Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

The act of giving one’s face to be marked with the sign of the cross in ashes on Ash Wednesday is a bodily declaration (1) that we are all going to die and (2) that even in death Jesus Christ will not leave nor forsake us, indeed, the sign of the cross in ashes is the declaration that there is no “Jesus Christ who is with us” other than the Jesus Christ who was crucified, dead, and buried with us. When Jesus calls us to follow him, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is famous for writing, he bids to come and die. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 6 in particular, lays out for us what a life looks like that has in this way followed Jesus. The followers of Jesus, the baptized, i.e., are to do their hard work as if they had already died and thus had nothing to lose—or gain.

And so, to understand what is entailed in “practicing your piety,” it is helpful to imagine what Jesus is denouncing. What might someone look to gain personally by giving alms or praying or fasting? What Jesus is criticizing in this passage is one’s drawing attention to oneself in these acts, in order in particular to be imagined to be pious. Jesus, the one declaring the words of this sermon, practiced his piety in such a way that no one among the authorities of Jerusalem’s temple would ever have thought of him as pious. Indeed, Jesus’ contact with the unclean people of Galilee and later of Judea broadcasts the very opposite of piety. From every appearance, he was an impious man, a person who did not shrink back from the despised and defiled people of this world in order to preserve his own status among the “pure.” He embraced those people who could only be embraced in a self-defiling sacrifice. To touch a leper, everyone knew, was to become as unclean as was the leper already. To eat with “publicans and sinners,” everyone knew, was to become as unclean as were publicans and sinners. Anyone wanting to get something out of their practices of piety would shrink back in horror from the kinds of deeds Jesus did daily. Their concern is to score points. Jesus’ concern is to be faithful to his heavenly Father, regardless of how difficult that made the rest of his life, regardless of the way it looked, regardless of the damage done to his reputation among those who are vigilant to keep the things of God protected. Jesus was confident that the holy God does not need our help. Jesus was confident that our task is to abandon ourselves to God’s holiness and in that way always go wherever God goes, no matter how far God leads us into the far country.

Our world as it stands is a world “where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.” That is, nobody and nothing gets out of our world alive, intact. You and everyone you know and everything upon which you may place your hand or take in with your eyes will one day crumble into dust. Jesus declares in Matthew 6 that our task is to live in such a way that we have no hope at all except the extraordinarily free God who meets us from the far side of death as God embraces the mutilated body of Jesus lying still in his tomb and raises him from the dead.