Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Have you been told to take a time out, or sit in a corner, or go to your room? These disciplinary actions meant to remove you to a place apart and give you time to reflect on your actions, are frowned upon in today’s society, which regards such measures as punitive rather than remedial. But Jesus gives us this very disciplinary direction in the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday and tells you to “go to your room and shut the door!” “When 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” (Matthew 6:6).

 

It is not entirely a direction to go to a quiet place to be more intimate with God as if He just wants to be alone with you to share some extra special moments and to give you a prize without anyone else seeing. There is also some correction included in His direction to go to your room. It is disciplinary. It is meant to shape your Lenten practices into godly disciplines.

 

“When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (vv. 5-6).

 

It is disciplinary to be told to go to your room. Your heavenly Father hopes to correct the sinful practice of doing your righteous deeds before the eyes of others in order to be seen by them, to revel in your pride and wallow in your arrogance, instead of finding joy and fulfillment in communion with your heavenly Father. He wants a relationship with you practised in prayer, a union of heart in acts of love toward those in need, and a share in the sufferings of Christ as you fast, following your Lord’s example.

 

So, not all acts of charity, prayer, and fasting are pleasing to the Lord. He condemns those that are not done with a pure heart. He condemns those done just to be seen by others so that you might feel superior to them. He declares it misguided to do any righteous deed in order to receive any kind of reward from other people. For He wants to be the one to reward you for doing these things purely out of faith and love. So your heavenly Father directs you to go to your room and shut the door. And what happens there in your room?

 

You could just sit and sulk and be angry that you have been reprimanded. You could convince yourself that it is all unfair, that everyone else does their good deeds in order to be thanked, respected, and admired by other people. You could think that God must be treating you differently than anyone else, that He has more unreasonable expectations of you than of others. You might decide that since God has sent you to your room to shut the door, that you are going to shut Him out too, give Him the silent treatment, turn your back on Him, and listen to Him even less than ever before. Haven’t we all had those kind of thoughts when our parents have sent us to our room for some poor behaviour?

 

But even the loving discipline of our earthly parents is not directed toward isolating us, but to prepare for a moment when they will open that closed door and come and talk to us about our poor behaviour. Their hope is not that we will remain isolated in our room, or stay out of their face, or not talk to them ever again. Their hope ought to be to draw us closer to them by coming to us in our closed room in order to sort things out, to help us see the error of our ways, to reassure us of their love, and to encourage us to be the best that we can be.

 

In the best of these situations our earthly parents have striven to model our heavenly Father, who is not hesitant to tell us to go to our room and shut the door. It is not so that we might have an internal conversation with ourselves in order to reinforce the lies we have already been living: saying we have not done anything wrong, we don’t deserve this, we are better people than others, and know better than the God who has unjustly told us to go to our room and shut the door.

 

In today’s Psalm, David reflected on the time when he had been confronted by God through Nathan the prophet. God had to get David to think about what he had done, for he was just going to continue on in his life as if there was nothing wrong. But after things had quieted down and God sent the prophet to have a conversation with David, David gave us these words to confess to our heavenly Father: “Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being, and You teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Psalm 51:6).

 

David saw that God’s discipline was to get him to a quiet place where he could contemplate honestly and hear the Word of God that was being spoken to him, in order to draw him back in repentance so that he might receive God’s gracious love and forgiveness.

 

God delights in the truth, not in false works of piety done to be seen by men, but honest works fuelled by the knowledge of God’s love and grace: works of charity, prayer, and fasting that you would do even if no one ever came to know about them. It is only in quiet contemplation of the Word of God through the prophets, apostles, and evangelists that we come to the truth. And that is what gives our heavenly Father delight.

 

He sends us to our room to shut the door so that we might shut out all of the exterior distractions and motives, and consider our relationship to Him. He comes to us there in the quiet with His Word so that we might see our sins, confess them, be restored and encouraged to be more pure in prayer, more gracious in charity, and faithful in fasting. The Season of Lent is a time in which we are called to quiet and contemplation, in our rooms with the door closed, and in our churches isolated from the distractions of the outside world (places where we can hear our heavenly Father speaking to us).

 

What happens when you are sent to your room and told to shut the door? You hear His Word, not coming from your own thoughts and feelings, but remembering what you have heard and learned from the Bible. For your heavenly Father does not send you there to isolate you from Himself, but so that He might speak with you in a more intimate way. And having heard His voice, you don’t have to be afraid to confess along with David, “Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be justified in Your words and blameless in Your judgment” (v. 4). “You were right, dear Father, to send me to my room.”

 

While out in the world and in the eyes of others, it is too easy to convince yourself that you are better than most, that you have deserved special treatment, that you should be recognized for your prayers and charity and fasting, that there is no way God can condemn a person so righteous as you. But when you are sent to your room and the door is shut, then it is quiet enough to hear the voice of your heavenly Father through His Word.

 

What happens when you go to your room and shut the door? King David knew what happens: the truth comes to our inward being and we confess our sins. And God teaches wisdom in the secret heart.

 

That wisdom is not only knowledge of your sin, but also the knowledge that your loving heavenly Father who has called you to repentance has an abundance of love and forgiveness to lavish upon you. It was while the disciples were in the upper room with the doors shut that Jesus came to them to show them His nail marked hands and to say, “Peace be with you,” breathing His Holy Spirit upon them, and empowering these forgiven to also forgive in His stead (John 20:20-22).

 

God imparts His wisdom in our hearts in quiet contemplation of His Word so that we might be sure that we are forgiven for our ostentatious displays of piety, whether they be charity, prayer, fasting, or something else. He has provided for us a Saviour who prayed with tears and bloody sweat for our salvation. That Saviour, Jesus Christ, fasted in order to battle the devil and his temptations so that we might have a sinless sacrifice offered for our sins. It is through that Saviour that your heavenly Father dispenses His charity in pouring out grace and blessing upon you.

 

So, in sending you to your room to shut the door, God not does not just reveal the truth of your sins, He also teaches you the wisdom of His grace. And so we can go to our rooms and shut the door, not with a sense of foreboding punishment, but with an expectation of restoration. We can go to church not to send a message to our community, but to receive a message addressed to us. We can be isolated in our individual confession of very personal sins in order to hear the voice of our heavenly Father speaking through His servant into our own ear. We can pray with David in the psalm, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (v. 10).

 

We can ask our heavenly Father to wipe out all our sins and to uphold us with His Spirit, so that we have a right attitude, motivation, and purpose founded on faith in God’s love and not on any need to try to prove ourselves worthy of worldly rewards. For our reward will come from our heavenly Father who has forgiven us. As He has cleansed us from sin and washed away all of our impure thoughts and motivations through the merit of Jesus, so He will also reward us with joy and gladness in doing His will.

 

We will have great pleasure in our prayers, joy in our charity, and gladness in our fasting when we do these things not to be noticed by others, but out of a sober recognition of all that God has done for us through the suffering and death of His Son. Our reward will be the kind of things that David mentions at the end of the psalm. There is joy and gladness in the discipline of the Lord. There is reward in pleasing Him whether anyone else knows about it or not.

 

It is rewarding to pray, to fast, and to do acts of charity even if no one sees it but our heavenly Father. For these are the things that proclaim we have a loving and gracious God. These are the things that declare His righteousness and mercy. These are the disciplines through which God has promised to do great things in us and through us to a world that may come to know that somehow, in some way, the heavenly Father has shown them His love.