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Miserable beggars
When you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites…
"Cheer up!" the man said. "Things could be worse." So, we cheered up, and they got worse. If that little anecdote does not at least make you smile, then you obviously look, are, and deserve to be classified as utterly "dismal, like the hypocrites".
So what did the hypocrites look like, then… apart from being dismal? Are all hypocrites dismal, or is that only one manifestation of hypocrisy… or a particular manifestation of religious hypocrisy?
Our word 'hypocrite' has its origin in the Greek word for an actor, and has come to mean somebody whose outward show is but an act, or a total pretence. Hypocrites therefore, like good actors, should be utterly convincing, but it is in accord with Jesus' sense of humour to contrast the fact that although "they disfigure their faces", making themselves unrecognizable, they do so only in order to make their false piety utterly recognizable to anybody who might be impressed by the show. Piety involving contrition and repentance is a private matter between human beings and God, which is why when Jesus fasted, he did so alone, and he did not make a public show of it.
Here are these people – these actors, these dissemblers, these religious hypocrites – putting on a show with a practice whereby abstention is meant to generate a sense of repentance, whereas genuine repentance should result in good works on behalf of others, rather than in an outward show put on like a classical actor's mask to prompt other people to think well of us.
Jesus, being Jewish himself, is well aware of the practice and purpose of sincere fasting and also of God's question that the prophet, Isaiah, posed: Is such the fast that I choose… for a man… to bow down his head like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? [Isaiah 58.5] However, we must also be aware that Saint Paul nowhere in his letters mentions the practice of fasting, because he is writing for a Gentile readership, in whose minds fasting is a particularly Jewish practice.
Here we have to be careful, especially as Christians, and especially on the purposely-named Ash Wednesday. For the Christian practice of the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, although signalling contrition and repentance, is more to do with repentance occasioned by our recognition of our mortality, rather than as a specific adjunct to fasting: You are dust, and to dust you shall return. [Genesis 3.19] The Book of the Psalms is even more clipped, acknowledging before God: Thou turnest man back to the dust…
How Christians begin the season of Lent and what they do throughout it has always been problematic. Most Christians have tended to think that fasting of some sort – the renunciation of a luxury or a pleasure – has an indispensable part to play in Lenten observance. "What are you going to give up for Lent?" they ask. If, however, repentance in the Lenten season ought to manifest itself in good works on behalf of others, rather than in a public demonstration of our own Holy-Joe abstinence, then it might make more sense to buy two Mars bars – one to enjoy as normal, and one to give away to somebody who looks as though they might appreciate it!
Furthermore, if the ashes of Ash Wednesday symbolise our contrition in the light of the recognition of our own mortality, have we not every right to look as dismal as the hypocrites, if not more so? We are going to die, and that is not a particularly pleasant thought. As Woody Allen once said, "It's not that I am afraid to die. It's just that I don't want to be there when it happens." To put it in a scriptural context, the Second Book of Esdras in the Apocrypha records: "But… we grow up with the power of thought and are tortured by it; we are doomed to die and we know it." [2 Esdras 7.64] John Lawrie, in the TV series "Dads' Army", put it even more succinctly – "We're doomed… doomed!" Have we not then every right to look dismal on Ash Wednesday, if not throughout the whole of the penitential season of Lent?
No – we don't! Jesus told us that we have no right to look dismal: When you fast, do not look dismal… It may well be true that, at the time, such an injunction was offered so that Jesus' disciples were not open to the accusation of religious hypocrisy. I have always thought that there was a grave anomaly in renouncing Mars bars for Lent but then stuffing yourself with chocolate eggs on Easter Day. But when twenty-first century Christians take on board the instruction, do not look dismal, it is more on the grounds of the danger of misrepresentation of our faith than of hypocrisy.
When I see a Christian habitually looking dismal, I ask myself the question, "Isn't the Christian faith supposed to bring you joy?" The Gospel – the Good News – of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the promise of eternal life for all those who belong to him, surely offsets the anxiety occasioned by the contemplation of our mortality. We may solemnly acknowledge our mortality, especially on days such as Ash Wednesday, but then we draw our shoulders back and set our jaw in the hopeful assurance of the promise given by Saint Paul that "in Christ shall all be made alive." I am not quite sure that I have the same courage as Saint Paul who claimed that we could "rejoice in our sufferings", but I can share with him the progression of factors which moves from suffering, through endurance and character, and finally arrives at hope.
Of course, you will come across some Christians who respond to our text, do not look dismal, with an unbearable ostrich-like optimism that utterly fails to take seriously the sufferings and doubts and trials of others, and that, as a polar extreme of Christian conduct, must also be incorrect. The best way to proceed through Lent, it seems to me, must be the way that Jesus himself proceeded to Jerusalem – with the dignity of trust in God, with the humble acknowledgement of the cross to be borne, but also with the joyous prospect of the gift of the glory of God's manifestation of salvation on the first day of the week.
I like to try to imagine all the expressions that crossed Christian's face in John Bunyan's story of "The Pilgrim's Progress". They must surely pattern all the expressions that cross our faces as we make our pilgrimage. In Christian's journey, The Slough of Despond was only one chapter of his experiences, and there are times when we too feel the look of despair crossing our faces – but it should not be a daily, habitual expression for Christians, not even throughout Lent: When you fast, do not look dismal… Apart from which, of course, in the interests of balance and fairness across the whole Thames Valley Methodist Circuit, at the western end, the place should be re-translated as The Maidenhead of Despond!
You have your instruction for Lent from the Lord himself, and from one of his preachers: Do not look dismal!