Ash Wednesday - March 9, 2011

Ash Wednesday
The Our Father and the Sacrament
in the Passion of Christ
Matthew 6:5-14

Matthew 6:5-14 (ESV)

5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,

+INI+

Lenten Sermon Series: 

The Our Father and the Sacrament
in the Passion of Christ (Matthew 6:1-15)
 

based also from the writing:

"The New Testament in His Blood: 
A Study of the Holy Liturgy of the Christian Church" 

by the Rev. Dr. Burnell F. Eckardt Jr.

A Gottesstdienst Book

During the forty days of Lent, God’s baptized people cleanse their hearts through the discipline of Lent: repentance, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Lent is a time in which God’s people prepare with joy for the Paschal Feast (Easter). It is a time in which God renews His peoples zeal in faith and life.  It is a time in which we pray that we may be given the fullness of grace that belongs to the children of God.

And so in this time of repentance, prayer, and grace, we hear from the first of His teachings to the last, that Jesus Christ taught with specific instructions on the “How?” of receiving His grace.  When one of the disciples asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”(Luke 11:1) Jesus did not hesitate, He taught.  Jesus said, “When you pray, say, “Father hallowed by Your Name...”(Luke 11:2)  And the content of this prayer in the first teaching ties closely to His Words which He spoke on the night in which He was betrayed.  For in the Passover meal Christ speaks of the fulfillment of the Our Father prayer.  In fact Christ teaches the apostles, that Our Father has always been with them in Christ, they are hallowed by His Name and they, as are we, continue in His blessing each time they receive the cup of blessing that they bless in the participation in the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

And what of those first teachings of Jesus Christ?  We have heard Him say to His apostles, and to us, “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.”(v.5)  So, how is it that when we hear these words we hear nothing of the hypocrites, yet latch onto the words, “may be seen by others.”  For that is how it goes, ‘Aren’t we by the Ashes of this Wednesday trying to be seen by others?’  And truthfully the answer to that question is ‘yes’ but with two meanings.  The improper answer ‘yes’, is that in wanting to be seen by others you only do so as a result of piety.  What is piety or pietism?  It means that we would take the words of Christ and turn them into stringent Law.  It means that we receiving the ashes would only do so to show the world that we have met this stringent Law which we have perceived.  It means that we are trying interpret the words of Christ so that they may be accomplished by us, then throwing that completed task down before other people.  Look, see what I have done for Christ, surely you all will know that I have established my place before Him because of what I have done.  That is the role of the hypocrite, to cry out, ‘look at me, see what I have done.’

And proper ‘yes’ to being see with these ashes placed upon your forehead is that they are placed there in the knowledge of what we have not done but what Christ has done for us.  These ashes are placed and received in the knowledge of our complete and utter nothingness before God.  We cry out as did the saints and prophets before us.  We receive and display the ashes in the knowledge that Christ heads toward Jerusalem to die for our sins.  As Jeremiah has said, “And those pierced by the Lord on that day shall extend from one end of the earth to the other. They shall not be lamented, or gathered, or buried; they shall be dung on the surface of the ground. 34 “Wail, you shepherds, and cry out, and roll in ashes.”(Jer 25:33-34)

And as we look up from our lives of sin mired like heaps of dung, we recall that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself pierced the ones living in Chorazin and Bethsaida calling them to repentance with His own words as spoke that, “they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”(Mt 11:21)  So with ashes displayed we rightly gather to respond to Christ’s call to repentance.

We are taught by Christ to pray not by heaping, “up empty phrases as the Gentiles do.”(v. 7)  Yet the reality is that the words of prayer that men create in these days seem to begin all too often with, ‘Father we just want.’  And if that prayer were to stop only with those words then they would be succinct and accurate.  For we are at all times and in all places in need and want and it is good to acknowledge that before our God. But this is not the way in which God in Christ has taught us to pray, for He has told us when you pray say this, “Father, hallowed is your Name.”

But in today’s modern world of abstract prayer and worship, this old ‘Our Father’ is of course a ‘canned’ prayer, not extemporaneous, not from the heart, and just sheer repetition.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  For as Luther reminds us the beginning words, ‘Our Father’ remind us that we are tenderly invited “to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.”(SC)  God is our dear Father who has sent His dear Son Jesus Christ to lift us out of the muck and wallow of our lives.  So the ‘Our Father’ is not a man centered ‘we just want’ sort of prayer, it is more than that.  In fact, this prayer is so important that it is found in virtually every recorded ancient liturgy.  From the time of the Apostle’s when they met, they gathered and said this prayer, and they also broke bread.  Meaning they had Holy Communion every time they met. 

The church of all times and places has kept the ‘Our Father’ on her lips, returning thanks to God for what He has done.  It is therefore also noteworthy that this is one of two very specific instructions that Jesus Christ gave with regard to the ‘how to worship.’  The other is command is given in Christ’s Words of Institution when He said, ‘this do.’  According to Christ these two, the Our Father and the Sacrament of Communion then always belong together when the church meets for worship. “The Lord’s Prayer itself establishes the context in which the [Words of Insttution] are repeated also, in accordance with His command.  So at the most basic level, the format of our worship is not our creation, but it is by Christ’ directive.  Christ tells His disciples exactly what they are to do, and exactly what they are to say. Jesus is the great physician, He has written the prescription for the liturgy, the way in which we worship.

So this emphasis and connection between the Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Supper can not be made trivial, to do so would make Christ Himself trivial.  And the precision in Christ Word’s, their connection continues with every petition.  For in the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer we are told how God’s Name is to be hallowed and that is by placing God’s Name on His people in Holy Baptism. “God’s Name is hallowed when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it.”(SC) 

Jesus Himself prayed to His hallowed ‘Father’ often, three times in Gethsemane, in the warning to the disciples ready to fight at His betrayal, "Do you think I cannot now pray to My Father” and upon the cross, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

And in the Word’s of Institution we receive the hallowed Name of Christ.  For in the Holy Supper Christ declares that His Body and Blood, are given and shed for us, are given for us to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins.  Jesus is the hallowed Name of God, and we receive His blessing in the cup in which we drink, and by the participation in His body which we eat.

The blessings of the Lord’s Prayer and the Lord’s Supper are two bookend blessings.  Pray thus, Do this.  As we remember this night of Ash Wednesday with repentance marked on our foreheads, remember too that in your baptism the Name of Christ was also placed there on your forehead. 

Therefore repent.  Remember the ‘Our Father’ prayer which was always upon Christ’s lips.  Remember His Name given to you in Holy Baptism.  Remember the Ashes which stain your foreheads this night and with the marks ashes recall from whence you came, and to where you shall go.  For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Recall that we are the dust of this world are given life because of Christ’s journey from His Father to our world to the cross. 

The recollection of Christ’s passion has begun.  From Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, it is Lent. Pray, for Christ has prayed to His Father for you.  Receive the Sacrament, for Jesus went to the cross as His father willed Him to do this, for you.  It is the time of Lent, Jesus Christ is sacrificed by Our Father, in remembrance of Christ Our Father would do this, for you.  Amen.

+SDG+