Matthew 6 (NRSVue): 16 “And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.[a]
This year I’m going to try something new for Lent. Instead of giving up a bad habit (which has never worked anyway), I’m going to try adding a Lenten discipline. Instead of spending every last one of my waking hours doomscrolling the news, I’ll take a few minutes and reflect on the gospel readings I hear almost every Sunday morning. It might take my mind off the collapse of Western civilization, at least put it in a broader, more constructive perspective. And who knows? It might even get me back to journaling more regularly.
In these Lenten journals, I’ll be adapting a meditation practice called Dwelling in the Word that I got from my local synod, or regional body, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (I’ve journaled about it HERE.) It’s kind like a simplified version of lectio divina, It can be fairly elaborate, but it doesn’t have to be, and it can be quite flexible.
Our synod, the Central/Southern Illinois Synod, begins its meetings with a f20- to 30-minute DiW session and encourages parishes to use it “at their council and committee meetings, Bible studies, and other gatherings.” At our parish, we use the DiW format at small-group discussions of lectionary readings. It consists of a reading from scripture, followed by three discussion questions:
- What captures my attention?
- What questions do I have? What do I wonder?
- Where might God’s Spirit be nudging us?
I like it because it’s rigorously non-academic. “The purpose of Dwelling in the Word is not about answering questions or getting to particular results but rather allowing ourselves to be present with God’s living Word,” explains the C/SIS how-to page. “Dwelling in the Word does not require a leader steeped in biblical scholarship.” That focus, on the here-and-now, keeps me from getting into the weeds of doctrinal exegesis; more importantly, it invites all of us to apply the gospel readings to our daily life.
Here’s how it works in practice. Sunday mornings after church (and coffee in the narthex after the service), four or five of us meet to go over the pericope, or assigned gospel reading, for the next Sunday. I’ve been taking part in DiW a little more than a year now, and I’m finding it helps me get ready for the next week’s service. (There’s also a fun element there of wondering what’s-Pastor-gonna-do-with-this-mess!) By keeping a week ahead, I’m paying more attention to the ebb and flow of the church year, of how the gospel readings fit together.
Enough preliminaries! Let’s give my new spiritual discipline a test run. Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. DiW is designed to be communal. Participants share their insights first with each other, then with the entire group and, finally, wherever the Spirit nudges them. So what you’re reading is basically me talking to myself.
Since I’m starting this journaling exercise as a Lenten discipline, it makes sense to begin with the pericope for Ash Wednesday. It’s the standard gospel reading for the occasion, and in other years I’ve noticed St. Matthew advises us, “And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting.”
This, on a day when we mark our foreheads with ashes!
Either Matthew had a quirky sense of humor, or a profound sense of paradox. (Matthew doesn’t strike me as a wild and crazy guy, so I suspect the latter.) Either way, when I tracked down the pericope for Ash Wednesday (Matt. 6:1-6 and 16.21) in the New Revised Standard Version (updated edition). I cracked up! You’re going to be journaling about humility, Pete. Better try to be humble.
What did I notice? Here’s what jumped.right off the page at me. The entire passage is very familiar, and solely because of my wry little observation about being admonished not to mark our faces in the context of a service in which our faces are marked as a sign of the Lenten fast.
But, then again, is the paradox meant to be there?
How do we balance these things — things like pride, humility, fasting and observance? Are we meant to hold in tension with each other? I wonder ..
But that’s the next question: What do you wonder?. Before we get to wondering aloud (or in a journal), there’s quite a bit more in this pericope for Ash Wednesday. Most of it is very familiar:
Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven […] So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others.
And so on and so on. Don’t pray in the street either, says Jesus. “But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” All good advice. All advice I wholeheartedly agree with (which may be saying the same thing twice). If nothing else, it suggests to me that churches haven’t changed very much in the last 2,000 years. Nor, in my opinion, have good going-to-church-on-Sunday Christians.
What do I wonder? I guess I’ve always known the part about hypocrites. I grew up in a liturgical church (Episcopal), and even down South we didn’t have sidewalk preachers. But even as a kid I realized the loudest and most self-confident voices I heard expounding doctrine in the popular culture weren’t exactly preaching the same brand of Christianity I was learning in Sunday school.
For a variety of reasons, when I went off to college, I swore off organized religion in a post-adolescent huff. And nothing in the media or the popular culture — reinforced by an antiwar demonstration I attended when President Nixon waxed political at a Billy Graham crusade that led to mass arrests — tempted me to reevaluate my opinion of institutional religion. Nothing I heard from the likes of Jimmy Lee Swaggert, Jerry Falwell or the self-proclaimed religious right matched up with the love-thy-neighbor Christianity of my early formation.
Thirty years later during the 1990s, I was drawn into the Lutheran church my family attended at the time, largely as the next logical step in 12-step recovery program, I read some Luther (I’ve always been kind of a theological nerd), and I was blown away by Luther’s theology of grace and redemption, his insistence we are saints and sinners at the same time (simul iustus et peccator) and, above all, the chorale tradition my father loved. But I came to discern my faith is still basically that of an Anglican table grace I’d learned as a child: bless this food to our use, And us to Thy service, And make us ever mindful of the needs of others. There’s nothing in all the books I’ve read and creeds I’ve studied as an adult theology nerd that explains it better.
And that’s what makes me wonder about the pericope for Ash Wednesay.
The next passage is also familiar. But I’m having a hard time squaring it with my own values — with that Anglican table grace — serve God, be mindful of the needs of others, but be humble about it. There’s just a little whiff of a quid-pro-quo in the passage that bothers me:
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[b] consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust[c] consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
So now I’m back to wondering.
OK, I get it that we’re talking about spiritual treasures here, but what’s this about heaven? I’d like to think I outgrew my adolsecent rebellion a long time ago, but Matthew sounds, just a little bit roo much, of the jakeleg preachers I heard on 500-watt radio stations back iu Knoxville: Do right, and you’ll get into heaven. Drink, smoke or go out danc9ng, and you’ll land, kersplash, in an eternal lake of fire and brimstone. I was kind of a snotty kid, and now I realize there’s more to popular Christianity than my adolescent stereotypes, and I really shouldn’t judge anyone else’s religion. According to Pew Reports, 72 percent of Americans believe in heaven, i.e. a “place where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded.” Who am I to say they’re all wrong, and I’m the only one who gets it right?
But aren’t there better reasons to lead a good life? How’s about doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do?
I’ll have to sit with this for a while. I want to know more about the fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), for example, in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. And what’s the old saying? Virtue is its own reward.
Where might the Spirit be nudging me? Here’s something I like about Dwelling in the Word: About half the time, I’ll go into a session with my mind made up about the passage. But, especially in a group setting, the DiW quedtions — what did I notice? wonder? where is the Spirit nudging me? — lead to other questions. After all, as the synod’s intro puts it, the “purpose of Dwelling in the Word is not about answering questions or getting to particular results but rather allowing ourselves to be present with God’s living Word.”
So at least the Spirit is nudging me — obviously — to take another look at Galatians.
[Uplinked Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026]
Ordinary Time 
