Ash Wednesday Meditation on Matt. 5
Jesus doesn’t seem to be in favor of organized religion. He is quick to point out the pitfalls of practicing your piety with and around other people. Instead, he suggests that we spend more time alone.
I am fascinated by something that Jesus says over and over again. “Your Father who is in secret.” What is he saying? He is saying that it is the nature of God to be hidden, to be “crypto”, in secret. Remember what Saint John said: “No one has ever seen God…”
This has implications. It means that the only way that you can know anything about God, the only way you can know what God might want from you, is if God finds a way to tell you. In order for you to know God — God has to reveal Godself to you. For you to know what God wants — God has to tell you.
But there is another side to this. Jesus says that if you are going to do religious things. You should do them in secret as well. If you do charity — give it secretly. If you pray to God — do it in your own room. Shut the door — then be with God. If you are following a spiritual discipline — do it in secret. You don’t have to blab about it. If you do, you spoil it.
This suggests to me, that there are many things that are between you and God alone. If there is someone who wants to tell you all about God — they may be right or they may be wrong. If they want to tell you what God wants from you, they may be right or they may be wrong. Because the only way you can know about God and about what God really wants is if God reveals it to you.
Everyone is interested in Abraham Lincoln lately. In the fall of 1862 — some Chicago ministers came to him to urge him to act according to God’s will. Lincoln told them that he had been bombarded by advice from “religious men” about “Divine will,” but that the advice was conflicting. Lincoln suggested that if “God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.”
Martin Luther said something similar:“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.”
“Pray to your father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” In the end you must take responsibility for yourself and for your own actions by following your conscience. We are totally responsible for ourselves.
There’s an old Gospel song:
It ain’t nobody’s fault but mine.
It ain’t nobody’s fault but mine.
And when I die, my soul will be lost
Ain’t nobody’s fault but mine.
There is a reason we must take this responsibility and there is a reason we must do it alone. We must do this by ourselves so that we can be with others. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.” If you can’t be alone — you are not fit to be with others. But he goes on to say that the reverse is also true: “Let him who is not in community, beware of being alone.” We need both these things.
We need God to speak to us through other people. We need to seek their guidance and counsel. We need to weigh how our actions affect them and yet continue to own those actions.
The next verse of the same Gospel song:
My sister taught me how to pray
My sister taught me how to pray
So when I die, my soul won’t be lost.
My sister taught me how to pray.”
There is help to be had. But then finally, we still need God to speak to us in our solitude so that we can decide for ourselves whether or not God is truly speaking to us directly or through others. More finally still, there is our own, singular, conscience.
