Since no camera was available at this venue, the text of the message follows.

Intro: Good evening: I bring you greetings from the Church on Eastland in Warren – a congregation who knows God is up to something and is doing its best to position itself to join in with what God is doing.

Tonight, as we begin our series of Lenten services, we are likely thinking about what we are to abstain from as we prepare for the remembrance and celebration of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So tonight, via the Sermon on the Mount, let’s look at Jesus’ approach to three aspects of Christian piety: giving to the poor, prayer and fasting.

Read from Matthew 6:1-18.

Part 1: Regularity

The first thing we can take note of in Matthew 6 is something that Jesus doesn’t state explicitly: He considers giving to the poor, prayer and fasting all to be normal, regular parts of the lifestyle of a disciple. We tend to focus on giving to the poor at Thanksgiving and leading up to Christmas, and on fasting during Lent, while only prayer have we made a regular part of our rhythms of Christian life. So Jesus challenges us, through the very structure of the Sermon itself, to make all three a regular part of our Christian life. Taking this seriously implies that we will make giving to the poor, both individually and congregationally, as normal as breathing. Moreover, it implies that we will practice fasting in ways that allow us to do so healthfully across the whole of the year, not merely for 6 out of 52 weeks.

Part 2: Reward

The second thing we can note is the concept of “reward.” We as Christians rightly shy away from any notion that our good deeds will “get us in” to heaven, since it is by grace we have been saved, through faith, and this not of ourselves, it is the gift of God – not the result of our own efforts, that no one may boast. Nevertheless, here, as elsewhere, the New Testament talks about our reward as being located “in heaven,” and given by our Father. Jesus presumes that his audience wants a reward, a payoff or a wage from their efforts in piety, and, as he does elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount, unapologetically tells his followers that there will be a reward in heaven for those who live as a prophetic people, focused on the Kingdom perspective of the Father, in the midst of a society focused on their own ends.

So the notion that we should desire a reward for our giving to the poor, our efforts in prayer and in fasting is not something Jesus challenges in the least – in fact, he presumes it. But the question is where that reward should come from. Do we want that reward to come from people – presumably the same people who “persecute us, and falsely say all sorts of evil against us because of Jesus”? Do we want our reward to be in fame, power or cold hard cash, any or all of which could be meaningless when dramatic political and social changes described by Jesus as a part of the fullness of the Kingdom come about? Or do we want our reward to come from our Father in Heaven, who is bringing about those radical changes that will set aside the corrupted structures of this present evil age and usher us in to the age to come? The reward, the payoff, the wage that will truly pay off, Jesus says, and be worth something in the long run, will be from our Heavenly Father, not the people around us.

Part 3: Audience and the Practice of our Piety

So this passage challenges us in the way we practice our piety to make our Heavenly Father our sole audience and the true provider of our reward. So when we give to the poor, let’s not look for the oversized check with the handshakes while the cameras roll. Instead, like true children of our Heavenly Father, let’s just throw ourselves into caring for the poor, and say, “Look God, no hands!” Let’s let others talk about our generosity, if they even find out.

And when we pray, do we have to make it an issue of public policy? Perhaps we pray in schools or at public events anyway – but silently or off to the side, so no one has to know. Who knows? Maybe later on down the road someone will actually INVITE us to pray in those settings, rather than having to elbow our way in to create a scene. (And yes, I suspect some of you are pretty ticked with me right now for saying all of this. I’m just trying to be faithful to the text.)

And when we pray, we don’t have to manipulate or bribe God like he’s some mindless bureaucrat: he’s our Heavenly Father, whom we desire to honor and glorify, whose will we desire to do, who desires to give us good things, including provision for our daily needs, whom we owe a whole lot, thus whom we ask to forgive us in the same way we forgive those who owe us something (blessing or curse here, right?), and whom we ask to not bring us in to a time of testing and trial like Israel had in the desert, so that God swore they would never enter his rest, but we ask him to deliver us from the evildoers around us – in particular that great Evildoer, the Devil. Praying like that, we will see the completion of our Exile and the fulfillment of the Kingdom in our very lives.

Finally, when we fast, we do so quietly. But I suppose we just need to do it. Some of the earliest Christians fasted (evidently, year-round) on every Wednesday and Friday. Maybe we don’t start off that frequently, but we find ways of integrating it into our lives throughout the year. And we don’t do it to make a statement about how this society is going down the toilet so we need to turn back to God: that may very well be true, but how attractive does that really sound to those swirling around in the bowl? My experience is that as we fast, God is able to start working on all the desires and issues that we have in our lives that we medicate with consumption, food or otherwise. And that could be a very healthy area of growth for us, personally.

Conclusion:

So this Lent, instead of developing Lenten disciplines that cause us to want to be 6 weeks and out, let’s find ways to fast, pray and give to the poor that we can do year-round, in a manner that makes God our sole audience as we receive the reward we rightly deserve for our good deeds. Let us do so without fanfare – a sort of “fastaholics anonymous” where, in theory, no one knows that we’re in the club, but they can see the positive life transformation and inquire as to what God has done in our lives. Amen.