Christ the King-Epiphany Church, Wilbraham

The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

March 5, 2025 / Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Because we had our own little Mardi Gras this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about masks.  In the New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition, masks were worn as a sort of disguise so that you could act as foolishly as you wanted without anyone knowing who you were.  The anonymity provided by the mask allowed people to unleash their inhibitions – sometimes in quite raucous ways.  Today, it would seem, that Mardi Gras masks are worn more just to honor the tradition and add to the celebration.  At least that was true at our Mardi Gras.  I didn’t observe any outrageous behavior at our party, even in those who wore the fanciful masks!

But there are other masks that we wear that are much less fanciful, and much more dangerous to our spiritual health. 

Three times in the Gospel, we hear Jesus instructing his disciples not to be hypocrites.  Before the writing of the New Testament, the Greek word hypocrite meant simply “an actor.”  And you may remember from your school days that ancient Greek drama made use of masks to help the actors portray their characters.  So a hypocrite was someone who wore a mask to cover up their true identity so they could become someone else for the sake of the play.  By Jesus’ day, and certainly in our day, the word hypocrite has a negative connotation – of someone who’s play-acting, pretending to be someone they’re not, not for the sake of acting on a stage, but because they’re phony or fake.  Three separate times in today’s lesson from Matthew, Jesus instructs his disciples not to be hypocrites.  When you give alms – when you make donations to help the poor – Jesus says, don’t do it like the hypocrites do, making a big deal out of it so that people will think you’re a really generous person.  When you pray, says Jesus, don’t do it like the hypocrites do, trying to attract attention so that everyone will see how holy you are.  And when you fast – when you make sacrifices – Jesus says, don’t do it like a hypocrite, so that everyone will see how miserable you are and think that you’re very brave and very strong.  Take off the mask, says Jesus.  Don’t act like you’re amazingly generous and holy and brave and strong because you can fool everybody some of the time, but you can’t fool God ever.  And what is more, the dangerous thing about wearing a mask is that, over time, we can begin to fool ourselves.  We can begin to fool ourselves that we really are as righteous as we act like we are.  We lose sight of who we are, where we need to grow, and what we need to change to align ourselves with God’s purpose and plan for us and for this world.  The message of Ash Wednesday is “Take off your mask.”  Receive the ashes on your forehead, the mark of fallibility and sin and death, and remember that the truth is:  you’re not as virtuous as you think you are.

But the message of Ash Wednesday is also “Take off your mask.”  Receive the sign of the cross on your forehead, the sign that marks you as God’s own child, and remember that the truth is:  you’re also more beloved than you think you are.  Sometimes the masks that we wear are to cover our shame.  Jesus speaks in this text about our Heavenly Father seeing in secret – and while I believe Jesus’ words are meant to be comforting, meant to be encouraging of quietly cultivating our lives of faith, I have to admit that, for me, those words are more than a little frightening.  Because there are any number of things that I think and feel and do in secret that I’d rather not acknowledge before God.  I sometimes wear the mask of energy and enthusiasm to hide that, in spite of knowing that I have a God who can do help me do anything, I get weary and discouraged.  I sometimes wear the mask of health and vitality to hide the fact that I don’t always take proper care of the temple that houses my spirit.  I sometimes wear the mask of education to hide that, often times, I have no understanding of what’s going on in the world around me.  I even sometimes wear the mask of “pastor” to hide my struggle to keep my relationship with my Creator at the center of my life.  And I feel shame for those things.  Shame and sadness and unworthiness.  But today I remind myself – and I remind you – that we are loved nevertheless.  We are loved and cherished, precious and valued, treasured and beloved by the one who died so that we could bear this mark (making a cross on forehead).  There is no need to put ourselves down.  God loves us just as we are. 

It’s Ash Wednesday.  Mardi Gras is over.  It’s time to take off your mask and be yourself, your honest self, before your Creator, Savior, and Helper.  Your heavenly Father sees beneath the hypocrisy, sees the secret you you try to hide, and loves you tirelessly, relentlessly, eternally. 

And strengthened by that love, let us now, together, follow the path of Lent, which leads us into right relationships with ourself, our neighbor, and our God.