+ Ash Wednesday – March 6, 2019 +
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
Joel 2:12-19; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let’s be honest. Jesus’ words are a bit strange. In a fast-food, have it your way, 24-hour drive through, value meal, supersize me, Uber-eats world, Jesus’ words about fasting sound strange.
Prayer – ok. We get that. Jesus instructs us to pray and promises the Father hears us and answers us as a dear father care for his own dear children.
And giving to the poor – we understand that too. We give for the work of the Gospel here in our congregation. We give to missions, charity, and other ways to help the poor and needy.
But Jesus’ words about fasting sound rather strange and foreign to our ears.
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
What are we to make of this? We could toss it out like moldy left overs. Or we could ignore them like our least favorite vegetables. But that won’t do of course. Like his disciples, Jesus calls us to chew on these words and wrestle with His teaching here in Matthew 6. What does this mean?
Jesus’ words sound a bit strange to us because when our stomach growls, we feed it. When we’re thirsty, we get a drink. When we need something, we go to Amazon and it shows up on our porch tomorrow.
And that seems to be one of the things Jesus is teaching us and his disciples here. To fast is to abstain from something. It’s a physical discipline of our desires and our bodies. It’s a denial of ourselves. People fast for many reasons, but Jesus teaches us about fasting to remind us that what really fills the emptiness in our lives isn’t food. What really fills the emptiness in our lives is God’s Word.
This is why Jesus teaches his disciples that when they are fasting – just as when they pray or give money – they are not to do it like the Pharisees. Not for the attention. Not for selfish gain. Not to show off for our friends or impress God. But as a reminder that Jesus alone fills our lives with His forgiveness, righteousness, and salvation.
I don’t know about you, but Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 hit me like a gut-punch. His teaching on fasting reminds me just how much of a failure I am at hearing and following Jesus’ teaching on every other part of life. I don’t perfectly deny myself. I don’t pray as often as I should. And I’m not nearly as generous to others as he is gracious to me. I have not loved the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and mind; nor have I loved my neighbor as myself. Jesus words reveal our emptiness. The emptiness of our sin.
St. Augustine knew this well when he wrote, “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until we find our rest in Thee.”
That gaping hole in our hearts can only be filled with one thing, or rather, by one man. “Behold the man!”; Jesus, the God-man. As Pontius Pilate trotted out before the jeering crowds a flogged and bloody Jesus wearing a twisted crown designed to inflict suffering and a faux-royal robe intended to invite ridicule, he preached an unintentional, yet profound, sermon: “Behold the man!” (John 19:5). Today, and throughout this Lenten season, that’s what we’ll do. “Behold the man!”
In Jesus, God is man. The Word has become flesh. Like you. God is your Brother. The One begotten of the Father from all eternity is now the One born of the Virgin Mary. He is our Lord, Yet He is like us. He has skin and bones, blood vessels and lymph nodes, teeth and hair, heart and lungs, blood and saliva, hands, feet, eyes, lips, tongue, stomach, spleen and kidneys. Behold the man! He eats. He breathes. He walks. He sleeps. He prays. He weeps. He laughs. He bleeds. He dies. He rises. He ascends. He sits. And He will come. He is completely human and completely divine, two perfect natures in one indivisible person. He has fingerprints and DNA. Behold the man, Jesus, your Brother.
Unlike us, though, He has no sin. His human nature is perfect, unspoiled by Adam’s rebellion. Because of sin, we are subhuman. But not Jesus. Oh, He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet He is without sin. His desires were never distorted into lust, greed, coveting, or idolatry. Like unblemished Adam at the close of the sixth day of creation, when God declared His handiwork “very good,” Jesus is as human as human can be, as human as He intends to make you in the resurrection. Behold the man!
Behold the God who took human flesh in the virgin womb of a Jewish girl. Behold the unborn baby, being nourished for nine months in His temporary, earthly throne room. Behold the crying infant, rooting for the breast to fill his newborn stomach. Behold the toddler to whom His parents introduced new foods, all of which He had created. Behold the boy, eating the Passover lamb with His extended family. Behold the man, God in human flesh, who needs to eat in order to live.
Behold the man, the incarnate God, with lips, teeth, tongue, and taste buds that have not savored a morsel for forty days. With an esophagus, stomach, and intestines that have been empty and aching for forty days. Behold the man who fasts for you. The First Adam sinned by eating. The Second Adam will fast before enduring an onslaught of temptation, withstanding every one. Behold the man who fasts and denies himself for you.
Jesus is a God who can eat—who needs to eat—so that He can abstain from eating, enduring the pains of hunger to deny His flesh what it desires. For you. For our tendency to prefer the spiritual over the physical in a fake spirituality that leads us to indulge the flesh with its desires, both good and evil. Jesus endured temptation and never sinned so that He could be the man to redeem all other men, the Creator who would ransom His creatures, God who could give His life for sinners, for you.
Behold the man who fasted, prayed, and gave alms perfectly for you. His rumbling stomach, His hunger pangs, are our comfort in temptation. His flesh is your hope. He succeeded where we have failed.
Behold the man! He joins us at His altar and gives Himself to you to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of your sins, for the strengthening of your faith, for the enabling of your fervent love for one another, for the salvation of your flesh. In bread, in wine, behold the man!
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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