Virtue of Forgetfulness (2019-03-06, Ash Wednesday)

ASH WEDNESDAY 2019.MARCH.06

•  Joel 2:12-18 • Psalm 51 • 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2  • Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 •

Title: Lent / Forgetfulness

[__01__]     Is forgetfulness a virtue?  Many years ago, I was at a taxi stand … like at an airport or train station where there are many taxis waiting. There was no Uber. It was not a reserved car, just a car and driver that happened to be there when I was.

At the end of my ride, I accidentally dropped my wallet in the back of the taxi. The next passenger found this and gave it to the driver. The driver went to great lengths to find me, going to the building where I was, but could not find me.

So, the whole day, I am anxious and without my wallet, i.d./license, credit cards. Somehow, I did get home that evening.

When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine. Remember those with the red blinking light. The driver had looked up my address and and phone number and told me how to find him.

          When I later offered to give him a reward, he adamantly refused, telling me all the reasons it would not be right, that he had a responsibility to return what was valuable and belonged to me.

          And, in this case, he gave me an example of both integrity and charity which Jesus expresses in the metaphor/symbol:  “do not your left hand know what your right is doing.” (Matthew 6:___)

So, it seemed that with his right hand he was delivering what I valued… and with his left hand was deleting any text or record of it.

[__02__]     Lent, on the one hand, begins with PRECISION that we better take and follow from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday …

          … the abstaining of meat and fast of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and the abstaining from meat on Fridays of Lent.

          But, is LENT, are the 40 days of Lent, simply a precision or basketball shot clock that runs out after March Madness?

          Is it simply a list of drills to complete or days to cross off on the calendar. 1 down, 39 to go. Check.

[__03__]      Yes, there is PRECISION in Lent.

          Yet, there is also a PARADOX in Lent and a PARADOX in the Gospel of Ash Wednesday.

          A paradox about remembering to do certain things…but also forgetting about them or hiding them so that they will not be seen or ostentatiously advertised.

          The taxi driver handed me back my wallet and went to some trouble to get it back to me, but he still did not want his left hand to know what his right was doing.

[__04__]     This taxi driver remains, to me, an example of almsgiving or charity. 

          Lent is not necessarily a time for us to figure how much to give away, but to forget how much we may have already given, to start over.

[__05__]      Sometime in the next 48 hours or 40 days, I might meet someone in need of my time or energy or something.  Will my attitude be – “I already gave..I have already given so much.”

          And, can I put aside my curiosity and criticism to forget what I have already given and simply ask what I can do next?

          Do not let your left hand know what your right is doing.

[__06__]      In the Lenten practice of fasting …

          In order to persevere in a sacrificial action – or a fast – it helps if we can stop keeping score or keeping track.

          If you consider, for example, that when you endeavor to love someone – even someone who might make you anxious or upset – are there not moments when you forget what is troubling you?

          St. John of the Cross wrote, first in Spanish:    “donde no hay amor, pon amor y sacarás amor”

“where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love.”¨

          But…I suggest in order to put love in a place where there is no love, we may have to forget – or try to forget or forgive – what has gone before.

          Fasting not just about remembering to do things, it is also about self-forgetfulness,

          Fasting is also about forgetting our own agenda, our own contentment, at least for a little bit of a time.

[__07__]   I lost my wallet in a taxi. I returned to that taxi stand several times. It was a taxi stand at which many people connect with many taxis at every moment.

          So…I was fortunate, blessed in that experience, the humility and generosity of the driver.

          Of course, it is nice to be connected with lost objects. Lent and later Easter is a time of recovery.

          But , not simply a time of material or physical recovery at which we get back what we lost, but we get back something better, something more, new life, mercy, forgiveness.

          In Lent, we are trying to connect personally with God, with Jesus as a person, and with our neighbors, with the others in our lives. Personally.

          It’s good to be reunited, reconnected personally … but at the end of our fast, we are not simply trying to connect with lost objects or lost conveniences, but with a person as well  - the person of our Savior who loves us so much that he too “conceals” his divinity giving up his life so that we may live, taking our sins away as far as the east is from the west.

          This importance of the person and the personal was driven home when, 3 weeks later, at the same taxi stand, where there were many cars and potential passenger, I actually found myself with the same driver on the same route. [__fin__]