Asceticism and Abundance

Scripture

Psalm for Lent V, 2021, RCL Year B: Psalm 51:1-13

Sermon

Wash me, we pray with David. Cleanse me. Purge me. Teach me wisdom in my secret heart. The one I don’t always listen to, the one that sometimes tells me things that I don’t really want to hear. Teach me to listen to it.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that in all this life, there are times and seasons for different spiritual activities and orientations, where we emphasize one aspect of life or another – a reality brought to the fore of our attention by the liturgical cycle. The church year is one of seasonality: times of pruning, and times of joyous growth; times of death, and times of life; asceticism, and abundance. One the truths we learn to hear in our inward being is that none of these seasons can be separated from its counterpart: growth requires pruning, life abundant requires death. This is a season of asceticism.

Thomas Keating tells us that prayer, in particular contemplative prayer, can be a kind of purgatory. We don’t have a tradition around purgatory in the Episcopal Church, but I think the idea in this life can be a helpful one. Purgatory is where we are purged of that which makes us less than whole, less than complete, less than the reflection of the divine Image that we were created to be. Like medieval images of the flames of purgatory, where we are purified by fire as our sins are burned away, coming face to face with our own selves and our own foibles can be painful. Stripping away pretense can be painful. Truth can be painful. But it also provides a solid foundation upon which to build back up for the coming seasons – it is the rock, rather than the sand of pretense and avoidance.

It is in the ups and downs of daily life, with which we sit in prayer, that the journey – and work – of a Christian life takes place. We are all of us fearfully and wonderfully made in our unique imperfections, beloved of a God who holds out to us always a grace and love that we cannot earn nor become more worthy to receive. Yet we often have remarkable difficulty seeing this, or truly, in our inward being, knowing this. When we glimpse this wisdom, usually through a glass darkly, we are better able to see what is serving us in our life with God and each other, and what is not serving us.

Psalm 51 is traditionally understood to have been written by David after Nathan confronts him in 2 Samuel about his egregious actions towards Bathsheba and Uriah. As such, the psalm shows David having such a moment of clarity: he has done some things which were by any standard completely off the rails, disrespecting life and person, and so sinning against God, at levels both subtle and obvious. Now he sees what his actions have wrought and, rather than avoiding or minimizing his actions and his feelings about them, he sits with and offers to God a pain that is so intense that it feels as if his bones have been crushed. Out of that pain, he prays that God purge him of these sins and create in him a clean heart, a new spirit. He is stripped down, spirit and heart broken and contrite.

This stripping down is asceticism, the practice of releasing that which does not serve us or which is not necessary, and recognizing and holding consciously to that which is necessary and which does serve us and give life. I’m speaking less of traditional old-school monastic asceticism, which many of us may picture as an extreme physical deprivation, but rather of a spiritual discipline whose great season is Lent. Like David, we look at the vine of our lives – both individual and communal -- and consider: what have we grown out of? What habits or ways of thinking or being are dragging us down, or even hurting us? We grow out of all manner of things, sometimes unconsciously: masks we wear, stories we tell ourselves about life and the world and our place in it, perceptions that we have about ourselves and others.

Learning to see those masks, stories, and perceptions is some of our life’s spiritual work.

Keeping only that which is necessary, and purging that which is not, is asceticism. As we see with David, this work can be hard. The Rule of St. Benedict calls us to radical hospitality, to receive all visitors as if they are Christ. In prayer we are called to extend that hospitality to ourselves, even to our crankiest, most selfish, least-likable self – for that self, too, deserves compassion and is beloved of God, and has things to tell us, even if they are things we would rather not hear.

Asceticism doesn’t end with minimalism, but with abundance. We are now entering the final week of Lent proper, anticipating Holy Week and beyond that Resurrection to new life. Abundance, then, is a mindset that grows from the recognition of and gratitude for having those things which are necessary. Sometimes we don’t realize something is necessary until we encounter it! And how abundant life feels when you find something that fills a void of which you were only vaguely aware, but for which you have made room. Carrying around things we do not need doesn’t feel abundant. It feels burdensome. Setting down our burdensome baggage, that sometimes painful and sometimes joyous pruning, makes having life, and life abundantly, a lived reality as we seek to walk, day by day and week by week, alongside Christ.

So I invite you in this final week to pray alongside David with me: LORD, each me wisdom in my secret heart. Accept my sacrifice of a broken and contrite spirit. Purge me with hyssop and create within me a clean heart. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain within me a willing spirit, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

Amen.

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#lent #psalms