Christianity seems like such a very tricky business.  . . . Christianity seems like such a very tricky business because part of the year we read the teachings of Jesus which declare God’s abiding love for us (and we talk about God’s unconditional love), . . . but then there are the other times . . . like today . . . when Jesus seems to talk about God as if He were an ill-disposed, omniscient crab: . . .

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them [we read on the first day of Lent]; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

What gives?  Who is our God?  A Father to embrace us, . . . or a celestial scorekeeper poised to disqualify us?

    Well, . . . who’s asking?  You see, the hardest thing about knowing Who God is . . . is coming to grips with the answer.  And that is what Jesus is getting at in this Gospel appointed for Ash Wednesday.  . . . If God is a loving Father, Jesus is saying, . . . then the object of our affections matters.

    If, for instance, we give alms so that we might attain to a certain level of self-satisfaction, . . . God has regard for our wishes!  Giving alms to be thought well of is the illustration Jesus uses; but it could just as well be the case of a fellow I knew quite a few years ago (may he rest in peace) who advocated tithing gifts of money to the Church because it was his experience that he got back more material benefits than he gave.  For him . . . tithing was a kind of capital investment venture.  . . . In either event -- in the example that Jesus gives us, or in the instance of the fellow I knew -- . . . in either event, the almsgiving serves an immediate purpose which has something other than God as its object of affection.  . . . It is not a response to God’s own generosity; . . . it is, instead, a mechanism of self-satisfaction.

    And Jesus asserts that the same may be said of prayer and fasting.  If prayer has some object other than the habitual oblation of one’s self to God; . . . if fasting has some object other than habitual simplicity for the sake of faithful almsgiving and prayer, . . . then why should God meddle in your business?

    The point Jesus is making in His discourse on piety is to say that if you believe that your happiness is contingent upon immediate self-gratification, then because God is your eternal Father Who loves you . . . His reverence for you is sufficiently profound that He will not disturb your happiness.  . . . Of course, when this mortal life has run its course and your eternal self must stand before the heavenly Father to be received into His household, . . . and you have a lifetime of self-gratification, . . . then it will be as two strangers staring at one another.  . . . Because you have not obligated yourself to God, . . . He shall have no obligation toward you.  . . . You already have your reward is the way that Jesus puts it.  . . . That is not celestial nastiness; . . . it is not conditional love.  . . . It is the righteousness of divine love.

    So, . . . the tricky thing about the Christian Life is not God’s variability.  . . . The tricky thing about the Christian Life is sufficiently understanding your own motives for practicing its disciplines.  . . . And this season of Lent is an opportunity to examine those very things.  . . . It is an opportunity to examine your motives and to achieve clarity as to the affectionate object of your Christian Life.

    Now the advice Saint Paul gives us about the object of Christian desire; . . . the advice Saint Paul gives us is that “the love of Christ controls us”; . . .

the love of Christ controls us, because . . . he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.  [And so, Saint Paul advises,] be reconciled to God . . . so that in [Christ] we might become the righteousness of God.

Now, at this point you might be tempted to ask, how can the love of Christ control us so that we manifest the righteousness of God to one another and all the hoard of self-preoccupied individuals by whom we are surrounded . . . when we, ourselves, are continually beset by the distracting clamour of all the daily irritations, obligations, and necessities of our own lives?  Well, you overcome them the old fashioned way; . . . you overcome the things that threaten to defeat your participation in the divine life . . . with fasting, with prayer, and with almsgiving.  You manifest the purity of Christ by becoming it; . . . you become the knowledge of the Divine; . . . you become the forbearance and kindness and love and truth of God; . . . you become these things by fasting . . . and by prayer . . . and by almsgiving.  . . . But the thing to pay attention to; . . . the reason why Jesus tells us about fasting and prayer and almsgiving . . . is so that we fast and pray and give alms with focus!  . . . You are not the object of your devotions.  The object of fasting or prayer is not so that you become a better person; . . . the object of giving alms is not to reap its rewards.  . . . The affectionate object of your fasting, prayer, and almsgiving is Jesus!  Jesus is the object of your devotions because He is your life.  . . . And so, it’s not enough to give up chocolate for Lent if it never brings you to Holy Week; . . . it is not enough to give up chocolate for Lent if your fast doesn’t participate in the reality that no one gave Jesus either food or water from the time of his arrest on Thursday evening . . . until a sponge, soaked in vinegar, was placed to His lips on Friday afternoon.  The fast of Jesus was a self-forgetful offering of Himself to the Father so that simply everyone might come to life, . . . and our fasting must honor the fast of Jesus . . . until we begin to love it.  . . . And it’s not enough to make heroic prayers to God if none of them bring you to Holy Week; . . . it is not enough to pray if your prayers don’t participate in the intercessions and forgiveness of Jesus as He suffocated on the Cross and suffered the agony of the nails that pierced Him.  The prayer of Jesus was a self-forgetful offering of Himself to the Father so that simply everyone might come to life, . . . and our prayers must honor the prayers of Jesus . . . until we begin to pray them.  … And it’s not enough to merely give alms if your gifts don’t bring you to Holy Week; . . . it is not enough to give alms if your gifts aren’t lavish enough to remind you of how Jesus was stripped naked at the Cross and all His possessions divided among His murderers before His very eyes.  Jesus gave Himself as a self-forgetful offering to the Father so that simply everyone might come to life, whether they deserved it or not, . . . and our giving must be the same.

    This is why The Book of Common Prayer reminds us that “the first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection”.  They observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection so that by fasting and prayer and almsgiving their Christian affections could achieve clarity; . . . so that their Christian Lives might become conformed to that of Jesus; . . . so that the love of Christ could control them and cause them to “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”  . . . And today, in the Name of Jesus, we undertake to do the same.