The ashes of Ash Wednesday may be just the right thing to hold this tension together. Pulling together Joel 2 and Matthew 6 creates a tension between sufficiently caring about God to show it in my humble, penitential actions, and sufficiently honoring God by not making a show of my actions. The Scripture readings for Ash Wednesday seem to give us conflicting admonitions: on the one hand (if you are using the passage from Joel), the prophet Joel says to return to the Lord “with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning,” and on the other hand, Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, “whenever you fast, do not look dismal…(instead) put oil on your head and wash your face.” In other words, on the one hand, “do something public and explicit to show that you are devoting yourself to repentance and contrition.” On the other hand, “disguise the fact that you are devoting yourself to repentance and contrition.”
ELCA Intro Model Constitution Congregations.ELCA Guide for Use Model Constitutions Congregations.2022 Amendments to the Model Constitution for Congregations.2022 Model Constitution Congregations (Word).2022 Model Constitution Congregations (PDF).
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