of piety our Heavenly Father encourages us to perform.

Jesus upholds the standard. He describes the way we can corrupt the fulfillment of the standard. Then, he gives us the solution. The solution is to focus on God.
Piety in all of its many forms is the way we show love for God and the way we offer love to God. If we diminish or remove God from the act we lose the meaning and purpose.

The secular world saw the abuse of piety and concluded the solution was to reject piety altogether. Jesus acknowledges the abuse but has a different solution. The solution Jesus offers is for us to make a real choice to live and move and have our being in communion with God.

Jesus offers us reunification with God the Father and then transformation in God the Holy Spirit.

From the place of communion piety recaptures its original purpose and restores the original blessing of divine love and holiness.

Practice piety. Offer your good works to God the Father in union with God the Son by the transforming presence of God the Holy Spirit. The reward is the original blessing of eternal holy unconditional love that makes all things new here and now in this life and in the life of the world to come. Amen.