“Looking long and deeply into the eyes of Jesus”

Image Credit: Ash Wednesday by Carl Spitzweg: the end of Carnival

Ash Wednesday, Year C
5 March 2025

Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 51:1-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

In most cities in Canada Christianity exists in two solitudes, so-called mainliners are one, evangelicals and charismatic Christians the other. I am not certain where Orthodox Christians fit in this equation. These two solitudes usually meet separately, almost as if we did not share a common faith.
When we were in Abbotsford there was only one meeting of Christian clergy. We gathered once a month around a theme and a lunch, and while I was part of the minority, I still believed and felt that I was among siblings.
At one such meeting we talked about homelessness. A young pastor of a charismatic church stood up and told us how he had invited this young homeless man to stay with him and his young family. The story did not mention issues of safety for his wife and children. He told us how he had not realized his guest’s addiction issues and could not understand why the young man was wetting his bed every single night. Eventually he figured out that if the stuff you are on is too strong, you won’t wake up to go to the bathroom.
Even while I was aghast at this young pastor’s naivete concerning the safety of his family, I admired his compassion for the person he had met in the street and for his courage to tell the story to the rest of us, for he did not come away looking particularly wise.

The prophet Isaiah is quoted frequently in the Gospels. It is the book of the Tanakh most frequently quoted in the New Testament. Only a few weeks ago we heard Jesus read Isaiah 61 in his hometown synagogue. You know,
“¹⁸The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
…. has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
… to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Other passages we know are “the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Matthew 1 and Isaiah 7), and “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,” (Matthew 4 and Isaiah 9), and in the healing of many, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” (Matthew 8 and Isaiah 53). All four evangelists are quoting the voice in the wilderness from Isaiah 40 to introduce John the Baptist.

Today’s reading from Isaiah is perhaps lesser known, though it should not be. While Jesus or evangelists do not reference it directly, Jesus often speaks in the spirit of Isaiah 58. In Matthew 9 Jesus responds to his critics by telling them to “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” This particular quote is from Hosea 6 but it is entirely in the same spirit as our reading from Isaiah 58:
⁶Is 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?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

It is the demand to bring the homeless poor into our house that made me think of the young pastor’s story I told at the beginning. Of course, that story provides the perfect rationalization not to follow the demand of the Lord, after all, the task is too great and our means are too small, and so we are justified in restricting our faith to acts of personal piety that make us feel better. For the rationalization that prevents us from acting for and with others reduces our faith to a small personal faith. That our piety has become an end in itself is precisely the charge of the Lord:
“Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practised righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they want God on their side.”¹
Their faith sees God as a means to an end.

And so we have a dilemma and whenever you have a dilemma it is best to face it for ignoring it will not make it go away.

In 2012 Koinonia Farm celebrated what would have been the 100^th birthday of its founder Clarence Jordan. That summer someone had brought invitations to a conference I was at. The festivities included Sunday School class with Jimmy Carter. How I would have loved to have gone!
Jordan and his wife Florence had founded Koinonia Farm in 1942 as a place where black and white could live and work together. They sought to create a community that was committed to racial integration, nonviolence, a simplified lifestyle, sharing of possessions, and stewardship of the land and its resources. They articulated three principles for their life together:
• All people are related in God’s eyes.
• Live in accordance with Christ’s love.
• Common ownership – distribution based on need, not profit.²

Considering what they sought to be and the time in which they did so, it does not surprise us that throughout the 1950s and early 60s, Koinonia Farm faced threats, property damage, excommunication from churches, Grand Jury investigations, and economic boycotts.
Also, considering their thoughtful and committed approach it does surprise us that in 1948 Jordan writes, “You can’t put Christianity into practice. You can’t make it work.”
But he continues, “For Christianity is not a system you work – it is a Person who works you. You don’t get it; he gets you. Jesus said, “I am…the life” (John 14:6). Now life isn’t something you try out for a while and then exchange for something else if it doesn’t prove practical. You either have it or you don’t. And if your Christianity is the kind that has to be ‘worked,’ you don’t have the real thing.
For when you look long and deeply into the eyes of Jesus, that compulsion of love falls on you, and you find yourself vowing that you would follow him and serve him – practical or impractical, wise or foolish, for better or worse – unto the death.”³

That Jesus gets us is more than the advertising campaign run at the Super Bowl, rather, it is like ownership. We belong to Jesus. We are his. And understanding that we belong to Jesus means that we don’t pray to get things, prayer is not a means to an end, and we don’t praise God for God’s vanity but because we are in love with God.
And being in love with God we do what God would have us do, not because it is practical or expedient but because we love him who loved us first.
So, in a time in which social justice is often sacrificed for “economic” reasons, for political expediency, or because people mistake democracy for the rule of the majority, it is important that we continue to love what God loves, which means that our devotion to God requires us to be concerned about economic justice. (v.7)

In this sense, Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are not about deprivation but about looking deeply into the eyes of Jesus, an act that rearranges our priorities, for social responsibility is a Kingdom value. Walter Brueggemann writes that the neighbourly actions urged by our reading (and enacted at Koinonia Farm) require a decision against self-indulgence, thus they are a fast, and the devotion God desires is solidarity that troubles with the elemental requirements of economic life for every member of the community.⁴ They transcend the private and self-serving piety for which God has no regard.

And in looking long and deeply into the eyes of Jesus, over the next six weeks, we give God room to rekindle our love, love not just for God but for the world God loves.

Amen.