We are in the Second Sunday of Lent, a season of the church year for introspection, for examining our lives and how we live. It is a season traditionally associated with fasting and denial, and many of you likely have memories of giving something up for Lent. I am not sure many do it any more, although the recent issue of The Christian Century has a cover-article on the supposed merits of fasting. The idea surrounding Lenten fasting, or denial, is that these rituals have value in focussing us on God and what God wants for us. And so you might have a question about Lenten disciplines, about whether or not you should fast, or give something up, or start a ritual.
Rituals are important.
Rituals can help us do things when we don t want to do them, when we would rather not, even though we know that they are good for us, at least in the long run. But we also know that if a ritual becomes divorced from the reason we started it, if the doing of the ritual has lost connection from what it was originally meant to accomplish, then not only might it not help us, it might also have harmful effects, fooling us into thinking that we are doing something good. And we know, as did Zechariah s contemporaries, that piety disconnected from justice is abhorrent to God. And so I am not telling you anything new if I tell you that if you fast, if you observe a Lenten discipline, then do it only for God, and do it only if it helps you listen, and if that listening leads you to act to further God s ways of justice in the world. None of this is new to you.