Friday after Ash Wednesday

 Lectionary: 221

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed....

Late one night, in a quiet residential neighborhood, a fellow paced back and forth, scanning the ground. A passerby asked, "Did you lose something?"

"Yes, sir." he replied. "I lost my car keys." 

"Well, I'll help you look." 

After several minutes he asked, "Are you sure you lost them here?" 

"No," he said, "I lost them back there in the alley."

"Then why are we looking here?"

"The light is better out here!" 

When I was a boy, we engaged the season of Lent by abstaining from candy throughout the season, Sundays being no exception. We abstained from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, and we tried to limit our food consumption. The sum of breakfast and lunch should not exceed our evening meal. 

It was a way of observing the season and it had its satisfactions. But there were ways to lesson the inconvenience. Eating a larger evening meal allowed for larger lesser meals. On Wednesdays and Fridays one could enjoy lobster, shrimp, turtle, or frog legs if you could afford them. They were not meat. (Who decides these thing?) And there was a wide selection, and no shortage, of fish. In Louisiana, crawfish made the season downright pleasant. And because there were no rules against alcohol, we could wash down those delicacies with beer. 

All this and heaven too! It seemed we had found the keys under the streetlight despite their being lost in the alley! 

Is this the manner of fasting I wish,

            of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed

            and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast,

            a day acceptable to the LORD?

The Church leads us into Lent not to enforce her rules but to remind us of God's sovereign presence. Observance of the covenant sharpens our awareness of the God who is  everywhere, omnipresent. How we practice that observance may vary greatly from one person to another, and one nation to another. It changes with times and seasons. But, as the Old and New Testaments commands, we must, 

"Know that I am God, supreme among the nations, supreme on the earth." 

Our observance must include both private and communal worship, and deliberate efforts to do right by our fellow human beings. Christians should not suppose they do justice who excuse themselves from weekly attendance at church. God deserves our worship; his Son has earned it. Nor is one's personal piety sufficient which does not answer the cry of the poor. 

Lent is a sacrificial season as we ponder God's sacrifice of his Only Begotten Son. No one lives well who makes no sacrifice. We know that from ordinary human experience; and from divine revelation.