March 5 Ash Wednesday                               Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Every year I keep asking, silently so nobody knows, why do we have to read this Gospel about praying behind the closed doors of my own room, and not praying (aloud) on street corners so people will notice? I do not know when I last prayed aloud on a street corner. (Prior to our first Book of Common Prayer and our church's break from the Bishop of Rome, this same Gospel passage had been assigned for this day by the Roman Catholic Church; we cannot claim the use of the passage as a piece of Reformation rebellion.)

My question, above, why, is not just a gimmick for writing. When Racquel Ray our Director of Formation, suggested I take this assignment, I decided it's time, in your company, to get past my prejudices and assumptions about these words and hope to move further. Move further with Matthew's Gospel and move further with Jesus.

So the next thing that came to me, Racquel, is an opposite injunction, from Matthew five: You are the light of the world. . . . . No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub . . . . Your light must shine in the sight of human beings, so that seeing your good works, they may give praise to your Father in heaven. Perhaps some people really need to hear, don't show off your faith and religious practice in public; others need to hear, get out there and share in down-to-earth witness to Jesus. At different times in my life I needed different pokes: don't show off! and get out there!

That's a neat way to end it-a nice balanced comment. I used to love such endings in sermons and teaching. But now in February, 2014, after 79 years of living, and 48 years of speaking on this text during Ash Wednesday liturgies, Matthew's Gospel has gotten through my skull with something new to me, and probably obvious to others: this is about intimacy. About the intimacy God draws us into when we make at least some kind of effort to be in focus. Strangely the assigned reading for the Ash Wednesday Eucharist omits the gold that is nestled into this long chapter, Our Father who art in heaven .... the entire Lord's Prayer we know so well. Jesus invites us into the intimacy he shares with the Heavenly One about the essentials of every-day life and eternal life. What can happen when we silence our cell-phones and turn toward Our Beloved?

L.H.B.