The Ash Wednesday Reflection:
Please! Some Genuine Humility!
The scripture readings were:
Isaiah 58:1-2 and Matthew 6:1-8, 16-21
The reflection started this way:
Isaiah’s words are twenty-five hundred years old – and yet how they can sting! In the words we just heard, God accused the people of Jerusalem of poor motivations if not downright hypocrisy in their fasting, in their wearing sackcloth and covering themselves with ashes – and oh, how safe it is to read those words in the context of those people who lived so long ago – and then how unsettling it is to pause and wonder if they are appropriate for us to hear today.
We need to make sure on this Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of our Season of Lent, that we know what we are doing and why – and heaven forbid any of it be “for show!”