Let’s face it. Our scripture lesson on this Ash Wednesday sounds like an attack on Ash Wednesday. Or to be more precise, on the way we celebrate Ash Wednesday.
Our lesson comes from those wonderful chapters in the gospel of Matthew that we call the Sermon on the Mount. At this point, Jesus is warning against hypocrisy in worship. Now hypocrisy is abominable in any form, but especially when it shows its head in the very act of worship. So Jesus warned that we should beware of practicing our piety before others in order to impress them; if we do so, he said, we will get no reward from our Father in heaven.
Alms-giving, prayer and fasting
Then Jesus gave some for-instances. When you’re going to give alms for the poor, “do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets.” Jews believed that almsgiving was the highest of all good works. They felt that giving alms ranked higher with God than any other good deed. Perhaps you will remember that the Old Testament book of Proverbs says that someone who is generous to the poor, lends to the Lord.1 So alms-giving presented both a great opportunity and a great temptation: a temptation to let everyone know that one was doing such a noble deed. So Jesus said, “Don’t blow your trumpet when you’re about to give alms.” I suspect that this is one of those instances where Jesus’ sense of humor was showing through. I don’t find any evidence that people actually drew attention to themselves quite this flamboyantly in Jesus’ day, but Jesus — with a smile — is suggesting that the way people seek attentio
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