Ash Wednesday: Practicing Spiritual Disciplines

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17


Psalm 103

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10


Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The context of the book of Joel is a plague of locusts, one of the many which periodically struck the Ancient Near East, and which strikes the area occasionally even today.  There was little that could be done when such strikes occurred, and like many of his contemporaries Joel is inclined to understand them as divine punishment, beyond human control.  Moreover, he sees the crisis in the context of a greater one – the day of the Lord’s coming, “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!” (Joel 2:2), and his call to the people is the age old call of the prophets:  “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart….Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful.” (cf. Joel 2:12,13)  How often is this pattern evidenced in the Scriptures, when the call for holiness and right living is actually a last ditch attempt to save ourselves;  that pattern which shows people self-reliant, even cocky, when the affairs of life are going their way, but crying to God – seemingly attempting to bribe God with all sorts of self-disciplines – when they meet crisis or disaster? 

However, the spiritual life must be something more than merely a simplistic response to crisis, merely more than acts to appease the “wrath” of God or to change the course of a impending tragedy.  No, the best in our tradition have always known and lived the truth that the spiritual life is a disciplined journey towards God, a journey of self-awareness and of relationship, regardless of the crises we may encounter and certainly not to be set aside in times of ease.  Its purpose is relationship with God and transformation of self, in order to make ourselves transforming agents in the world.  We can sometimes forget that is the true aim of religion – certainly of Christianity: relationship and transformation. 

In speaking of the three classical spiritual disciplines – fasting, prayer and almsgiving – Jesus certainly understood them as disciplines we practice for the “long haul”, as it were.  He does not call us to them in response to  crisis or disaster, neither does he allow us to use them for anything other than relationship with God and transformation of self.  Indeed he specifically points out how useless they become when we make their practice into self-congratulatory badges or marks of social standing, the opposite of self-knowledge.  In this case they have no eternal or lasting benefit at all.  No, the practice of spiritual disciplines are for building a way of life, they for are discerning and directing the heart, our inner desires.  They are for figuring out what it is we really value, and for helping us to make those values the priority of our lives.  They are for stripping away the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, and coming to face to face with the reality of who we are or have become, regardless of the unpleasantness we may see.  They are for helping us to see ourselves, the world and others as God does.  In his book, Finding our Way Again, Brian McLaren writes that “Spiritual practices [disciplines] are about life, about training ourselves to become the people who have eyes and actually see, and who have ears and actually hear, and so experience…not just survival but life [sic].  He then adds, “Spiritual practices are ways of becoming awake and staying awake to God….[T]hey can help reshape us for a more intentional, and perceptive way of living.”

Spiritual disciplines are just that – disciplines, ways that make us better disciples.  They are not occasional activities into which we dip, but deliberate practices in which we engage so as to go deeper; deliberate and interior attitudes we develop by doing certain acts, performing certain actions.  Dabbling will not do, if we are serious about practicing spiritual disciplines they must become for us the stuff of life, everyday life, gently but intentionally shaping those lives in a God-ward direction, purposefully molding our hearts along the paths of gentleness, humility and compassion.  Throughout Lent, we will be focusing on various of the traditional spiritual disciplines or practices, and perhaps encountering and engaging with new ways of entering more deeply, walking more intentionally, in the way of discipleship.

Re-visiting now the words from Joel, we can see hear them in a new light, far removed from the context of fear and appeasement: “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart….Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful.” (cf. Joel 2:12,13)  Engaging in the intentional and careful practices of spiritual disciplines, we find ourselves not just returning to God, but being transformed slowly, yet deliberately, by a God-ward posture.  Our coming to God ought not to be in episodes or on account of fear or crises, but the on-going journey of our lives, a constant turning and returning, as we direct our whole selves towards the divine.  Equally, Lent ought not to be a season when we alter our behavior for a time, but instead the opportunity to discern consciously how our behavior determines the direction of our lives, how it reveals our values and priorities; and to commit ourselves to practices and disciplines that will help mold and shape our lives in the ways we want them to go, in ways consistent with what we profess, in order that where are treasure is, there our hearts will be also. (cf. Matthew 6:21)