Praying in Secret

Rebecca Sheridan
Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

    I’ve always appreciated the evening Ash Wednesday service because we can go home quietly after worship and in an hour or so wash our foreheads off without anyone needing to even know that we did this sacred, holy annual ritual.  I feel very self-conscious in thinking about the gospel we just read whenever I receive the ashy cross earlier in the day – am I being like a street corner preacher showing off how faithful I am? How long do I need to keep this thing on – am I denying Christ or “being ashamed of the cross of Christ” if I wash it off quickly? Or am I listening to Jesus’ advice to practice my faith in secret? I’m sure I’m not the only one of you who have had these feelings and questions.
    Jesus is pretty consistently a big critic of outward religious piety that has no inner depth or authenticity.  This Lent, I’d like us to focus on the gift of prayer, and in particular, the prayer that Jesus teaches us, what we call the Our Father or Lord’s prayer.  And I’d like to think of prayer as God’s authentic gift to us rather than something we “should” do from some outward expectation of others.  We begin tonight by remembering what prayer is all about after all:  prayer is a conversation with God, meant to nurture our relationship with God.  One of the biggest reasons people do not pray as regularly as they could is that they think that they are bad pray-ers.  But when it’s a conversation just between you and God, who’s doing the judging that the prayer is “bad?”  And why are we so worried about that?
We’ve all heard pastors at big public events – in weekly worship or at a town hall meeting or recently our president’s inauguration who are very good at praying flowery prayers with impressive words.  Do you sometimes have the feeling like I do that they are praying to be praised by others, not necessarily to strengthen our relationship with God?  Our public examples of prayer don’t tend to nurture or improve our prayer life.  Instead, the first step toward an authentic prayer life is to listen to Jesus. Listen to Jesus’ advice tonight: “go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.”  Prayer is between you and God – quit worrying about everyone else.  And in fact, a prayer to start with doesn’t even need to be your own words.  You can start with Jesus’ words – “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”
    In a few moments, I will mark your foreheads with the sign of the cross in ash, and I will say, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  God says these words to Adam and Eve when he banishes them from the garden of Eden after they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They sin by trying to put themselves in the center so that they might be like God – maybe, even better than God.  After they eat the fruit, they realize they are naked and try to hide themselves from God. They stop talking to God and start blaming each other.  Of course, they quickly realize that there is no where they can go to hide from God – God sees them and sees their sin.  God starts engaging them in conversation again with some questions, to bring them back into relationship with them, even though the relationship is damaged by their sin.  God reminds them that he formed them from the dust, and to dust they shall return.  He puts them in their place.  God is the Creator; we are God’s created ones.  
    God seeks to restore our relationship with him through Jesus, and Jesus comes to teach us a different way of living in relationship with God.  No more running away and trying to hide our sin from God and others, pretending that we are somehow better than we are through our outward appearance of being faithful.  Everything we do in faith, we do for God, not for our egos.  In quiet prayer alone, we can be honest with God without shame OR shall we say, with a healthy sense of shame.  God sees our nakedness and our sin.  God knows we are but dust.  In prayer, we recognize that we are not God.  And when we come to God in this way, humbly in prayer without anyone else needing to know about it – we discover this amazing truth, that in spite of ourselves, our sin, our hypocrisy, our flailing attempts to present ourselves as “better Christians,” God sends his only begotten Son Jesus to die for us, while we were still sinners.  God never gives up on bringing us back into relationship with us, no matter how “bad” we pray.  Jesus comes and teaches us to pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”  The cross is for us – not so we can show off our faith to others, but so we can know how faithful Christ is to us.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.