Rend Your Heart, by Jan Richardson
As the global Church enters into the penitential season of Lent, we at M25i desire to walk with Jesus and be shaped by His heart for justice, mercy, and for those overlooked among us. For the next forty days of Lent, we invite you to come with us on a journey to discover the heart of God as revealed in Isaiah 58: true fasting.
Won’t you join us?
ASH WEDNESDAY
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.” Isaiah 58:3b-4, NIV
Meena Matocha, Into the Bright Sadness, 2019. Charcoal, ashes, soil, acrylic, and wax, 12 × 12 in.
Today, we enter into the season of Lent through the observance of Ash Wednesday. Christians around the world will gather to examine their hearts, confess their sin, and be reminded of their own mortality.
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In the breathtaking painting above, artist Meena Matocha uses ashes, charcoal, and soil to help us contemplate what it means to enter into Lent: a time for self-examination, for repentance, and for self-denial. Yet it is also a season that looks toward the brightness of Easter. We are not alone in our penitence; Christ is always with us.
Christ is always with the vulnerable, too. At M25i, our mission is to “to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable.” Isaiah 58 describes many of those vulnerable: the oppressed, the hungry, the poor wanderers without shelter, the naked, those bound by the chains of injustice, and those living in the midst of ruin and rubble and despair.
But Isaiah 58 says our fasting is not “true fasting,” if we don't see that workers are being exploited and the weak are being ignored and discarded either intentionally or unintentionally. We are called out for worshipping falsely if we fail to care for those who struggle and suffer, the downtrodden, and the hungry. Might then all our fasting and prayers be for nought?
“You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.”
– Isaiah 58:4b
What a sobering, heartbreaking thought. While Isaiah's words are bracing, they are laced with a beautiful vision of all that our hearts ache for, of what is heart-mending. So, if there are any barriers between our voice and God’s ear, we surely want to do whatever we can to eliminate them. Let us enter into the season of Lent together, discovering both the heart of God for the vulnerable, and the true fasting that He desires, so that all of His creation might flourish together and come into his shalom.
*This phrase is from Orthodox bishop Alexander Schmemann, in his book, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha.