For the first time in my pastoral career, we get an overlap of Lent with Ramadan. I’ve been blessed with many interfaith relationships over the course of my lifetime, including with several Muslim friends who have taught me a lot about the beauty of Ramadan. While Christians often complain about giving up meat on Fridays or some other beloved thing for the 40 days of Lent, our Muslim siblings fast from dawn until sunset every day during Ramadan. Many of my friends have talked about how this time of fasting is used to reflect on the world around them, including creating empathy for those who do not have adequate access to food. It is a time when our Muslim siblings focus on “self-reflection, spiritual growth, connection, generosity, increased worship, and community building,” One such example is how they gather for iftar, the breaking of their fast with friends and family . That description feels very similar to how we ideally talk about Lent in our churches. Both traditions require dedication, commitment, and even a bit of uncomfortability as we grow closer to God and one another.
While the practices of Lent and Ramadan differ, there are a lot of things that we can learn from our siblings in the Abrahamic faith traditions. Including embracing this season as a time that we get to intentionally lean into as a way of engaging with our own spiritual lives and our relationships with the world around us. When we say the words, “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” it isn’t just a reminder that we will die someday. It is also a reminder that we are not the creator, but the created, and that our bodies hold the history of the world and also its future. That we are not wholly separate from the world around us. This holy day in particular, but also the whole season of Lent, isn’t a punishment for everything we have ever done wrong, but at the same time it is giving us the opportunity to evaluate what we do, say, and believe and make any changes that we might need to in order to live more fully into our identities as children of God.
When we enter the season of Lent, we are intentionally slowing down and preparing for the promise that God is changing the world, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And, we begin our season of Lent with the reminder that we are created from dust and will return to dust, just as everything else around us is. It reminds us that we too are a part of God’s created, that we are interconnected with the whole world around us. That when something impacts people, animals, and the planet, it is impacting us as well, even when we cannot see it. We are all made up of the same dust, with life breathed into it, trying to make sense of the world around us and our place in it. The world doesn’t need more reminders of our mortality right now, as we see death tolls continuing to rise from wars, violence, and illness. But, we do need a reminder that we do not exist in our own little world, unaffected by what is happening around us.
I want to pick up on that as we listen to the words of Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew tonight because I think in our world we have moved away from people knowing that we are Christians by our actions and instead believing they will know by how loudly we boast about being Christians and enforce this sense that a specific type of Christianity is better than any other religion that exists. Yet Isaiah reminds us today: “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58: 6). This of course is the response to “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fastings as you do today will not make your voice heard on high” (Isaiah 58: 3b-4). And even in Matthew, Jesus warns, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them…” (Matthew 6: 1a). Jesus isn’t saying here that we don’t practice these tenets of our faith, that we don’t fast or give alms or pray, but that we need to understand why we are doing them. Are we doing them because we are so moved by our faith that this is our response, as a way to draw closer to God and to the world around us, or are we setting ourselves in a position where we want others to see how faithful we are? How much better our faith is compared to everyone else around us?
All of these things go back to the motivation for our actions. As Isaiah suggests, are we doing these things only to go back to oppressing others and causing harm as soon as our fasting is done? Are we praying loudly on the street corner so that everyone may know how much holier we are and how they should be changing their behavior to be more like us, yet we stop caring about the world around us unless it is to our benefit? Are we doing these things because we feel that we have to, so we are just going to go through the motions without them impacting our hearts, our minds, and our lives?
The whole point of doing these activities in Lent is centered in our confession and forgiveness that we say tonight on Ash Wednesday. While we don’t just want to focus on the brokenness of humanity, by naming these things that we have both done and undone, it isn’t just a pass to not change our lives and wait until next Ash Wednesday when we come together to confess the same things again. But, it is calling our attention to the things we need to be more aware of in the world. So many of these sins are corporate, done on a systemic level, not a personal one, but that doesn’t mean that we have to just accept things the way they are either.
Just as in Advent when we know what awaits us at the end, we know what happens at the end of our Lenten story too. And because we know what happens, it makes it all that much easier to fall into routines and traditions instead of focusing on what is happening in the world around us. I know that we cannot fix everything, nor is any of this something that we carry alone, but Lent is such an opportune time to pay attention to that which is not working in our world and in our lives. To intentionally build empathy for others and listen to stories we might never have taken the opportunity to hear before. To accept that we all cause harm, intentionally and unintentionally, but that together we can move forward with creating a world that is more just and inclusive of all the ways this dust is embodied in the world. Where people care about one another and want to see them thrive. Where systems of injustice and oppression are met with resistance and hopefully someday toppled. When we think that we are too small to make a difference, I want you to think about what happens when we all come together. After all, a single speck of dirt doesn’t seem like much, but think about all that it can create when brought together. My hope for us is that our Lenten practices draw us deeper into community and emphasize the ways that we can in fact care for one another in the midst of our daily lives. That while the reminder of you are dust and to dust you shall return may seem personal and a bit dark, it is in fact a freedom to live this life that we have been given and to remember that we are connected with all of creation through this very dust that we have been created from.
As I mentioned on Sunday, Lent isn’t supposed to be a season of “shoulds.” But, it does get to be a season when we are intentional about the ways in which we engage with our communities and cultivate our relationship with God. It is actually a really beautiful, countercultural act of resistance to say no, to slow down, and work to change the things that are not helping us live fully into our identities. In a world that demands productivity as a measure of worth, we are invited into a season of reflection. And, while our practices are different from our Muslim siblings, I can’t help but rejoice in the fact that we get to accompany one another in these holy seasons. May we continue to learn from them because there is so much that our siblings have to teach us about worshipping God and caring for one another.
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Sunday March 2nd, 2025 Worship