Co-missioners,
Two weeks ago we sent you a reflection on Ash Wednesday by Marcus Kunz. It was one third of a submission that included extended discussions of the Gospel and Epistle for the day, each framed by the assumptions laid out in the opening section, the one you got.
Today we send you Section Two. It’s Marcus’ discussion of the Ash Wednesday gospel, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21. We trust you’ll receive it as a word for the entire season of Lent. Read closely. Marcus digs deeply for God’s Good News in Christ in a way that too many readers of this text fail to do. Expect to be refreshed!
Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community
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When the Cross Made with Ashes Frames Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21,
the Gospel for Ash Wedesday
by Marcus Kunz
Christ Pantokrator in the apse of the Cathedral of Cefalù, Sicily, Italy. Mosaic in Byzantine style.
From Wikimedia Commons
The Sermon on Mount has most often been interpreted as Jesus’ radicalizing restatement of the Law which even so and paradoxically is “good news” because it promotes a truer righteousness than the universally condemned hypocrisy of “practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” (Mt 6:1). As an adjunct college instructor, I myself have taught that this first of Matthew’s five major teaching sections describes a truer righteousness than what was then and still is accepted as righteous or just (same Greek word for both: dikaios), and that one element of this truer righteousness is the internalization that gives it the integrity of congruence between “inner” devotion and “outer” behavior. Yet, if this righteousness is still understood as a human accomplishment or endeavor (“our spiritual warfare,” “your Lenten discipline”), then I think the fullest significance of this reading, especially for Ash Wednesday, is obscured.
A more fully promising hearing comes with having ears attuned to the promises in the Sermon on the Mount that are often neglected or even actively ignored. Although the Sermon undoubtedly radicalizes the Law’s demands, at the same time it is wrapped and laced with promises, beginning with a series of profoundly promising blessings too often reframed as aspirational goals: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” etc. (5:3-12). Similarly, a kind of aspirational perfectionism reads the verb esesthe in the verse immediately preceding this reading as a present imperative (“be perfect”) rather than as a future indicative (“you will be perfect just as your Father in heaven is,” 5:48). Either reading is grammatically correct. Everything depends on how the context is framed; that is, how the eyes are focused or the ears attuned.
When ears are more attuned to what God promises to do, then this reading can sound different than the familiar exhortation to more rigorous ethical living and more sincere private devotion. While a warning against superficial piety remains, the remedy is found in an entirely different actor. The repeated refrain “your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (6:4, 6, 18) holds two keys to who this actor is and how this actor acts.
- First, “your Father…will reward you.” Framing and context matter. The dominant framing for so many passages like this in the Scriptures is what Luther called the opinio legis—the assumption that a transactional God gives or withholds “rewards” on the basis of behavior defined by laws or “dictates” or whatever. It is, after all, how we ourselves use “rewards”: as a motivator for changing or at least directing behavior.
Rather than plug in our 21st-century usage of “reward,” I think it makes more sense to look at Jesus’ own usage in this Sermon, according to Matthew. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward (misthos) is great in heaven” (5:12). The ancient usage does indicate that misthos means some kind of payment, although it could be either what we might call an “award” or a “punishment.” Jesus, however, uses this word to describe the blessing that comes to people not on the basis of performance but simply for who they are (what today is often called an “entitlement”). The cause for rejoicing is that unexpectedly this blessing (perhaps more helpfully translated as “award”) comes to those who experience destitution, devastation, and persecution simply because of who they are: the recipients of God’s promises, the people whom God chose for the entitlement of being blessed with God’s own favor.
(There is a complex of philological, historical, hermeneutical, theological and pastoral reasoning in this preference to translate and understand misthos less as “reward,” more as an undeserved “award.” Briefly, in the Apology Melanchthon acknowledges the Augustinian and Thomistic theme that “God crowns his own gifts in us.” However, while that may address a problem about the idea of merit, it does not capture the full depth of God’s mercy in Christ for sinners. “We are not engaging in a mere war over words … There are very serious reasons for arguing over this … We are compelled to rebuke the Pharasaic opinion of the opponents, both in order to proclaim the glory of Christ and to present firm consolation to consciences” (Ap IV.356ff; Kolb/Wengert, pp. 170-172). What’s at stake is the God who chooses in Christ to justify the ungodly, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom 4:17, 5:6-11). Similarly, Luther: “This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good upon the bad and needy person” (Heidelberg Disputation, LW 31:57). In Christ God makes unmerited awards in the places of sin and death.)
- Second, “your Father who sees in secret (en kryptō).” Today terms like “performative activism” or “virtue signaling” are used to name (and, as usual, condemn) what Jesus called “practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.” Any careful observer can see what is happening in such practices: less a sincere attempt to help others or serve the common good than a desperate attempt to deflect scrutiny and to cover or keep hidden those things in ourselves of which we are ashamed…or at least that we know others will find deserving of contempt and exclusion.
From Canva
God sees that. God sees the often desperate attempt to deflect attention. God sees what is en kryptō, what is hidden, usually hidden in a well-fortified place, as in a cave or crypt. The English translation “in secret” accurately captures the intention to prevent discovery, but it fails to convey the desire to fortify against any discovery. This hiding is not merely using wrapping paper or a thin sheet to cover a happy surprise, or even mere camouflage that hides in plain sight temporarily in certain contexts. En kryptō signals the kind of hiding when someone wants things buried as in a crypt or undiscoverable as in cryptography. God sees that, the creatures who have gotten a glimpse of what they have become—crucifiers—and who want to hide.
- In that sense God knows human beings even more deeply than they know themselves. “O Lord, you have searched and known me … you discern my thoughts from far away…and are acquainted with all my ways” (Ps 139).
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Ps 139:11-12)
Such exposure can be terrifying, and yet God sees what the anxiously hiding crucifiers do not. In what Luther called “the hiddenness of the cross” God sees human creatures as no one else would or could. They are creatures who, in spite of their rejection in the crucifixion of Jesus, remain as deeply beloved as children are to parents whose love lives beyond rejection. They are the creatures loved by a crucified love—no, a crucified lover—risen from the dead.
I have no doubt that Miss Manners (Judith Martin, a theologian I’ve cited on occasion) would approve of a caution against using charitable giving, public worship, or the latest dietary fad as vehicles for self-promotion on social media. It’s good advice for polite living. This reading, however, has much more to say: God sees the crucifiers who are trying to hide from what they can only infrequently acknowledge about themselves, and in that hiding place God promises unexpected blessing. Again, Psalm 51 provides a fitting prayer. “You desire truth in the inward being / therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart” (Ps 51:6). To hear how, contrary to expectation, God is awarding life in the places of death is indeed blessed wisdom to be brought to our hiding places.
