Ash Wednesday

There was a common ruse among con artists in Ireland many years ago. These guys would place a ring which looked expensive, but was in effect virtually worthless, in a public place where someone was sure to find it. This ring in the Irish dialect was called a “fawney.”

Sure enough, sooner or later, someone would come along and discover the ring, thinking they had found something quite valuable. Invariably this person would look around, fearing that the real owner might see their find and come to claim it. Then, suddenly from out of nowhere, the con artist would appear. He would then persuade or frighten his victim into paying him to keep quiet about their find.  Making off with hush money, the con artist would leave the sucker holding this practically worthless ring.

So many people were defrauded in this way that anything fake came to be called fawney.  This was later Americanized into the word phony.

Nobody likes a fawney, or a phony—someone who looks like the real thing but is, in truth, simply an imitation.

An Italian newspaper carried a story about a young couple in Milan who seemed particularly devoted in their worship. The priest at the cathedral there reported that the pair spent an hour or more on a regular basis sitting before a statue of the Virgin Mary. The priest was impressed by their piety.

Turns out, this young couple was actually recharging their cell phone. They had noticed a stray electrical outlet sticking out of the wall behind the statue of the Virgin Mary. Whenever their phone’s power supply dwindled, the young couple came to the church and re-charged it from the outlet behind the BVM.

We talk about coming to church to “re-charge our batteries” spiritually, but not literally. What looked to the unobservant eye like an act of piety was just a self-serving ploy to save money. This young couple was using the church for their own needs. And we’re shocked, shocked, I tell you – until we realize that we may be guilty of the same mistake.

Nobody likes a phony.

In today’s Gospel from Matthew, Jesus says, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So, when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.”

Later in this same chapter he adds, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting.”

Mark Twain once had a certain acquaintance who had managed somehow to combine the appearance of piety with several unsavory practices in his business life. Somehow he was blind to the incongruity.

“Before I die,” this man proclaimed publicly, “I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There I will climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.”

“I have a better idea,” Mark Twain remarked. “Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them.” Twain knew the man’s heart.

Phoniness is particularly deadly when it comes to the business of following Jesus.Many people have been turned off to Christ because they have had an encounter with a blatantly phony Christian.

Years ago in Germany, there was a young Jewish boy who admired his father and sought to imitate his father’s acts of piety and devotion as prescribed by Judaism. This father was zealous in attending worship and religious instruction and demanded the same from his children.

When the boy was a teenager, the family was forced to move to another town in Germany. After the move, this Jewish father announced to the family that they were going to join the local Lutheran church. When the stunned family asked why, the father explained that all the leading families in the community belonged to that Lutheran Church and it was good for business to join it. The youngster, of course, was bewildered and confused. His deep disappointment soon gave way to anger and a kind of intense bitterness that plagued him throughout his life.

This same young man eventually left Germany and went to England to study. He sat daily at the British Museum formulating his ideas and composing a book. In that book he conceived of a movement that was designed to change the world. In the book he dismissed religion as an “opiate for the masses” which the world is better off without. The man’s name was Karl Marx and the system was, of course, Communism.

Who could blame him for his anger and intense bitterness? He watched his father give up his faith because it was good for business. Phony. Wouldn’t you agree that hypocrisy is particularly deadly when it’s practiced by religious people?

Jesus doesn’t want us to make a show of our faith. Jesus wants us to be authentic in our commitment to him. That’s what Ash Wednesday is all about. That’s what Lent is all about. It’s about dropping the pretense. It’s about living the Christ life to the best of our ability and not worrying about what the rest of the world thinks.

We are humbling ourselves in the presence of complete holiness and praying with the Psalmist, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” (139:23-24)

There was nothing phony about Jesus. There was no desire to impress others by seeming to be something he was not.  And that’s what he wants from us.

Be real, for Christ’s sake. Be genuine as Christ was genuine. As you come to the altar rail today, examine your heart and ask if your actions are in conformity with your faith. If not, let your prayer be that Christ will give you a new heart that is as his heart. And never let it be said of you that you are a fawney.