A Pious Faith vs. Faithful Piety
Pastor Mathew Magera – 2/10/16 – Sermon 142
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
What comes to your mind when
you think of Lent? You might think of soup. You might think of church on
Wednesdays whether it be a good thing or not. You might think of Jesus' journey
to the cross. You might think of it as a time to reflect on faith. I think,
however, that many people can't get past the question of Lent without thinking
of giving something up. It just seems to be something the world talks about.
What are you giving up for Lent? We ask that question of ourselves and others
and we think about it. We ask ourselves, what is something that we need to give
up that we wouldn't mind putting on the back burner for 40 days? June told me
the other day that her ritual is to give up beer and airplane rides because she
wouldn't have to think twice about doing it. Not drinking beer and not going on
airplanes comes natural to her. Now, how many of us fall into that same
category? We give up something to say that we did yet it doesn't give us much
of a challenge. So, it makes us think just a bit harder. We try to think of
something that isn't too easy because of course Lent is supposed to be a
challenge, yet at the same time we try to think of something that isn't too
difficult because we don't want to fail at our objective and lose. When Lent is
over, we might reflect on our chosen habit and celebrate that we completed it
or mourn that we were unable to do it, but in the end we typically go right
back into doing it again. If you give up TV for Lent, you go right back to
watching TV as if nothing happened. If you give up sweets for Lent, you go
right back to eating sweets. Thanks, Lent, for being a good 40 day challenge
for me, but now it's over, bye bye. It’s true, it is a fasting of sorts so if
you stopped eating for a period of time you would start eating again but during
that time that you weren’t eating you would typically fill that void with
prayer and reading Scripture. However, today if someone were to give up sweets,
chances are they won’t be filling that void with the goodness of God’s Word. Rather,
they might fill it with anything that might satisfy the sweet tooth and justify
their desires so at the end of the season they can say they have been
successful in their endeavors. This is what Lent has boiled itself down to in
much of main stream America, and even in the church, just another competition.
What's wrong with Lent being
a competition? First, because Lent is not a competition. Second, because the
very idea of a competition drives us further away from what Lent is really
intended to do for us. In a competition, you assume you are competing against
someone or something else so you are frequently comparing yourself to them by
either doing better or worse. In a competition, it also assumes there is a
winner and a loser. Lent isn't about comparing ourselves to each other and Lent
doesn't have winners or losers. During Lent, our only focus is Christ and what
it means to follow him.
The Gospel reading for Ash
Wednesday shows us Jesus bringing up the subject of piety or what it means to
be religious and how that can actually hinder our faith. He is saying that we
are prone to getting so fixated on acting religious that in doing so we lose
sight of the purpose of it altogether. Specifically, he talks about fasting.
This is what we might often think about when we think of giving something up
for Lent, a sort of fasting ritual. Oddly enough, this is really the only place
in the Bible that Jesus talks about fasting. Nothing is said about it being a
requirement or that it is bad, but he brings it up here and adds his opinion.
Piety, or acting religious,
and faith are not the same thing. However, faith is a role model for piety.
What I mean by that is by honoring certain rituals according to our religion,
whether it be bowing before the altar, giving ourselves the sign of the cross, fundraising,
or whatever it might be, these physical acts can draw us deeper into our faith.
It allows our faith to become more real. We act piously to build our faith but
not to replace it. This is where the trouble starts. Now, piety is not a bad
thing, but if it is let to get out of control we might see piety wants to be
faith. It's like the little girl that wants to be her mother and walks around
in oversized high heels and dresses up and tries to put make-up on. Piety wants
to be faith. It will try, but it will never be faith. However, when we start
acting religiously in order to quantify our faith, we become our own stumbling
block. Piety can say the lower I bow at the altar, the more faith I have. Piety
can say the longer my prayer the more faith I have. Piety can say, the more
weak I look when I fast the more faith I have. Piety can say all of these
things. It shouldn't, but it can. When it does, we start to talk about how
great our faith is because of how religious we look to others and we might even
start to depreciate the faith of others' who don't act as religiously as we do
even without even knowing it.
This tends to come out
mostly during Lent because by the time we're a few weeks in we start to feel
that we just need some kind of dessert. It's too hard to give up desserts. I'm
famished. I just need a drink of pop. It's too hard to go on without it. I just
need coffee. I just need pizza. I just need TV. I just need this or that. We
act so deprived yet Jesus says, stop it. Do not show others that you are
fasting. Let it be only between you and the Lord. Don't disfigure your face,
don't make yourself look so deprived in your fasting that others can clearly
see that you are, but instead wash yourself and glisten so that others may not
see. Fasting is a personal meditation between you and God. Piety tells us to
spread the news and tell everyone that you are fasting and that it is
difficult. Faith tells us to tell it to Jesus, the one who really cares. Tell
it to Jesus who will tell you all about his suffering. Tell it to Jesus who
will walk you through it. Lent is about deepening our relationship with God not
about openly displaying our fasting rituals to others.
The hardest part about that
though is to not want attention. Piety, our religious acts, demand attention.
Because they are physical motions that we go through our piety knows that it
can be seen by others and it is strengthened when others are watching. A pious
faith looks for the approval of others whereas faithful piety looks only for
the approval of Christ Jesus. To give up attention might therefore be what we
should desire to strive for this Lenten season. To look at our faith and to
avoid boasting or griping or whining. To tell ourselves that the religious
rituals we do will not earn us any better place in the kingdom of God. Though
it may gain the spotlight of the world, rituals will not be seen more by
Christ. So, we look at Lent a bit differently. We look at it as if there is nothing
we can do, nothing we can give up, nothing we can say, nothing we can be that
is able to get us closer to Jesus. Not bowing lower, not singing louder, not
praying longer, not giving more money to the poor. It's when we realize that we
are nothing and can do nothing that we see Jesus coming to us. And that is our
foundation. A foundation upon which many of our religious rituals can be used
to strengthen in but cannot be the core. Our piety can always be built into our
faith, but it can never, itself, be our faith.
One last example of what I
mean. Piety is an "I" statement. I did this, I'll do that. I've
committed my life to Christ. That's piety. Faith is He did this, He did that.
Christ Jesus has forgiven me all my sins. A pious faith is you wanting to be
this pop can on a display case down at Meijer with lights shining all around
you saying you are the best stuff on earth, buy me, drink me. That's the
ultimate goal of a pious faith, to be perfect in all that you do. However,
faithful piety is when you are this old pop can lying on the side of the road
just down the street from here by the cemetery when along comes someone like
Ron Porter wearing his orange and yellow vest holding his old golf club with a
nail on the end of it, walking up to that can, stabbing it and putting it in
his bag and walking on. That's faithful piety. Having nothing and knowing it.
Unable to move and knowing it. Sitting on the side of the road crushed and
beaten and knowing it. Then there's Jesus walking down the road looking for
you. There he is rooting through the tall grass, down in the ditch, walking
along the road looking for discarded trash, looking for sinners, looking for
you. And then he finds you, picks you up, puts you in his bag and says,
"you're mine." He's claimed us. He's walked right up to us, picked us
up and put us in his bag after everyone else would just pass right on by.
Ash Wednesday is like that
ditch on the side of the road where we lay. It's the start of a time when we
can re-evaluate who we are and more importantly whose we are. A time when we
can look at ourselves and say that we really do need Jesus, to say that
religion can't save us but Jesus can. We have the ashes, the dust, marked on
our foreheads telling us we are nothing but the absolute lowest, but then notice
the sign of the cross in those ashes, a symbol that Christ Jesus has walked
down that street and seen us lying there in the ditch and claimed us as his
very own. So, if you give up something this Lent, if you fast from something,
remember that your fasting is not a competition, it won't save you, but it can,
if faithfully practiced, deepen your relationship with our Lord and Savior. In
all that you do this Lenten season, seek faithful piety as support of your
faith not in replacement of it. Remember that you are but dust and to dust you
shall return but remember that Christ Jesus called out to you and said,
"Follow me." I wish you God's blessings as your start your Lenten
journey and as you follow our Lord to the cross. To God be the glory now and
always. Amen.