Starving inside

Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18

A little bizarrely, this Gospel from Matthew, turns up usually on Ash Wednesday. So we get to read a Gospel about not making public acts of devotion, just before we smudge ash all over our heads. As I am not sure it is there with a particular sense of irony I always think it is encouraging up to think about what we are doing and what our real motives are for it.

In this day and age public acts of devotion – standing on the street corner and praying loudly to God whilst dressed in fine robes – is more likely to end up with a chat with the police and possible a psychiatrist than to receive public adulation. So in some ways the comparison is lost on us – I had very little intention of praying loudly or putting ash on my face with any hope of a pat on the back from anyone.

So how does this passage mean anything for us as we go about our daily tasks? Well, at the heart of most human beings there is a competative streak – and this Gospel is talking about being who we are quietly and confidently before God, because God in not interested in us out-doing each other to get God's attention.

Looked at from this angle the Gospel suddenly makes a whole lot more sense to us going about our every day and ordinary lives. It is not so much about the actions which we perform – although it is important to make sure that what we do matches up with what we say we believe – but also the reasons for those actions.

So, the Gospel reaches not just to acts of religious devotion but further into all our lives. The mentality of mine is bigger, better and newer really has no place in our faith and therefore in our lives. And this is completely against everything which we experience in the world in which we live – a world which calls for achievement, exterior beauty and status.

It is easy to become introspective or even proud when we start thinking about this – less becomes the new more and we look down at those who consume more or own more – but this mostive is equally questionable by Biblical standards.

The only motive which really counts in the Bible is that everything we do is directed towards God without real consideration for what anyone else thinks or how they will judge us. This is a true freedom and one which it is hard to aspire to, let alone achieve because it means giving up our tendancy to compete and to look to one another for our self-justification and insteadlook to God as the measure of everything we do.

This may seem a curious method of detachment from the world – but ultimately will lead to a greater engagement with it, as we seek less to make an impression and more to be in relationship with the other. We live in a spiritually hungry time when people are eating food of competative glamour and fame and wondering why they are starving inside.