Look away now if you are coming to tonight's service.
In which I channel The Revd John Piper.
Ash Wednesday 2018 notes
Luke 17:1-10 (page 1051)
The boffins amongst you
will know that Ash Wednesday is 46 days before Easter Sunday and that the date
of Easter is determined by the lunar calendar, so of course, rather
inconveniently, Easter moves around each year.
Ash Wednesday can be as
early as 4th February or as late as 10th March.
This year, of course, Ash
Wednesday is also St Valentine’s Day.
I hope you’ve remembered
that if you needed to!
Well done for being here,
especially if you’ve passed up a hot date!
Or even better if you’ve
brought your Valentine with you!
This is the first year Ash
Wednesday has coincided with Valentine’s day since 1945.
The two dates also
overlapped in 1923 and 1934 and will coincide again in 2024 and 2029.
So it seems a good
opportunity to ask what Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day might say to one
another.
I imagine if we did word-association with Ash
Wednesday and Valentine’s Day we would get wildly different answers.
Ash Wednesday, that’s austerity, discipline,
the mortification of the flesh, self-denial, dust, humility, death.
Valentine’s Day that’s: love, romance,
flowers, chocolates, and a much-needed boost to the restaurant industry.
Perhaps we could sum up the two days in two
words:
Ash Wednesday: duty
And Valentine’s day: love.
At least, let’s go with that and think about those
two for a few moments today:
Duty and love.
What is the relationship between them?
And what is their place in the Christian life?
To some people “duty” is a dirty word.
Perhaps to you it’s not the most attractive
idea in the world – I could see that.
Doing your duty almost implies you didn’t want
to do it – but you screwed up your self-denial muscles and you forced yourself
to get to the Ash Wednesday service, or to visit that elderly relative, or do
the ironing, or whatever it is.
Maybe you hated it, but you did your duty.
I’m told that when one hands over the
Valentine’s Day flowers and chocolates, it is much better to say, “I love you”
than, “see, I have done my duty!”.
But duty is undoubtedly a good thing.
God is king.
He is your maker.
He owns you.
He is your rightful Lord.
It is your duty to do his will, whether you
want to or not.
Love, of course, is a much nicer idea!
We all want to love and be loved.
What could ever be wrong with love?
But our human condition might be described as
a love sickness.
We love the wrong things.
Or we love them for the wrong reasons.
Or we love them in the wrong ways.
Or we love them in the wrong order.
We do not love as we ought.
Ideally, of course, love and duty go together.
Love is in fact a duty.
One problem with our notions of love is that
we’ve forgotten that.
But God, Jesus and the Bible think love can be
commanded.
The first commandment, our prime duty, is to
love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
And the second commandment is to love our
neighbour as ourselves.
In the wedding service we don’t say to the
happy couple “Do you love one another?”, though we hope they do.
Rather, the minister asks, “Will you love
her?” / “Will you love him?”
Love is not just to do with the emotions or
feelings.
It isn’t just something that spontaneously
comes over us and which is entirely beyond our control.
Wonderful to be in love, but far more important
to love.
We promise to love.
We resolve to do so.
To seek to love.
And indeed, we commit ourselves to love in
action even when we don’t feel like it.
Love is a duty.
But we should also love our duty.
God is beautiful and lovely.
He commands what is good and life-giving.
The way of God’s commands is delight.
All around is death.
The attractive confections of sin will kill
you in the end.
Wander from God’s will and you risk ruin and
loss.
Love and duty go together.
In our Communion liturgy we often say:
“It is right to give [God] thanks and praise”
It’s our duty.
It’s the right thing to do.
We say, “it is indeed right,
It is our duty and our joy”.
Our duty and our joy.
The two go together.
Yes, we ought to do this.
But we also ought to want to do it.
We should love to praise God, to delight to do
so.
It is our joyful duty.
Delight is a duty.
Rejoicing is a command.
A perfect person would never act from duty
alone, because he or she would always want to do what it right – he or she
would love righteousness and hate evil.
Certainly we should do good even when we don’t
feel like it.
Sometimes we have to act from duty alone but such
duty is always a crutch because our love legs are not working as they should.
And we shouldn’t settle for permanent
spiritual disability.
We long to love aright.
We should pray for God to close the gap
between ought to and want to.
Lord, help me always to do my duty.
But may doing your will be a joy to me.
May I delight to do what is good and right and
pleasing to you.
Help me to see sin as the stinking, rotten
trap that it is and to flee from it.
Holy Spirit, re-wire my loves.
So this Lent, let us pray for goodness that is
heart-deep:
Goodness that is not merely a matter of our
words and actions but also of our loves.
How can we cultivate delight in our duties?
We should meditate on Jesus Christ.
Look at him in his Word.
Behold him in the Scriptures.
Linger on him in prayer and song and
reflection.
Significant looking at Jesus is the key to
loving Jesus.
Do not neglect or forget him or take him for
granted.
Remember your first love of Jesus.
And ask yourself what the maturing of that
love would look like.
Jesus is lovely.
He is delightful.
Delight yourself in him.
That is your duty, and it is a delightful one.
May it be a joy to you this Lent, and may this
love motivate and empower your service, for Jesus’ name sake. Amen.
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