a Sermon for Ash Wednesday, B

Text: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We’re trained from an early age to hate red ink. Our tests and composition papers were often so riddled with red, contrasting starkly with our own black or blue markings on the white piece of paper.

Each of our teachers counted up those red marks—with each mark contributing to an ever-lowering score. The number keeps ticking down and down. Staring at the page, splattered with red, you can almost picture the teacher, at home in her study, with a notebook bearing the running tally—one line, two, three, four, cross it to make five. The smile widening as she calculates your grade. Perhaps she’s disappointed that your C- still counts as passing. Maybe going through it a second time, looking for one more mistake she can use to give you a failing grade.

Of course none of my teachers were actually that masochistic in real life, but I certainly imagined they were.

And for all our assurances to the contrary, we often imagine GOD to be so giddy to condemn us for all of those red marks we have given ourselves. The times we lied, we hurt people, we hurt ourselves. And let’s not forget the times that we didn’t hurt other people, but our inaction condemned them. We are often told that GOD keeps this kind of score and will reconcile the ledger in the end.

Even tonight’s gospel passage evokes the image of the divine ledger—our earthly actions leading to heavenly gold stars or red ink. GOD with access to an entire lifetime of things that you didn’t know counted against you. Is GOD so committed to a process so unfair?

Well…I don’t think so; for 2 reasons. First, we’re often told the opposite in the gospels: that GOD isn’t keeping score. Second, the passage isn’t about GOD’s fictional ledger at all! It’s about ours. It’s about our desire to “win” at this life. The showboating, the glory, the praise.

It is easy to take literally the suggestions Jesus makes, such as giving in secret and never allowing anyone to attach your generosity to you or praying, locked in a closet somewhere so that nobody can see you. Jesus seems to instruct this, but in response to doing it for the praise. Jesus says that we pray and we give for GOD, not for the reward. He gives a radical response to the severity of our selfishness.

Do good things for GOD, not your own ledger. Don’t worry what others think but what GOD thinks.

Our work in Lent, beginning this evening, is to confess our mistakes and our sins; not to seek a balanced ledger, but to clear it. Or more appropriately, to toss it in the trash. No ledger. No counting. No a-ccounting. Only repentance. Did I screw up? Yes. Do I tell GOD about it? Yes. Do I ask GOD for forgiveness? Yes. Now there’s only one thing left: reconcile with the people I have hurt. Then it’s done. No more marks. No red ink. Just the marks I’ve made. Here and now.

And this one other thing. Something so out-of-proportion and unjustifiable and precious, we can hardly stand it. We are given mercy. That’s the only part that doesn’t wipe away. GOD’s mercy sticks and the rest, like us, is dust, disappearing.