"Beware of practicing your piety before others … " We hear these words on the very day we embark on a church season marked over the centuries by practices of prayer, fasting, and sacrificial giving; on the day we mark our very foreheads with ash, wearing it as a visible identity sign and a witness to a cross of Christ.

This scripture has been cited as a reason not to engage in such practices as being signed with ash or giving up (or taking on) something during Lent. Many years ago I participated in a joint United Methodist Church Ash Wednesday service in which the pastor who gave the sermon preached against the practice of receiving ashes, arguing that our God is a God of grace. Our faces should be shining with grace and joy, not disfigured by soberness and soot. It was a pretty confusing service for the congregation, faced with deciding whether to come forward to receive ashes from some of the pastors standing up front after hearing the practice criticized by the preacher.

Of course, the danger that Jesus names in the scripture we have just read is not that certain practices do not witness to God's grace but that they may become primarily motivated by a desire for recognition and praise – the real "reward" sought is not a deeper life with God but social elevation. The charge is hypocrisy; a hypocrisy that is all too visible among some people within his religious community. The passage we heard from Isaiah also has to do with hypocrisy. Practices of piety that have become ends in themselves, oblivious to the hungers and hopes of widows and orphans, of the despair of people who suffer from religious people's indifference and greed, are hypocritical. "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them," Jesus says.

There is sometimes a fine line between needing affirmation and encouragement in our lives of faith and being captive to others' notice or approval or whatever makes us feel self-important. Human beings need a certain amount of affirmation to thrive. Children need praise to recognize their gifts and abilities, and encouragement to develop them; they need to experience that giving is rewarding, that it connects them with others. But part of growing up is learning to love "the thing itself" that we do: the thrill of making music for its own sake, what it's like to build something that is well made or to do something kind for someone else because the action in and of itself has meaning – quite apart from anyone seeing us or praising us for doing it.

If we are so vulnerable to craving the notice or praise of others that it is the driving motivation for our choices, then perhaps the best gift we can receive is the challenge to practice our faith in secret for a while – a fasting or abstinence no one knows about but God; a practice of prayer done behind closed doors; putting a sacrificial gift in the offering that we'll never get credit for toward our pledge or tithe to the church.

But let us not let these words, which (like the reading from Isaiah) were a warning against the dangers of hypocrisy and misplaced focus, undermine the joy of finding companions as we seek ways of living that are life-giving. Christian practices, write Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra, are things Christians do together over time in response to and in light of God's active presence for the life of the world.* Honoring the body … extending hospitality … keeping Sabbath … giving testimony … engaging in prayer and discernment … abstaining … forgiving … dying well … singing our lives. We do not just think our faith. We find ways to practice it with our bodies, our voices, with the very physical and material choices we make each day. And there is nothing more salutary to practicing faith than to have companions in the faith, who engage in these practices with us. Jesus' whole ministry involved gathering people together for public witness, mutual support, and mutual accountability. Such a life has its dangers, and when they overtake us the best gift we can receive is a stern confrontation. But, finally, with all its risks and mistakes, we are meant for life together in Christ; to be "signed" with his cross and all that it calls us to embrace.

Grace is at the heart of it of course. But grace is not just about a scrubbed face and a big smile. As Heidi Neumark has said, " … grace cleaves to the depths, attends the losses, and there slowly works her defiant transfiguration."** Grace is present in the ashes; that is where we need it the most.

Ben Larson reminded me of that. Ben was the 25-year-old son of a friend, a seminary student at Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. He was a music maker – a guitarist and composer. He grew up in the church and learned to love it, in spite of what he knew were its many flaws. He wanted nothing more than to be a pastor in the church. This past January he went with his cousin Jonathan, his new bride Renee, and other Wartburg students to Haiti to learn from the people there, as well as to teach theology and work in the St. Joseph's School for Boys. He and Renee and Jonathan were in St. Joseph's School when the earthquake hit. They were separated from each other as the building collapsed. Renee and Jonathan were able to get out through some openings in the roof. As the aftershocks continued they called out for Ben. They heard his voice, singing. They told him they loved him and to keep singing, but the singing stopped after Ben sang, "Christ's peace to us we pray." Renee said, "He spent his last breath singing."*** How does a bereaved family and community bear an incomprehensible loss? Because, they say, their lives and losses are joined with the people of Haiti. Their lives and their deaths are held together in Christ; the Christ to whom and about whom Ben spent his last breath singing. Even in the grave we make our song.

On Ash Wednesday, through an ancient practice, we make our testimony that grace cleaves to the depths, attends the losses, and slowly works her defiant transfiguration. We allow ourselves to be marked with a physical, tangible sign of our own mortality and a mark of defiant hope even in the face of death and horrendous grief, bound to others in a common mortality and bound to Christ who lived a mortal life. We are called to witness to and practice our faith, because these witnesses and practices shape as well as convey our faith. As any person in a Twelve-Step group might witness, insight alone is seldom sufficient for transformation; our talk does not necessarily determine our walk. But changing what we do, the way we walk, can change everything. On this Ash Wednesday, let us renew our commitment to the walking, trusting in the One who alone can give the song. Amen.