1 Lent, 2022-C: Loving Lent

Lectionary: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

En el nombre del Dios, que es Trinidad en unidad. Amen.

I’ve mentioned a few times that Lent is my favorite season, to which some of you have responded with surprise and confusion. I promised I’d clarify why Lent is my favorite season. Here’s a start...

If I could reduce the purpose and practice of Lent into a single idea, I would use this quote from a poem
by St. Theresa of Avila:“ [God] desired me, so I came close.” Here’s the fullness of that poem: 

A thousand souls hear [God’s] call every second, 
but most every one then looks into their life’s mirror and 

says, “I am not worthy to leave this sadness. 

When I first heard his courting song, I too 

looked at all I had done in my life 

and said, 

 “How can I gaze into his omnipresent eyes?” 

I spoke those words with all my heart, 

 but then He sang again, a song even sweeter, 

and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence 

God showed me His compassion and spoke a divine truth, 

“I made you, dear, and all I made is perfect. 

Please come close, for I 

desire

you.”

It’s very sad to me that the pervasive notion about Lent is that it is a dark and difficult season, to be approached with dread, guilt, and sometimes even self-loathing; that we have to work to “tame” our desires by giving something up, then use all the self-control we can muster to keep our Lenten promises.

The irony is that exerting our self-will is exactly what we are called NOT to do during Lent. Lent isn’t meant to be a time of practicing self-control. It’s meant to be a time of relinquishing it.

During Lent, we practice discipline and repentance. It’s a mistake to confuse discipline with self-control and penitence with wallowing. In fact, it’s sin: the sin of hubris – the very thing that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the garden.

Our discipline and repentance are the means by which we re-enter the womb of God where we can rest, be restored, renewed, and prepared. In his book, “Praying Shapes Believing,” theologian Lee Mitchell reminds us that: “Joy, love, and renewal are as much Lenten themes as are penitence, fasting, and self-denial.” (29)

Temptation is anything that leads us into sin – and sin is that which causes us to forget who we are, whose we are, and why we’re here.

The gospel writer tells us that Jesus, the Incarnate One, the manifest reality of the unity of humanity and divinity, was tempted to forget his true identity and separate himself into a dichotomy of body and spirit. In the first temptation, Jesus was famished and he was tempted to focus only on his suffering earthly body.

Next, though he knew his divine purpose, Jesus was tempted to walk away from God’s plan for his life and live out a different plan – one in which he would get glory and avoid pain and humiliation.

Finally, Jesus was tempted to forget his relationship as the 2nd person in the Trinity and throw his earthly life away, daring God to prove to Jesus that he mattered by using divine intervention to save him; also daring Jesus to use his divinity to save himself.

We share with Jesus these temptations of identity, purpose, and relationship.

The first temptation, forgetting the divinity that dwells in us, goes to our very identity. We are embodied spirit. The actual coexistence of humanity and divinity was made manifest first in Jesus. Now each of us is a living testimony to that co-existence.

The second temptation, conceiving a plan for ourselves and putting that ahead of God’s plan for us, goes to how, or even whether, we will live into God’s purpose for us. If Jesus’ life is any indication (and it is), living into our divine purpose won’t be all blessing and honor, but it will be redemptive – for us and for the world.

When we’re honest, it seems ridiculous that we think we can devise a plan for happiness and fulfillment by chasing after the perfect life partner, the perfect body, the perfect job, car, home, or salary. That’s how the world tempts us away from our divine purpose, and about the only thing being fulfilled is the corporate bottom line.

The third temptation, testing God to prove we matter, goes to our core understanding of our relationship to God, one another, and ourselves. We are beloved of God. It’s true that many people don’t feel very beloved. Their earthly experiences have taught them to believe otherwise. But our faith assures us that God loves all God created. We will always have moments when we doubt that, or when it seems like God isn’t there so we have to rely on ourselves.

Learning to notice those moments of temptation, discovering what they look like for us and for our church, and repenting of them, that is, responding differently, is one of our goals during Lent.

For example, some of us eat, smoke, or drink to comfort ourselves. Repentance might involve attention to the stewardship of our physical bodies - noticing the physical signal that starts the process of filling an emptiness within us, then acknowledging the justifications as they speak in our thoughts (I can have this one cookie, or I deserve this drink) and responding differently - which is to say repenting - saying “no” to the temptation; saying “no” to the self, and living into the emptiness until it is redeemed by God.

Institutionally, this can look like trying to run a church as a successful business rather than as the mystical body of Christ in the world. Jesus was famished. The church will be too at times.

Others among us work too much in order to win approval or to feel like we matter. Institutionally, this can look like expecting too much work from church employees, misidentifying productivity with faithfulness or value. Repentance here might involve attention to the stewardship of our time and relationships - committing to and encouraging a schedule that balances time devoted to work, family, leisure, and includes time devoted to corporate and private worship of God. Lent is a good time to commit to regular attendance at Sunday worship or our Christian formation offerings through FaithQuest, remembering that we live out our purpose in community as the body of Christ in the world.

Some of us habitually deny ourselves anything good out of a sense of unworthiness or, at the other end of the spectrum, deny ourselves nothing from a sense of privilege. Repentance here might involve the stewardship of our spiritual lives - fasting from criticism of self or others, or keeping a prayer journal in which we acknowledge the daily gifts and blessings God is giving. Institutionally, this might look like trusting that God loves, sustains, and guides our church working through the servant-leaders God has called to serve here, from bishop, to clergy, to vestry, to the greatest and least among us.

The Lenten disciplines we practice are meant to help us enter humbly into the presence of God, where we surrender ourselves to God’s unfathomable love and unfailing care for us. The emptiness within us that continually seeks satisfaction comes from a deep sense of separation from that love. Lent is when we go to that scary place of emptiness, but we go there knowing that God desires communion with us and that Jesus came to make that happen – once for all.

Remembering that helps quiet those voices of temptation that play like a tape-recording in our heads, saying: you are not worthy or beautiful or gifted… you don’t matter to God or to the world… you are not loved. We are worthy, beautiful, and gifted, and we do matter. 

We’re also unfinished… continually growing and maturing in body and in spirit. Our brokenness is not something to be ashamed of or to avoid. It is as much a gift as any talent we possess because it is the place in us where God dwells most assuredly, most compassionately.

Our brokenness is the cross we bear; the place where we witness the redeeming love of God still at work in the world. When others see spiritual growth and maturation happening in our brokenness, they are empowered to stop being ashamed of their brokenness, pick up their own cross, and walk into redemption.

God desires us to come close and we hunger for that too. Bound together in the eternal love of God in Christ we discover love that protects, satisfies, and delivers us.

This is our Lenten journey, and this is just the beginning of why Lent is my favorite season. It’s a time of deep transformation for us in the womb of our living, real, and present God. God bless us as we begin it. Amen.