Be Reconciled to One Another, a sermon based on Isaiah 58: 1-12, preached on Ash Wednesday 2025

My sister has been in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While the roots of Mardi Gras are religious, she’s not there on a pilgrimage. Mardi Gras is a big party that ends today, with Ash Wednesday. Traditionally, the high point of Mardi Gras was yesterday, Fat Tuesday, the last day you can eat all the things you give up for the season of religious fasting that we call Lent. Lent, which begins today, leads us to Easter. The 40 days of Lent are days of preparation and fasting, meant to remind us of the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness tempted by Satan, and the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering after leaving slavery in Egypt before they reached the Promised Land. For 40 days, beginning today, we prepare for Easter, Resurrection, and the Promised Land. Now is the time to leave behind that which stands in the way. It’s a time to let go of heavy baggage that’s holding you back. Now is the time to repent and be saved. Many Christians give something up like wine or chocolate during these 40 days as a daily reminder of what they’re doing without. That seems like a good thing to do, but our daughter Cece used to always say that she was going to give up church for Lent. It’s a good spiritual practice to give up something for Lent, but you must be careful about what you’ll give up. Giving up something for Lent wasn’t something that I ever did until I was a student in seminary. Going through seminary and becoming a pastor can make you a more observant Christian in a lot of ways. Once you’re a pastor, you’re going to church every Sunday. I didn’t realize how many Sundays I wasn’t going to church until I was working every Sunday. Even 4th of July weekend. I also didn’t develop much of a prayer life until I was praying all the time and encouraging people to pray. Likewise, I didn’t tithe until I had to ask people to tithe. Now I start each day with prayer and a devotion, and we give 10% of my income to the church because I can’t stand up here telling you to do those things unless I’m doing them. I also started giving up something for Lent in seminary, and seminary students are competitive, as all students are competitive, but because seminary students are preparing to be pastors, it’s weird the things that seminary students are competitive about. I remember classmates competing over who was giving up the hardest thing for Lent. I was thinking about giving up dessert until I heard that a classmate was giving up meat. Then another was giving up driving a car. For the whole season of Lent, he’d be walking or riding a bike. Someone else was giving up coffee. Another alcohol. Regardless of the severity of what we were giving up, we were all missing the point. What kind of fast does the Lord require? Our second Scripture lesson from the book of Isaiah draws a clear comparison: there are those who fast, who humble themselves, but do so expecting God to notice how hard they’re being on themselves. Don’t fast trying to impress God with your suffering. Jesus warned His followers not to use religious observance to impress anyone. What kind of fast does the Lord require? It was there in our Scripture lesson from Isaiah. Is not this 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 that God’s people labor under. In other words, give up that which stands between you and your neighbor. Give up doing the things that cause your neighbor to resent you. If the way you are managing your business is building resentment among your employees, if they’re complaining about you at the water cooler and behind your back, then change the way you’re managing people. If your family is in conflict, then consider what you’re doing that makes things worse. What are you doing to add to the conflict? Don’t give up chocolate or French fries. Give up resentment, anger, or stress. Don’t give up something that makes you harder to be around than you already are. If giving up coffee makes you grumpy, then keep drinking it. If giving up beer keeps you from hanging out your friends in the neighborhood, then keep drinking it, but if drinking gives rise to anger, then let it go. If you drive your car through the neighborhood and never slow down to greet your neighbors, then consider with me that your car is keeping you so isolated that it’s getting in the way of better relationships. God doesn’t care about fasting for the sake of fasting. The goal of Lent is to consider everything that we’re doing that keeps us from being reconciled to each other. Back to alcohol. If you’ve seen my favorite TV show, Ted Lasso, then you’ll remember in the first season the strained relationship between the young superstar, Jamie Tart, and the aging veteran, Roy Kent. Seating them at the same table for a benefit dinner, Coach Ted Lasso brings over a round of beers and says, “This is either going to make things a little better or a lot worse.” So often, this is the case with alcohol. So many substances and devices in our lives started out as making life a little bit better, a little bit easier. They were fun until they took over so much of our time that they started making our lives worse. Some of our habits are like pet boa constrictors. They’re little and cute and easy to control, but they grow so large that they can suffocate you. What is suffocating you? What is isolating you? What are the bricks that you’re using to maintain the wall between you and your sister? What would it take to bring that wall down? You don’t have to give anything up for Lent. You can start doing something new. I wonder what would happen in your life if you gave up playing Candy Crush on your phone to take up texting a different member of your family every night. I wonder what would happen if you gave up watching TV and started inviting the neighbors over for dinner. I wonder what would happen in your life if you gave up ordering Starbucks coffee in the drive thru in favor of going in and learning the name of the tattooed graduate school student who is working behind the counter. Do you know how fun life can be if you take the ear buds out of your ears to listen and greet the people in your neighborhood? Sara asked me to walk our dog, Izzy, last week, and I was putting the ear buds in my ears so that I could listen to a podcast while I walked, when Sara said, “That’s a good way to let everyone know that you don’t want to talk to them.” I felt a little resentful when she said that. Not only was she asking me to walk the dog, but she was also telling how to walk the dog, but she’s right. What am I doing that is shutting other people out, and why am I doing that when it’s other people that make me happy? Where are your damaged relationships and what can you do about them? Wouldn’t it be nice if you got back together with that friend whom haven’t talked to? Maybe you had a falling out. She said something mean. Then you got defensive. Maybe it all took place on Facebook. As it turns out, Facebook is a good place to destroy a friendship, and it’s not a good place to rebuild one. What if you gave up Facebook for Lent and took up face-to-face meetings with someone whose feelings you hurt? What if you gave up running on a treadmill in your basement and invited your mom to walk the neighborhood with you? Speaking of moms, my mom’s favorite thing is to walk with me around the neighborhood, but when I walk the dog, I just listen to this history podcast about the emperors of the Roman Empire. I don’t need to establish a relationship with any of them. With whom do I need to establish or reestablish a relationship? Which friendships of mine are frayed and why? What are you doing that is taking so much of your energy that when you get home, there’s nothing left for the people you love? Ike Reighard, who runs MUST Ministries, is known to have defined success this way: Success is when the people who know you best, love you most. Do the people who know you best love you most, or would they describe you as distracted, frustrated, and preoccupied? Give up over-functioning. Give up turning on the TV as soon as you walk through the door. Give up listening to the biggest complainers in your office and take up a new practice of writing thank-you notes to the people who make you happy. It’s been said that the opposite of addiction is relationships. We substitute so many substances and so many mindless activities for relationships. Give up the substances. Give up the distractions. And be reconciled to somebody. If we all tried to lay down the grudges, to speak to each other with respect, to try to understand, to be curious rather than judgmental, can you imagine where we would be at the end of these 40 days of Lent? It would be a lot more like Heaven. It would be something like the Promised Land, which is where He’s taking us. Lay down your burdens, your bad habits, your addictions, and follow where He leads. Amen.