When I was a kid, I had some masks I would play with—cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo. I used to love putting the masks on, mucking around, and pretending I was on TV. Back then, wearing a mask was a novelty, but in recent times we’ve all had to get used to the idea of wearing masks, thanks to COVID. Some people sought to make the most of this restrictive situation, coming up with all kinds of clever and humorous designs. You can now get masks with a screen-printed image of any personality you can think of, such as George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Mr T, Anni-Frid from Abba, Robert Redford, Marilyn Monroe, Denzel Washington and John Cleese. The options are endless, but simply put, today you can put a mask on and pretend to be just about anyone you like.
The wearing of masks goes back a long way. In the ancient theatre, actors wore masks to play particular roles. The literal name for an actor who wore a mask to do this was a ‘upokrithV’—a hypocrite.
That’s a word we hear in tonight’s Gospel reading. Jesus refers to the ‘hypocrites’: those who appear spiritual and righteous on the outside, but inwardly they are not righteous at all. It is as if they have put on a mask to play a role. Their hearts are far from God, for their acts of piety are not even directed to God. The elite religious performance of such people is for self-gain; the only reason they are doing these things is to be noticed by others to gain their attention and admiration. When their mask-wearing, play acting results in attention from others, they have got the reward they have hoped for. That’s a sad thought, because all they have received is fleeting attention from others, but not any blessing from God.
This was a problem for God’s people well before the days Jesus spoke about this in Matthew 6. In the Old Testament reading from Joel, God issued a call through the prophet for the people to repent—to turn to the Lord with fasting and weeping. The situation was urgent! The dark and dreadful day of the Lord was coming. There is no excuse! Even newlyweds and nursing mothers are to make returning to the Lord an urgent priority; a matter of life or death. Blackness will cover the land as the vast army of locusts descend as one to strip the fields. They will devour and destroy all the crops, so that there can no longer be an offering to the Lord. God had said that the people: “…draw near with their mouth and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13). He detested their fake worship so much that he would bring an end to it.
The people followed the religious rituals as a mechanical performance, while at the same time turning aside to the inanimate objects of their pagan neighbours, enthroning dumb blocks of wood as their spiritual guides. They had engaged in the most abominable of practices and had forsaken the most vulnerable and needy, all the while going through external religious motions they thought would be pleasing to God.
God had had enough! The people were to be real with him—to remove their masks. The dark and terrible Day of the Lord was fast approaching. The people are to repent. But instead of habitually tearing their garments as was the cultural religious practice for mourning, God wants them to be real with themselves and with him. Instead of tearing their garments, they were to rend their hearts open, emptying them of all their sinful attitudes, motives and deeds:
“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Rend your heart
and not your garments” (Joel 2:12-13).
As King David wrote in Psalm 51, only a broken and contrite heart is an acceptable sacrifice to God—not external displays of religion or attempted righteousness. After Davids’s shocking sin of sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband Uriah killed in the front line of fighting, God sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke him. Psalm 51 is King David’s sorrowful confession. David realised nothing he could do would cover up his transgression. He says to God: “You are right in your verdict and justified when you judge”. David knows that there is nothing within his own resources to cause God to take notice of him and pardon him.
When I wore playtime masks as a child, everyone else went along with the game, all the while knowing it was really me under the mask. After a while the fragile plastic masks became brittle, and began to break up, and the elastic perished and pulled away from the masks. They were stapled and taped, and stapled and taped, over and over again, until they could be worn no longer.
As we hear tonight’s readings, we might be thankful that we have not sinned in such a serious way as King David, committing adultery and setting someone up to be killed. But Jesus brought the law to its sharpest point—even the very thought of these things is sinful. How might we be trying to persevere with wearing masks before God? Where is our conscience pricked by God’s word to be real with him? What in our hearts do we attempt to conceal safely from others, and God? Like brittle masks break and crumble, the masks of human making will not endure in God’s presence.
God has a better way for us than covering up: to return to the Lord, and have our heart washed and made whole. The basis on which Joel makes his appeal to the people to show genuine, heartfelt repentance and return to the Lord is God’s own compassionate nature:
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity” (Joel 2:13).
It is the same basis on which King David appeals to God. David doesn’t appeal to the good things he has done, or the circumstances around his actions, or promise what he will do better in the future. He doesn’t even place his confidence on how righteous his prayer might sound. His appeal for God’s mercy and compassion is on the basis of God’s own character revealed in scripture—that he is gracious, compassionate and full of steadfast love:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
In the season of Lent, when there has historically been a focus of giving something up out of devotion to God, it is God who has given up far more than we ever could, that we might have forgiveness, life and salvation. God gave up his own Son for you. That is how you know that he is gracious and compassionate.
This is what the ancient custom of the application of Ashes proclaims again tonight. The application of ashes on us reminds us that “dust we are and to dust we shall return.” Life is fleeting, and we are frail and mortal. We are completely and utterly dependent on God for every single breath.
But we receive the ashes on our head in the shape of a cross to symbolise the love and grace God has for us. It says that although you will return to dust, you belong to God in Christ who has redeemed you and washed away all your sin. The one who can make dust live will make our mortal bodies live when he raises them on the last day. The sign of the Cross links us to the sign of the Cross which was made over your forehead at your baptism as a sign that “Christ the crucified has redeemed you”. It was there, at the font, that in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of the saving benefits of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were delivered to you personally, and you were washed and made whiter than snow.
As you go tonight, you have so much more than the mark of the Cross on your forehead. You have the power of the Cross at work in your heart; the power of God who has overcome sin, death and the Kingdom of darkness for you. As you go, bearing the mark of the Cross, this power leads you proclaim to the world that God is not play acting, but that he has come down to earth, to be real with us. He is real about sin and evil, about salvation and love. His heart for the world, and for you, is genuine and true.
For God did not wear a mask, but he put on the human flesh of Jesus, to humble himself, and become obedient unto death, even death on a cross. The Cross is where the dark and dreadful day of the Lord arrived, and his wrath on sin is satisfied, and his love for the world magnified. For that is where Jesus died to blot away all transgressions by his holy and precious blood. As we begin the season of Lent, look to the Cross and see that is where you can be sure of God’s unfailing love and great compassion for you. Look to the Cross and see that that is where God laid bare his heart for you. Amen!
