Repentance, Not A Show
Matthew 6:16-21
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Matthew 6:16-18 Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. [17] But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, [18] so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… One of the earliest and most divisive conflicts within orthodox Christianity was the conflict over when and how to celebrate Easter: what the date or the day of the week should be, and how long one should fast before the feast. Some said the date should be set by the Old Testament lunar calendar for Passover, whatever day of the week that fell on. Others said it should be on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox.
Some fasted for 24 hours before the feast began. Some fasted for 40 hours before the feast, from 3 PM on Good Friday until 7 AM on Easter Sunday. The forty-day fast that became the Lenten season didn’t develop until after the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. At the end of the second century, the conflict over fasting and the date of Easter became so heated that Victor, Bishop of Rome, almost succeeded in excommunicating the whole Eastern half of the Christian Church because their practice of fasting and their date for Easter were a little different than his. Thankfully, godlier voices, like those of the Church Father Irenaeus, prevailed and the unity of the Christian Church was maintained, even though their manmade ceremonies were different.
For as much as fasting has been an acceptable part of Christian tradition from the earliest days, it is still troubling that the Church tried to make binding rules about when and how Christians were to fast; it is troubling because God Himself never gave any such rules.
If only the Church had listened to Jesus about fasting, they would have avoided all those errors.
Jesus warns His Church in tonight’s Gospel about turning fasting into an outward show. He warns us not to go around “like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting.” Notice, He doesn’t forbid fasting, just as elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount He doesn’t forbid giving alms or giving to charity. What our Lord does indeed forbid is turning all of this into a show. He wants it done in private and not as a public mark of being a Christian.
Who are you fasting for? Do you fast out of devotion to God and as a way to discipline your flesh so that you can focus on Him? Then it can be useful, for that really is the biblical model. But if you do it to follow some church rule or tradition or to impress the people around you with how religious you are, or to impress God with how zealous you are, or how deserving you are of His favor, well, then it is something sinful. Indeed, fast and engage in other religious activities that God has left up to you in Christian freedom. But don’t let any of it be for an outward show, and don’t do it in an attempt to earn God’s favor. Let it be done in connection with inward repentance, as an act of true devotion toward God.
The Prophet Joel urged the same thing in our second reading: “Turn to Me with fasting”, God said, but also, “Rend your hearts and not your garments.” The Hebrews, as you may recall, had the external custom of tearing their shirts open as a way of expressing the internal emotions of anger or grief. There was nothing wrong with it, but, as Joel told them, God wasn’t at all interested in what they did to their garments. They weren’t doing any service for Him by fasting or by tearing their shirts open. God was only interested in heartfelt grief and genuine repentance over their sin, and in recognizing the ways in which they had turned away from God and His Word.
But then, God invited them back after they turned away. Their many sins had not driven God away. God, through His prophet, was inviting them, urging them to turn to Him, to turn back to Him. Why? Because of who He is and what they can count on if they repent, not on the outside, but on the inside: “He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.” Or as Psalm 130 puts it in the form of a prayer, “There is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.” (v. 4)
Remember how it went for Israel. It was always a repeated cycle. They rebelled against God, He sent some judgment for their sin, they repented, and God relented and forgave them and rescued them from the judgment. And that went on and on until eventually the cycle fell apart – not because God changed His pattern, but because they changed theirs; they didn’t repent any longer, no matter how bad the punishment became. They neither acknowledged their sins nor turned back to the Lord.
Now, that cycle didn’t end with Israel, because the disease of original sin infects us all. The early Church father Eusebius wrote in his Church History about the Great Persecution of Christians that took place especially between 303 and 311 AD. It was a terrible and widespread persecution of Christians that involved the torching of churches and the unspeakable tortures and senseless killings of countless Christians. Eusebius was alive at that time and witnessed much of it. But do you know who he blamed for it, ultimately? Yes, the cruel emperors and their officials were to blame. But ultimately Eusebius laid the blame on the Church itself.
After nine different periods of persecution over the previous 270 years, the Christians had finally begun to enjoy a time of peace and prosperity and acceptance. But Eusebius noted that their great freedom brought with it great arrogance and laziness. Christians began to envy and attack one another. Church leaders attacked one another, laymen formed factions against laymen. Pastors quarreled bitterly with one another (even though they were all in fellowship with one another) and they claimed tyrannical power for themselves. The initial judgment God sent to get their attention was limited to Christian soldiers in the army losing their positions, and yet still there was no repentance, still no recognition of how far they had gone astray, and so the judgment grew far worse.
Now, God used that Great Persecution for many good purposes: for judgment against some, yes; but also as a glorious testimony to His Gospel and its power; as a witness to the faithfulness of Jesus, who was willingly tortured and killed that we might live forever in God’s kingdom and in whose footsteps Christians were glad to walk. It also served as a powerful confession that Christians do not live for this life, but for the life of the world to come in the eternal presence of God.
Would you say that Christians in our day have given the Lord cause again to bring judgment on the visible Christian Church? I think you know the answer. False doctrine, apathy toward the doctrine of Christ, hypocrisy, pride, false humility, the teaching of justification by works and the teaching of justification without faith, tyranny of bishops, priests, pastors, and supposed church leaders, denial of the six-day creation, acceptance of abortion and homosexuality, downplaying of the Sacraments, the refusal to practice closed Communion, mistreating one another, love growing cold, the lack of conviction, refusal to believe in God’s promises… Surely the 21st century Church is more than ripe for God’s judgment.
Now, this isn’t to say that every Christian is living impenitently in the above sins or that every Christian body has fallen away. But you know as well as I do that the state of the Visible Church as a whole is dismal.
So what to do? Joel told Israel, “Consecrate a fast! Call a sacred assembly!” In other words, Take the Lord’s judgment and your sins seriously. Now, the Church is no longer united around the world. We can’t gather all true Christian churches in one place for a sacred assembly. All we can do is gather here in this sacred assembly around Word and Sacrament. And so we do. We, the baptized, we, the Church in this place, gather tonight, and on the Lord’s Day to confess our sins regularly, hear God’s Word, and receive His correction and rebuke. But we also gather to receive His absolution and His comfort and the Sacrament of His body and blood, the very price of our redemption, and the seal and pledge of His forgiveness applied to each communicant.
We shouldn’t expect that our sacred assembly will cancel out the judgment that’s coming on the whole Church and on the whole world. But we should expect that God will see the inward repentance and faith in each of our hearts, and that He will spare us from wrath for Jesus’ sake, even as He calls us to repentance n- ot a once-in-a-while exercise, but a daily attitude and practice, so that we don’t drift away into sin or apathy or outright unbelief, as members of His Church have done over and over again throughout history.
That’s why we’re here today. That’s why we observe the Lenten season. Lent is simply a good time to make sure you are focused on the daily exercise of repentance, which is something we engage in all through the Church Year.
And as we continue to do that, remember the temple curtain which was torn in two from top to bottom at the very moment Christ breathed His last on the cross, taking the full-bore punishment that all your sins deserved. For the Father Himself tore that ceiling-to-floor curtain both in grief that His Son had to suffer and die, and also to demonstrate that Christ had fulfilled all the prophecies about Him and that through Christ we now have access to the Father, and that the OT priestly system of sacrifices was no longer necessary. Jesus, the ultimate and only sacrifice for sin suffered and died to pay for all sin. As the ultimate High Priest, Christ’s sacrifice was what all of the previous sacrifices pointed forward to.
And the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice are now delivered to you in His Word and Sacraments – the Gospel, Baptism, Absolution, and Supper. What was done on the cross is delivered to you here in these things, and only in these things.
So, having heard the saving Gospel yet again, renew your determination during this season to take God’s Word seriously and to engage in repentance. Check your life for sin and avoid it. Be renewed in love. But most importantly, remember Jesus Christ and Him crucified and the free forgiveness of sins you have in Him. Then you will be storing up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
