The First Sunday in Lent February 25, 2007
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91
Romans 10:5-13
Luke 4:1-13
Last Wednesday night at our Ash Wednesday service, I began my sermon by welcoming us to Lent. Welcome is not the first word which comes to mind when you invite people into Lent. We think of welcoming as a gesture filled with grace and hospitality, an invitation which offers something pleasing to us. But I meant what I said when I welcomed us to Lent, and I mean it again this morning on this First Sunday in Lent. I invite you and welcome you into the Lenten disciplines which mark this 40 day period. I ask us to be intentional about taking quiet time away to empty ourselves of the noise and clutter of our life. I invite us into deeper periods of prayer and study of scripture and other materials which challenge us to learn and grow. I encourage us to do the work of rigorous self-examination which focuses our minds and hearts on aspects of our life we would rather not deal with; the ones we keep buried under piles of busy-ness, the ones we dance around at a distance, and the ones which keep us in avoidance or denial; like our personal inadequacies and failures; like the doubts and fears we hide beneath our confident and cool exterior; like the dark little secrets which make us the people we are, but not the people we show to others. Yes, I welcome you to Lent because this truly IS a season of blessing. It is a blessing to people who believe that their life is made better by coming clean with themselves and with God. When we are able to admit our human faults and frailty, and acknowledge our separation from God and from each other by our sin. It is a blessing because when we are willing to take the risk and do the hard work of Lenten disciplines, we come back to ourselves, and to God and to each other in truer and healthier relationship. We find ourselves becoming the people God created us to be.
But don’t just take my word for it. If you want to get some idea of what Lent is about and what it is meant to do for us, the secular world provides a another model which requires people to take a demanding inventory of their life for the purpose of turning it around. And it provides its own blessing. Just ask anyone who is deeply immersed in the disciplines of self-help programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. Persons in such programs will tell you what a blessing it is to finally come clean; to see yourself as you really are; to admit publicly to others who share your experience that that you are rendered helpless by what controls your life, and to ask forgiveness of others for the damage you have done to their life. They will tell you what a blessing it is to surrender yourself to a higher power, and to realize how much you depend on that power and the people who share your experience with you to help you keep living in the truth of your life. It shouldn’t surprise us that such programs get results, but results only come to those who keep the faith, so to speak, and stay in the disciplines of the program. The same can be said of our disciplines of worship in our church. Worship provides regular opportunities for us to acknowledge our faults in our confession of sin, so that we can be forgiven and restored to God and to each other. But Lent is the time for us to go deeper and to be more intentional about our religious disciplines. In the words of my AA friends, it is time to work the program. Really work the program. To feel what blessing is like when you are willing to sacrifice something for it, to risk something for it, and to do the hard work for it.
That is why we are meeting here at St. George’s Church on every Wednesday evening at 6:30 for Stations of the Cross, followed by intercessory prayer. We are also engaging in a study series every Friday evening to learn what it means to be a child of God in the Episcopal Church. These are opportunities our advisory team planned so that we might come together to share in Lenten disciplines. We would like you to join us, because this is how we grow to God and this is how we grow with each other. And, if I might add from my background in congregational development, this is how we grow a church.
I must admit at this point in my sermon that this is not the sermon I set out to write. It was not my intent to delve into the purposes and promises of Lent. My entire sermon on Wednesday night set out to accomplish that. So I apologize to the people who were there and are hearing some of this for the second time. But for those of you who were not able to attend the Ash Wednesday service, I felt it would be important to begin this First Sunday in Lent with some of the thoughts I shared about Lent because I believe they are important to us, not just as a people of God, but also as a community of faith in this church of St. George’s. But there is another reason I felt some urgency to focus on Lent this morning. If you notice in your service leaflet, this Sunday in our liturgical tradition is called The First Sunday IN Lent. Unlike the First Sunday OF Advent for instance, this Sunday is a regular Sunday which just happens to fall in Lent. Unlike the Sundays OF Advent which are meant to focus on Advent hope and expectation, Sundays “in” Lent are not “of” Lent. Each Sunday in Lent is still a mini Easter celebration. And while we will encounter Lenten themes, themes of sin and repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation, our primary focus will remain fixed on Easter joy and thanksgiving. So Sunday worship will not necessarily provide the focus for our Lenten disciplines. We will need to provide ways to focus ourselves on the disciplines of Lent. We will need to set aside time to pray and meditate, to study and learn, and to enter into rigorous self-examination. We will need to take advantage of opportunities our church provides for us if Lent is going to make a difference for us; if we are to fully participate in the paschal mystery of Christ’s suffering and death and resurrection; if we are to experience lasting joy in Easter celebration.
Forty days is not too much to ask, I think, to do the work God gives us to do for the sake of our spiritual and mortal well-being. If we look at twelve-step programs, the first 30 days is critically important for one who is serious about working the program. But that 30 day period is only the beginning for people who spend the rest of their life practicing the disciplines which keep them healthy and fit for life. So it is that Lent is only the beginning for Christians who will emerge from their Lenten disciplines into their new life of worship and service to God throughout the church year.
Forty days is what it took for Jesus to prepare himself for his new life and ministry on this earth. Immediately after he was baptized, Jesus intentionally went into the desert. He went to strip himself bare of all that his body and mind and soul had accumulated over the course of his life, things that would keep him from knowing God and from knowing himself. To do that, Jesus knew he needed to be in a quiet and uncluttered space where he could fast and pray without distraction. He needed to face the demons of this life, and even evil incarnate. He needed to know how he would live into the identity God gave him at his baptism. “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Now Jesus needs to know what that means, and what that will require of him. He needs to know if he will be able to fulfill his divine purpose on this earth, given his human capability.
These are the things we need to consider by our own baptism, and this season of Lent is a good time to consider them. For it is in baptism we receive our own identity as a child of God. And it is God’s hope that we will spend the rest of our lives living into the promises of our baptism, becoming the persons God created us to be. Our forty days of Lent provide us the same opportunity Jesus had in the desert to find out who we really are, and who God is, and how we are meant to be in relationship with God and with each other. It is a time for us to look at our own demons and the demons of this world, and face them down. So that we can be rid of them. That they might never get in the way of God’s purpose for our life. Interestingly, the demons Jesus faces in his encounter with the devil are the same demons we face when we have the courage to dredge up our own demons and flush them out. All of the ways the devil tempts Jesus are about our need for power and control in our life. They are indicative of the ways we try to get power to satisfy our own needs and purposes in it.
In his first temptation, the devil appeals to a basic human need which, if not met, is life-threatening. At the end of forty days, Jesus is hungry—indeed “famished,” according to scripture. It is interesting that Jesus does not deny that a hungry person needs food; but Jesus’ response is clear and certain: he has come to the desert hungering for something more. Something that food will not satisfy—even in a hungry man. So Jesus’ response to the devil’s offer is this: “Man does not live by bread alone.” Jesus makes it clear to the devil that he has been willing and able to fast these forty days in order to turn his hunger into hunger for God. At this time of Lent, we might ask ourselves: What do I hunger for? To what lengths would I go to satisfy that hunger? How will satisfying that hunger with things of this world keep me from hungering for God? Taking it one step further, how does satisfying my own hunger keep others from being fed? The tragic story of Anna Nicole Smith demonstrates the extent to which people will divorce themselves from God and from people who could help them make healthy decisions for their life. It seems to me that Anna Nicole hungered for love. But her demons offered her money and sex and drugs. She took them, but they were never enough to satisfy her. She craved more and more from her demons until she became enslaved by them. She became lost in the things she thought were about love, and in the end, she lost her life. Out Lenten disciplines can help us know the things we have lost our life to, and they can help us find what we really hunger for.
In his second temptation Jesus is offered the glory of the world and all authority in it if only he will worship the devil. But there is the catch. Once you agree to worship the devil, all the glory and authority you receive from him will be used for his destructive purposes. Christians, however, acknowledge all glory and authority to be in God, and God will use them in and through us for the good purposes of creation. Jesus knows that. Jesus knows that the glory and authority we seek in this world are short-lived. He knows that placing them above God causes us to use them and abuse them for our own purposes. Jesus also knows that to accomplish God’s purposes in this world glory and authority must come from God, and it will not look like the glory and authority of this world. So we might ask ourselves in this season of Lent: What glory and authority do I worship? What am I willing to do to have glory and authority? How does having glory and authority bring others to worship me instead of God?
Recent news stories about popular stars like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have prompted experts to explain why people in the limelight are prone to outrageous behavior the more glory and authority they receive. They seem to agree on one thing. People who are drawn to the field of entertainment are often very insecure and very needy. When the world of entertainment gives them the attention they crave, they are lured by the glory and authority which comes to them in it. This only makes them crave more attention, until their out of control behaviors have no meaning or consequence for them. They refuse the help they so desperately need to restore them to health and life because the glory they continue to imagine they have causes them to become their own authority, and the decisions they make become more dangerous to themselves and others. Unless there is a successful intervention, they have no idea that they have sold their soul to a devil whose easiest prey are people who are needy and insecure. A demon who promises glory and authority can only bring them to shame and ruin. For Christians Lent can be our time of intervention. Our time to listen to the voice of God when other voices are moving us in directions in our life we were never meant to go.
Jesus’ last temptation is the temptation to call on powers we do not have. The temptation to believe that power lies within us for our own needs and purposes. We don’t have to look far beyond our local news to hear stories of how people use and abuse that power. People who do not serve power; rather people who use power to serve them. Need I mention the names of politicians and CEO’s, heads of state, and the state of privilege and protection granted to those who have as opposed to those who have not. Jesus would not go to the pinnacle of power offered to him by the devil; Jesus knew that his power came from and belonged only to God. He was not about to jump off that pinnacle of power to his death. He was not about to be another casualty of power which absolutely corrupts, and corrupts absolutely. So the questions we might ask of power in our Lenten disciplines are these: How do we serve the power invested in us by God and the power given to us by the circumstances of our life in this world? In what ways do we use our power to serve our own purposes? In what way do we serve the purposes of power for a common good, even a good which does not serve us?
By his forty days in the wilderness Jesus claims the identity he received in his baptism. He does not succumb to the devices of evil which prey on human need and desire. In every temptation he is able to remember who he is and who he belongs to. “You are my Son,” said God. “I am well-pleased with you.” And we are no less God’s children by our own baptism, each and every one of us. And God is no less pleased with us. God may be hurt at times and disappointed by the ways we separate and divorce ourselves from him by our sin, and there are times he may even become a little angry. But no matter how far we stray from him by the seductive temptations of this world, God is always seeking us out, searching our hearts, hoping that we will return to him.
Jesus intentionally went into the desert wilderness to find himself in his baptismal identity. Our journey through Lent is meant to help us deepen our own baptismal identity as children of God so that we are better able to serve God’s purposes for us in our life. Like Jesus, we have to be willing to do the hard work of our Lenten disciplines. Like our friends in twelve step programs we might think of ourselves as “working the program,” the program which can restore us to our life in God and our life with each other. Lenten disciplines, like twelve-step programs, provide ways and means for that to happen. But first we must acknowledging our need of them. The British author G. K. Chesterton, who lived in turbulent times between the First and Second World Wars, made such an acknowledgment in a newspaper contest. The contest asked people to respond to the question, “What is wrong with the world today?” Chesterton answered, “I am.” He won the contest. Our forty days of Lent begin with “I am.” But the good news of the Gospel on this First Sunday in Lent comes in our response to the question, “What is right with the world today.” Christians living into their baptismal covenant can say with confidence, “I am.” Welcome to Lent.