Online Sermons
The 1st Sunday in Lent: March 1, the Rev. Dr. Barbara Schlachter
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsWith friends like that, who needs enemies. Jesus did not say this, but perhaps he wondered about it. It was the Holy Spirit that drove him into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. We who do not like being even slightly pushed by anyone or anything, wanting to make our own decisions, find it difficult to imagine God’s kindly spirit leading us into a place where Satan can have at us for 40 days.
The word tempted sounds a lot like tempered, however, and perhaps we can see this time of trial as one that was necessary for Jesus’ self understanding and his ability to withstand the other trials that would come his way. It took an untried metal or mettle and strengthened it through an ordeal. It may, therefore, fall into the category of, “You’ll thank me for this some day.” Or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Demons tempted and angels ministered. This experience of Jesus in the desert is the basis of our Lent. Jesus was there for 40 days and 40 nights and so our Lent goes for 40 days, not including Sundays. Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday. Mark says nothing about his fasting, but other gospels do. So Lent became a time set apart for Christians to reflect upon how they were tempted and how they were cared for by a loving God who sends ministering angels, and to fast and do whatever else might be necessary within oneself to prepare for the great joy of Easter.
The section of Gospel of Mark we heard this morning takes us from the moment of Jesus’ understanding of himself as God’s Beloved at his baptism, through the desert, and then into the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. According to Mark it did not begin until John was arrested. With John’s voice silenced, Jesus’ knew it was time for him to speak up. And so he proclaimed the Good News. The Kingdom of God is near, repent and believe.
So repentance has become part of that time of reflection in Lent. We are to engage in a self-examination about how far we have drifted away from our center, from a life centered in God, from the things and people that are most precious to us. Lent is a time for mid-course correction, to use a nautical expression. We return to our center, to our Beloved and our status as God’s Beloved Son or Daughter.
I Peter says in our second reading that Christ suffered for sins once for all. The alienation that separates people from God, from knowing themselves as God’s Beloved, has been taken care of once and for all. In studying and reflecting on the love and life of Christ, we know God in a way no one had before Jesus came.
God was still experimenting with relationship with human beings in the Noah story, figuring out destroying creation was not the way to help people live in God’s image. God’s repentance is signed in the rainbow. God tried still other covenants, with Moses, with David, and we still didn’t get it. So God made the bold step, the radical disjuncture of being not only the creator but appearing as one of the creatures. Jesus paid a high price for that revelation, but we who have come after realize that there was something in his life experience that changed what it means to be human, to be in God’s image, to be God’s beloved. We spend our whole lives learning to understand this and what a difference it makes to how we live and how we understand our purpose. Every year in Lent we get another turn of the spiral to come again through this time of conversion and return—of realizing how far we have drifted and of coming back.
Easter is a great homecoming. Ash Wednesday is the day we turn around and begin our return. There should be eagerness in our steps, not dread.
Thomas Merton was a beloved Cistercian monk of Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky. Here is what he wrote about the First Sunday of Lent:
The first Sunday of Lent, as I now know, is a great feast. Christ has sanctified the desert and in the desert I discovered it. The woods have all become young in the discipline of spring: but it is the discipline of expectancy only. Which one cuts more keenly? The February sunlight, or the air? There are no buds. Buds are not guessed at or thought of, this early in Lent. But the wilderness shines with promise. The land is dressed in simplicity and strength. Everything foretells the coming of the holy spring. I had never before spoken so freely or so intimately with woods, hills, birds, water, and sky. On this great day, however, they understood their position and they remained mute in the presence of the Beloved. Only His light was obvious and eloquent. My brother and sister, the light and water. The stump and the stone. The tables of rock. The blue, naked sky. Tractor tracks, a little waterfall.
Where you and I might have only seen the dragging on of winter, Merton saw the sanctification of the desert, the promise of resurrection.
Whatever discipline you undertake this Lent, I hope it will be one undertaken with the idea of finding the holy, in yourself and in the world about you.
If you get up earlier to pray, marvel at the increase of light and the choir of birds.
If you give up a favored food, do it because it is good for you or for the environment. We have decided to give up beef because it uses so much water and so much vegetable matter to produce.
If you give up something else, consider making it television so you can play games or talk with your family or read. Or whatever it is that keeps you from having time with those who matter to you and reflecting on your soul’s health.
If you take something on, choose something that will help you see God in those around you or in the creation, or in those who are in special need of some sort.Choose as a family something to give some extra money to, like Episcopal Relief and Development and figure out what you will not do in order to have that money. Like no soda or latte for Lent. No fast food. Fast from fast food; it will save you money and improve your health.
Don’t select a Lenten discipline that will leave you exhausted and unhappy, beating up on yourself for being a spiritual weakling—or else prideful because you have enough discipline to actually not eat a favorite food for 40 days.
Here’s an idea that I am going to try. I am a great list maker. I put all the things down that I need to do every day. I know sometimes I can feel more like a human doing than a human being, so for every time I put something on my to do list, I am going to add a way to be. So my list might read. Call Audrey—be kind. Do the laundry—be thankful.
One of the greatest temptations we face is our self-sufficiency—our desire to think that it all depends on me, on us. We are partners with God. God who has given us life and called us to our baptismal ministry will give us the grace and time to do that which we are called to do. So give up worry and anxiety for Lent. Trust God.
Whatever you do, choose something that will make you love God more and know God’s great love for you even more.
Observe Lent as Thomas Merton did—as a great feast to prepare for the Great Feast.
Make it like taking a deep cleansing breath, to refresh yourself. Let the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, blow through you, taking away what ever separates you from the great love of God.