I shared this meditation last night. I tried to riff on Augustine's On Christian Doctrine with "use and enjoy." Some things in life are to be used and some things are to be enjoyed. The only thing we must not use is God and the only thing we are to enjoy is God. The meditation might make more sense with that background in mind:
There is a story of a Presbyterian pastor who puts ashes in a brass bowl on his desk after every Ash Wednesday. One day a church member dropped in to chat, saw the ashes on the desk, and asked in horror—“whose ashes are those?” He responded, “all of ours.”
A great preacher in our age, Barbara Brown Taylor, says that Ash Wednesday is the day when Christians get to attend their own funerals.[1] Today is a day of reckoning; a day of judgment. We receive ashes on our foreheads and we realize that we cannot save ourselves, no matter how hard we try. We lay our lives open before God and we beg for mercy. Ash Wednesday is a time to put our lives back into a larger perspective and to examine our intentions as Christians.
If you look at the ministry of Jesus in the sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus is all about intentions and putting things back into the right perspective. Jesus hones in on the outward practices of the Pharisees. And he says that the heart of their problem is hypocrisy, which literally means that they are “stage acting.” The Pharisees have put on a mask to deceive each other about their true intentions and character as the people of God.
For the Pharisees everything is about being seen in public. Everything is about appearance. For the Pharisees it is all about, “me.” They give alms to the poor so that people will talk about how generous they are. They stand on the street corner and shout so that the world looks at them. They look weak and dismal when they fast to appear holy and righteous.
They are all self-addicted and God had been reduced to a stepping-stone to power, fame, or recognition. God had become a means to an end.
A popular Christian preacher and theologian once told a story about a day that he brought his wife a bouquet of flowers home. He went to the store, got the flowers and they were beautiful, the colors were just right. Well, he got home and gave them to her and she was blown away. She took out a vase, smiled, and said, “this means so much, I am so surprised.”
Well, what if he had responded by saying, “I am your husband, this is my duty.” Or, by saying, “ it’s no big deal they were cheap.” Or, “I figured you needed them.” (Rob Bell)
She wouldn’t even want the flowers anymore, because she wanted his heart. To give her flowers without giving his heart was hypocrisy. The flowers were no longer about loving his wife; they were about him.
The pastor who told this story notes that Jesus is the same way. God does not want a bunch of stage actors. God does not want to be used. In our story, Jesus tells the Pharisees, “this is not all about you.” True spirituality is motivated by the heart—by your innermost being.” God wants your actions, but God also wants your heart.
We are prone to want to use God to better ourselves. If we are honest, there might be a little bit of that self-centeredness in all of us. When we first started talking, our first words were “mommy look at me.” We all have a deep need to be recognized by others, to be well thought of, or to stand out.
I once heard that the most difficult lie you will ever contend with is that life is all about me. “There is no drug as powerful as the drug of self. There is no rut in the mind as deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, and all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction.”[2]
Today, Jesus confronts our self-addiction. He asks, “Why do you do the things you do?” Are you a Christian because it is the right thing to do? Are you a Christian because it is expected? Are you a Christians because it gives you a free pass to heaven?
Jesus asks, “are you using me or are you loving me?”
Ash Wednesday is a shocking reminder that life is not all about you. It puts our life back into perspective. Treasure on earth does not last. And most importantly, God is not a means to an end.
God wants to be desired and enjoyed. Not used.
I once heard that Lent is all about saying “no” and saying “yes.” That’s really what Jesus tells the Pharisees. You have to start saying “no” to yourself and you have to start saying, “yes” to me.[3]
Most of all, we say “no” to our self-addiction. During Lent we Christians are called to say no to any habit that comes between God and ourselves. Through practices of self-denial we seek to be transformed from manipulative, self-centered, and creatures humans into people more like Christ.
What are we going to say “no” to? Maybe it is an unhealthy spirituality. Maybe it’s judgment, superiority or exclusion. Maybe we need to say “no” to our use of time. It could be apathy or indifference or laziness. Maybe we will say “no” to using God.
It is only when we say “no” that we are open to say “yes” to God. Just as there are lots of things we may need to say no to during Lent, so there are many opportunities to say yes. When we say “no” to the things that hold us back from God we can develop new practices to draw us closer to God.
Listen to these ways to say yes: “Say no to prayer as a demonstration of piety, and say yes to prayer as conversation with God. Say no to fasting as a display of spiritual fitness, and say yes to fasting as dependency. Say no to giving possessions as a display of generosity, and say yes to giving away possessions to be possessed by God.”
Say “yes” to enjoying God.
If you give something up for Lent, I urge you to say “yes” to something else.
Ash Wednesday is our funeral. It is the death of the self. We are just dust—and to dust we will return. The good news is that we don’t need more of ourselves…what we need is salvation. We need God.
What are you saying “no” to this Lent? Are you saying “yes” to God?
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