How truly wonderful that this day combines themes of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day; a vocation to be really concerned about our loves and affections and to wary of empty, dry practices. The sermon text is below the sermon audio.
Sermon preached at Trinity Church, Newport RI, Ash Wednesday (2.14.18)
The Reverend Alan Neale, “Perfect Rendition”
We have to reach back to 1945 (73 years ago) to discover another day when Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day combined; and yes, I’ve worked out, that I probably won’t be around when next it happens. I read this morning these words of Father Gabriel Toretti of Cincinnati “”If your beloved is expecting a card and flowers and chocolates, do not say, ‘Oh, I gave that up for Lent.’ That’s how you break up.”
But it seems to me that there is a perfect confluence of themes, congruence of ideas as these two days combine… both stress the importance of the heart, of finding authentic and eloquent ways to express our love and our devotion.
So I offer you a text that speaks, literally, to the heart of the matter – “Rend your hearts and not your clothing” (Joel 2:13).
You will know that the rending of clothes, the intentional tearing/ripping of garments was a traditional and external practice in Jewish religion. It is called kriah – it expresses grief, contrition and even anger.
Kriah is an ancient tradition. When the patriarch Jacob believed his son Joseph was dead, he tore his garments (Genesis 37:34). Likewise, in II Samuel 1:11 we are told that King David and all the men with him took hold of their clothes and rent them upon hearing of the death of Saul and Jonathan. Job, too, in grieving for his children, stood up and rent his clothes (Job 1:20). And we remember the anger of the High Priest Caiaphas… “Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy” (Matthew 26:65).
At moments of profound, psychic emotion the practice of kriah is a cathartic and expressive act. And yet the act had become lifeless, insignificant, hypocritical.
A great divide, an enormous chasm had opened up between the act and the intent, between the practice and the person, between the symbol and the reality.
And so the prophet Joel shouts out in warning (as happens still today in London’s Underground) “Mind the Gap!”
Lent (and maybe even Valentine’s Day) calls us, charges us, challenges us to do our best (aided by the Spirit of God) to be authentic and real in our expressions of devotion to those who we claim to love – both God and our beloved.
The “gap” between religious practice and spiritual reality is experienced by each of us this side of eternity; the season of Lent calls us to a holy discontent with such a gap. Away with pretense, frippery, sham and distraction.
Yet another horrific shooting in Florida today compels me to ask when will our political leaders start rending hearts leading to action in gun control and not merely engaging in a political savvy posture of rending garments of words. Words of absolute horror must be matched by a commitment to act. What is a moral absolute today is for us to require our political agents act out of hearts being torn apart, and not merely vigorous words of concern and condemnation.
“Rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Joel 2:13-14 (Message Translation)
“Change your life, not just your clothes.
Come back to God, your God.
And here’s why: God is kind and merciful.
He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot,
This most patient God, extravagant in love,
always ready to cancel catastrophe.
Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now.
AMEN.