Where Is Our Treasure?

I don’t know about you but this year the Ash Wednesday lectionary readings hold a particular weight.

You can read them here Please take the time to read them.

Modern day Christians, sometimes make Ash Wednesday and Lent about personal sins and failings. And that is not wrong. But the Bible asks us to not solely focus personal failings.The sin that Scripture is most concerned with is how we treat the poor, and the marginalized and the stranger. The Bible, and of course Jesus, are concerned about how we live together, how we treat each other. These sins are both personal and communal. Both matter because the acts of a community or of a nation are dependent upon the acts of us as individuals.

The season of Lent is not a time for us to bemoan how terrible and worthless we are. Neither is Lent a time to embark on a personal improvement plan. I will confess, I have done both those things during Lent.

Lent is a time for us to take a clear eyed view of how we live. Lent is a time to seriously consider how we have been Christ’s disciples in our particular situations- what we have done and what we have left undone. The intent of this reflection is that we would resolve to do better. And not just resolve but repent and pray for guidance. Repentance in the Bible carries the meaning of “turning around”, of reorienting ourselves. It is to change our thinking and to change our ways. As we reflect on the life of Jesus, we reflect on our lives as his disciples.

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58:6 NRSVUE)

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21 NRSVUE)

This year the Ash Wednesday readings are prompting me to think about how we take care of each other. I’m thinking about what our responsibilities to each other are. Where is my heart? Where is my treasure stored? And where are our communal hearts and treasures? Where is our national heart and treasure? How am I called to live as an individual person who also is part of a community and a nation? How the various communities I am part of called to act? How are we as a nation called to act? Have I, have we chosen to loosen the bonds of injustice? Have I and have we shared with the hungry and the homeless and the afflicted? What does it look like for myself and for Christian people to love their neighbor, and their enemies?

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right Spirit within me. ..Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing Spirit. (Psalm 51:10,12 NRSVUE)