Each year, at the beginning of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, we hear this passage from Matthew’s Gospel, an extract of the famous “Sermon on the Mount” where Jesus reminds the crowd of the basics of Jewish piety: Giving alms, praying and fasting. If you remember from last Sunday, we said that Jesus was the “new Moses” and this is certainly how Matthew wants us to think of Jesus with this long discourse: Jesus comments the Mosaic Law. As Christians, we have often come to think that Jesus gives us “a new law”, a law of love, that abolishes the law of Moses, but it isn’t true in Matthew’s thinking, besides the law of Moses is certainly a law of love! In this passage, what Jesus does, as he reminds the people of the basics of their faith, is that he invites them to think more deeply about the meaning of the law – the ultimate reason why they should obey the law and the reason why they were given the law in the first place: to love their neighbor, and in this very passage more specifically, to love God – they should practice their piety in order to build a relationship with God.
It is interesting if you think about it, because in everyday life, nobody cares about the reason why we obey the (civil) law: We just have to follow the rules. For example, there are different reasons why one would obey the traffic regulations. Maybe because they want to be safe, or they want to protect their family, or maybe they are very altruistic and they worry they could injure someone on the road. Or maybe they respect traffic regulations just because they can’t afford a ticket or lose their insurance bonuses. But in regard to the authorities, the source of our motivation does not make a difference, it does not matter why one obeys the rules as long as they obey the rules. It shouldn’t be the same with the religious law though. Actually, Matthew’s passage invites us to realize that it is completely different: Motivation, the reason why we do the things we do as religious people is everything. Jesus points out to the people who act religiously for all the wrong reasons – mainly because they want to be righteous people in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. If they obey the law for those reasons, yes, they have “their reward”, they get what they aim for: they can think well of themselves and enjoy a good reputation. And yet, if they act for the wrong reasons, they will miss the entire point of the law, that is to open their hearts and to draw them closer to God.
Jesus “discusses the law” not to give us a new law – the law remains the same. If you look up right before our passage, this is what Jesus says (Chapter 5:17): “Do not think that I have come abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished”. What Jesus does is that he invites the crowd to think about the reasons why they do the things they do, and it’s really a thread in all the Gospels, in Jesus’s sermons, and in his parables: Jesus invites people to examine their lives, to think about what they do and to do it for the right purposes.
This is also what we are called to do, throughout all of our lives but more specifically during Lent. Maybe we cannot live questioning everything we do, all the time – but as days go by and routine takes over, at some point we need to stop and to wonder. This is why Lent is a time of self examination. It does not mean that we have to accuse ourselves with all the sins we can think of (although we are certainly invited to confess our sins) it’s about revisiting the meaning of our lives and our religious practices: How can our religious practices help us build a life of faithfulness to God? Jesus shows us that it is not enough to be religious, because sometimes religion can become a circus, a “show”, and a trap. Jesus tells the crowd that we can be religious for all the wrong reasons, mainly out of hypocrisy, and we can think of other reasons: we may act religious because we want to please others, or maybe just because that’s the way we were brought up, what we have always done. Or we can live a religious life out of fear. There are many, many reasons. Again, Jesus reminds us that the only reason why we have a religious life, why the law was given to the people, is to bring us closer to God.
And so, I am telling you all this because on Ash Wednesday, most often, we are preoccupied with “what we are going to do during Lent”: What devotion will we take on, what earthly pleasure will we give up, what kind of money will we give away. Sometimes it can make our heads spin. And yet, if we look at the Gospel, it’s very simple. Jesus shows us that we don’t have to be fancy or make it complicated – another trap of religious life. But in all of our giving, praying and fasting, whatever we decide to do, Jesus invites us to do it to please God and to please God only – that’s the reason why we should do it “in secret”, to make sure we don’t have ulterior motives. In short, we are invited to redirect our piety, to purify our intentions. Jesus’s teaching is meant to free us from all the superficiality that clutters our lives so we can be in a genuine relationship with God: This is the “reward” that is promised to us “in heavens”, not only in a future life, but even right here, right now, experiencing the joy that comes from heavens to earth when we open our hearts to God and live in God’s friendship.